Kav LaOved (Workers' Hotline)

Kav LaOved describes itself as an Israeli civil-society organization dedicated to defending workers' rights under Israeli labor law and international standards, explicitly serving workers without regard to nationality, religion, gender, or legal status.[1] Its stated constituency encompasses migrant workers, refugees and asylum-seekers, undocumented persons, Palestinians, Arab citizens of Israel, and low-income Israeli workers — in short, groups that established labor institutions have not always served adequately.[1]

The organization combines two broad functions. On the individual level, it provides labor-rights assessments, wage and benefit calculations, communications with employers and authorities, and referrals to labor courts. On the systemic level, it publishes research and policy papers, conducts strategic litigation, monitors enforcement practices, and works with government ministries on legislative proposals.[1][9] Its 2024 annual report states that it operates with 22 professional staff members, more than 50 trained volunteers, and a seven-member board.[1]

Public outreach is a significant part of its model. The organization reports operating eight hotlines that provide advice in ten languages, eight Facebook pages with a combined 170,000 followers, and a website in three languages.[1] Its agricultural-workers service includes a Thai-language Facebook page followed by more than 24,000 workers and distributes information leaflets in Thai, Hebrew, and English.[10] This multilingual approach reflects the diversity of the workforce it serves and the difficulty of reaching workers in peripheral agricultural regions through conventional channels.

Kav LaOved was founded in 1991 by Hanna Zohar and a small group of volunteers.[11][3] A 2002 Globes profile described it as a public nonprofit established eleven years earlier and reported that it received roughly ten complaints of verbal workplace violence per week, compared with only a few physical-violence complaints per year.[11] Zohar told the publication that the organization helped complainants by contacting employers, raising awareness, and publicizing cases.[11]

The impetus for its founding lay in gaps left by Israel's established labor institutions. In a 2011 interview, Zohar described Kav LaOved as an organization created to assist workers the Histadrut had not helped, and said the organization had attempted — without success — to cooperate with that federation.[9] Alongside other members of the Forum for the Enforcement of Workers' Rights, Kav LaOved began working with the government on legislative proposals from 2002 onward.[9]

In its early form, the organization functioned as a telephone hotline for foreign workers whose employers mistreated them, later developing into an office where lawyers provided labor and employment services voluntarily or for minimal fees.[2] By 2013 it had grown to 22 employees and approximately 70 volunteers.[3] A Jerusalem Post account from 2010 described its Tel Aviv branch as a free clinic where workers could seek help with employer disputes, including unpaid wages and benefits, and noted that it held a weekly session specifically for Israeli workers.[12]

The breadth of Kav LaOved's individual casework is documented across multiple years. In 2012, the organization opened 3,394 new files, closed 7,715 files, and reported helping recover more than 16 million shekels withheld by employers, including pension payments, recuperation pay, and holiday pay.[5] By 2014, a Ynet report said it handled more than 30,000 worker inquiries annually and that millions of shekels had been recovered in the preceding year on behalf of Israeli workers alone, although it did not specify the exact amount.[6]

Its attorneys and staff have assisted workers alleging failures to pay minimum wage, overtime, holiday and vacation pay, sick leave, travel expenses, severance, and other legally required benefits.[12] Clients have come from cleaning, security, and manpower-company sectors, and the organization has argued that weak union representation and limited enforcement leave many private-sector workers without adequate protection.[12]

In 2024, the organization reported directly assisting more than 4,800 workers whose rights had been violated and recovering over 19 million shekels in unpaid wages and benefits.[1] It also reported advising more than 10,000 workers in ten languages and providing assistance in person, in the field, and online.[1] Its recurring case categories include unpaid wages and benefits, denied healthcare, debt bondage and labor trafficking, workplace safety and accident claims, barriers to disability and maternity benefits, immigration-law violations, discrimination, and violence.[1]

A case described in the 2024 report involved a Sri Lankan caregiver diagnosed with advanced lung cancer after ten years of work in Israel. According to the organization, an inquiry prompted after her sister saw a Kav LaOved Facebook post helped the worker obtain 90,000 shekels in loss-of-work-capacity compensation and medical evacuation with an escort at the insurer's expense.[1]

