It is estimated that thousands of hours of work were wiped off the record of minimum wage workers in one of the branches of Tnuva, the daily HaMevaser reports. Sadly, we are dealing with workers earning less than NIS 20 an hour, and in addition to their minimum salary, managers robbed them of hours worked apparently so they did not stray from maximum hours allotted to their respective departments.

An investigation reveals that collectively, about 10,000 hours were stolen from the minimum wage employees totaling about NIS 200,000. It was also learned that after Tnuva learned of what was done, the cooperative did not take any action against the managers and even worse, it did not return the money from workers.

The Haaretz investigation revealed for example, that in one month in 2006, a worker who earned a mere NIS 3,329 lost NIS 675 from that salary, leaving NIS 2,564.

Tnuva’s Ephraim Dvir, an internal auditor, did finally investigate and compile a report, which is labeled “Unusual Incident”. The report was distributed among senior department heads and manages, citing the actions taken against employees were illegal and could compromise Tnuva’s image. No mention was made about returning the stolen funds from employees.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)