By Ruth Eglash
One of the first events I covered as The Jerusalem Post’s Social Welfare Correspondent was a protest demonstration of participants in the newly inaugurated “Wisconsin Plan” in Israel.
More than 200 people — Jews and Arabs — joined the rally, uniting in one voice to protest the Wisconsin-inspired welfare-to-work program known in Hebrew as Mehalev.
They claimed the program was unfair; that it targeted the old and the weak; and that it only served to enrich the for-profit multi-national companies currently running the pilot job centers in four Israeli cities.
Against such slogans as “Arabs and Jews are getting poorer on Wisconsin,” the program’s participants begged me to tell their stories and were happy that someone was finally listening to them.
“It’s a joke,” Samira Avinadj, 57, from Nazareth, said as he waved a piece of paper in my face. “I have to sit at the center for four hours every day doing nothing, even though I have a letter from the doctor saying I can’t work.”
“They still have not found me any work and they blame me for that,” said Reuven Eliyah, 62, from Jerusalem. “They sent me to work in the storage room at Hadassah University hospital in Ein Kerem, even though I am a trained electrician.”
Excellent ‘eventually’
In the months since that demonstration, the program has not grown any less controversial.
About two weeks ago, 83 Knesset members — including Binyamin Netanyahu, who was involved in establishing the program when he was finance minister, and coalition chairman Avigdor Itzchaky — signed a petition calling on the government to cancel the program.
And a few days later, Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor Eli Yishai joined the bandwagon, announcing, after extensive visits to the Mehalev centers, he felt the same way.
However, last week Prime Minister Ehud Olmert took up the cause. He announced the establishment of an inter-ministerial committee, which his office would directly oversee, to help draft reforms of the program’s format.
He called on MKs, social welfare groups and others who have been monitoring the program to submit their suggested changes to the committee.
“If the government does all the things that we have suggested then eventually this will be an excellent program,” Ran Melamed told me last week in an interview.
Melamed is deputy director of social policy and communication for Yedid, the association for community empowerment. Yedid has been acting as a watchdog for the program, told me last week in an interview.
“There are always going to be people who are not happy with such a program. However, there are many satisfied people who now have jobs,” Melamed continued.
“Journalists and the media always focus on the good case study versus the bad case study, when really they should be looking at what the government is doing to improve the program and iron out the problems,” he said.
It was a cool day last November when I visited Jerusalem’s Mehalev center. I was unsure of what I might find at the newly refurbished facility, especially after my experience at the demonstration in June.
The atmosphere, however, was calm and those working for the program seemed genuinely dedicated to putting even the most chronically unemployed on the path to work.
“Someone who has been in receipt of welfare for a long time is most certainly living below the poverty line; and, for them, surviving is the name of the game,” Roy Newey told me as he showed me around the building.
Newey is group board director of A4e, a British-based company that operates the program in Jerusalem together with Israeli company Amin.
Newey highlighted that the problems facing the program in Jerusalem are unique, considering that a large proportion of the participants are devout Muslim or Orthodox Jewish women 55 and over who have never worked before. “The barriers they face are enormous,” he said.
Caseworkers, both Arab and Jewish, were equally serious about helping their clients overcome the hurdles and return to employment.
“It is a culture shock for many of them,” said Sandrine Amer, a trained lawyer. “But as an educated Arab from East Jerusalem, I believe that it empowers women and I am willing to support that.”
“It is a slow process but we are managing to change perceptions little by little,” she continued, adding, “It is a real confidence booster for women and mothers to go out and bring in money for their families.”
And while Melamed is highly critical of the government’s implementation of the plan, he and many of the other social welfare activists I have spoken to about this insist that it is time for the country to adopt a welfare-to-work program. Only time will tell if Olmert and his advisors can pull it off.
Ruth Eglash, a former assistant editor for The Chronicle, is the social welfare correspondent for The Jerusalem Post.
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