Summary
The railway workers’ union founded as the Jewish Railway Workers’ Association (RWA) in 1919, renamed the Union of Railway, Postal and Telegraph Workers (URPTW) as postal and telegraph workers amalgamated, which in 1924–25 became, briefly, a joint Arab-Jewish union before most of its Arab members left over its continuing Zionist affiliations (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 1390-1392, 1430, 1536-1542).
Details
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The RWA was established by Jewish railway workers in 1919 with the Conquest of Labour on the railways as its main task; improving wages and conditions was secondary, a means to strengthen Hebrew Labour (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 1390-1392). Its first congress was held in Jaffa in November–December 1919, a year before the Histadrut’s founding congress; it was financially dependent on the Zionist Commission, which supplemented Jewish railwaymen’s wages and funded workers’ kitchens, Hebrew and English classes, and books and magazines (lines 1400-1402).
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The union remained weak and unrecognised: Palestine Railways management and government officials refused it official recognition or direct dealing, so Yitzhak Ben-Zvi usually mediated for it; its third congress (some thirty delegates representing some 600 Jewish railway workers) joined the Histadrut as a unit and paid little attention to Arab coworkers (lines 1402-1410).
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Its fourth congress (Haifa, February 1922) endorsed the Histadrut’s national-sections policy with the proviso that until enough Arab members existed for a separate Arab section the union would accept Arabs as full members (line 1426). Renamed URPTW, it intervened in 1922 for dismissed Arab as well as Jewish workers and, in 1923, protested the sixteen-hour maximum workday, cancelled contracts and revoked religious rest-day choice; General Manager R. B. W. Holmes refused severance pay in January 1923 (lines 1430-1440).
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Its fifth congress (Haifa, September 1923) — twenty-one Jewish delegates representing 200–250 unionised Jewish railway workers of a total railway workforce of about 2,000, with Ibrahim al-Asmar and ‘Ali al-Batal attending as the first Arab observers — adopted a Po’alei Tziyon Smol resolution reaffirming Histadrut affiliation as an autonomous unit while demanding the Histadrut separate its cooperative from its trade union functions and establish the latter on an “international” basis, failing which the railway workers would hold a referendum on disaffiliation; its new bylaws declared the union “based on class struggle” and made no mention of national sections (lines 1446-1450).
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In June 1924 its central committee took organising Arab workers on itself; abandoning national sections for a purely unitary, territorial structure opened the way to a tacit understanding — the union formally international, Arabs in its leadership on the basis of parity, the joint union non-Zionist — on which by the end of 1924 it comprised some 529 Jewish and Arab members out of a workforce of almost 2,400, roughly half Jewish and half Arab, though only 10 to 15 percent of Arab railway employees belonged (lines 1494-1504; Chapter 3 note 42 records the union’s own higher claim of about 350 Arabs joined in four months, which Lockman says “seems too high”).
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In October 1924 it launched a campaign to restructure the Histadrut — separating its Zionist settlement and cooperative functions from its trade union functions, established territorially, beginning with changing the Histadrut’s name, since “it is impossible for it to be part of a General Organization of Hebrew Workers” (lines 1504-1508).
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Its January 1925 council in Haifa (twenty-five voting delegates) proclaimed by eighteen to seven a territorial and international trade union open to all railway, postal and telegraph workers regardless of race, religion or nationality, and demanded the upcoming Histadrut congress require all trade unions to be international; the Histadrut leaders present rejected the decisions as invalid because Arabs had contributed to the majority; seven Arabs were elected to the central committee (lines 1524-1532).
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In the months that followed, most Arab members left, which Lockman attributes mainly to the union’s continuing Zionist affiliations rather than to communist agitation or management divide-and-rule; from 1925 to the mandate’s end the URPTW remained overwhelmingly Jewish in membership and Zionist in orientation, active alongside the exclusively Arab Palestine Arab Workers Society among the railway workers (lines 1536-1572).
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The union defended its autonomy against the Histadrut, refusing wholesale expulsion of communists — “We do not expel members for their opinions, we are a trade union and have members who belong to various parties” — though in May 1924 it expelled seven Jewish communist railwaymen for one year for organising an unauthorised meeting with Arab workers’ leaders, and its central committee later suspended its one communist member (lines 1478-1490).
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In Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Chapter 4: the union continued to claim to be the sole legitimate representative of all railway workers; its 1926 claim of 780 members (422 Arabs) is judged “obviously very inflated”, a total of 300–400 being a safer estimate. Its January 1926 council abandoned its autonomy claim to the Histadrut and endorsed Ahdut Ha’avoda’s joint-unionism formulation; its sixth congress (summer 1927) voted by a small margin for joint organisation on the basis of national sections, and February 1928 bylaws established the sections and renamed it the National Union of Railway, Post and Telegraph Workers in Palestine (NURPTW) — see International Union of Railway, Postal and Telegraph Employees in Eretz Yisra’el for the union under its 1928 and 1931 names (lines 1844-1878).
Related pages
Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Palestine Railways, Histadrut, Joint Organization, Po’alei Tziyon Smol, Palestine Arab Workers Society, Hebrew Labour