One of Kav LaOved's defining causes has been challenging the legal framework that tied a migrant worker's residency status to employment by the specific employer who sponsored the worker's visa. Under that system, a worker who was fired, transferred, or who quit — including in situations involving exploitation, violence, sickness, or abuse — could lose legal status.[13] Roy Wagner, then a Kav LaOved board member, argued that many workers categorized as "illegal" had entered Israel with valid work visas but lost status after refusing rights violations or abuse.[13]

Wagner wrote that, at the peak of migrant labor in Israel around 2000, legally and illegally employed migrant workers numbered more than 250,000, excluding Palestinians, and amounted to roughly one tenth of the local labor force.[13] He attributed a subsequent decline of more than 25 percent to a downturn associated with the Second Intifada and the bursting of the high-tech bubble, followed by an aggressive media campaign and deportations.[13]

In response to a petition filed by Kav LaOved, the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, and other NGOs, the Supreme Court ruled on March 30, 2006, that the policy making foreign workers' residency status dependent on a specific employer led to abuse. It ordered the government to create a new legal mechanism for employing foreign workers, which the government had not implemented by the end of that year.[4] A 2013 Ynet profile attributed the ruling to Justice Edmond Levy and quoted it as characterizing the employer-binding arrangement as "modern slavery."[3] Wagner wrote in 2007 that state reforms and protective mechanisms were due "in large part" to achievements by NGOs such as Kav LaOved, while cautioning that shifting workers' dependence from employers to brokers did not make them free.[13]

The organization also petitioned the court in 2006 to limit the recruitment commissions migrant workers paid to secure jobs in Israel.[14] The court required the state to report on enforcement of recruitment-agency regulations and to promote agreements with sending countries.[14] Kav LaOved links this petition to a 2009 Israel–Thailand bilateral agreement for agricultural recruitment supervised by the International Organization for Migration; it reports that the first Thai workers recruited under that arrangement arrived in the second half of 2012 without a private recruitment agency.[14] The organization subsequently supported bilateral recruitment agreements with Bulgaria and Romania for construction workers.[5]

Kav LaOved also worked with the Immigration Authority and Ministry of Interior to extend from 30 to 60 days the period migrant workers could use to organize their departure after reaching the maximum permitted work period. It argued that the shorter window made it difficult to pursue unpaid wages or other rights before leaving Israel.[14]

A sustained focus of Kav LaOved's work has been the legal status of Palestinian workers employed by Israeli employers in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and inside Israel proper. The central legal question was which body of labor law applied. The state argued that Jordanian labor law governed employment in the West Bank, while Kav LaOved challenged that position. Its 2012 report described the broader legal effort as lasting approximately twelve years.[15]

On October 10, 2007, the High Court of Justice issued a unanimous ruling by an extended panel of nine justices in HCJ 5666/03. Kav LaOved's report said the judgment required Israeli employers in the West Bank to comply with Israeli labor laws for both Israeli and Palestinian workers and applied the principle of equality in labor-law enforcement to Palestinians employed by Israelis in Israel and the West Bank.[15] A State Department report said the ruling granted Palestinian workers the same rights and benefits as workers in Israel.[16] Kav LaOved later reported differences among labor-court judges over whether the ruling applied retroactively and said violations continued after the judgment.[15]

Reports from later years documented persistent shortfalls. By 2018, Kav LaOved was bringing cases in Israeli labor courts on behalf of Palestinian workers concerning unpaid or misreported wages, inadequate medical care after workplace injuries, and subsequent health-insurance claims. It also documented dozens of cases in which employers allegedly instructed injured workers to return to the West Bank rather than seek medical attention in Israel.[8] Reports covering 2022 and 2023 described similar allegations and said employers in settlements used Palestinian contractors who commonly limited workers' rights, including by denying pay raises. The reports also said Israeli authorities did not conduct labor inspections in settlements.[17][18]

A 2020 petition before the High Court challenged the practice of issuing Palestinian construction workers' permits through employers, tying workers to particular workplaces. The government subsequently announced a reform, effective December 6, 2020, under which permits for some construction workers would name a field of employment rather than an employer. Workers could move between employers, and those losing jobs could retain permits for 60 days and apply for a permit to seek new work.[19] Kav LaOved welcomed the direction but called for a system allowing workers to search independently and preventing illegal brokerage; its attorney said workers still lacked official information about the reform in Arabic.[19]

Research by the Institute for National Security Studies cited a Kav LaOved survey indicating that permit trading continued after the reform and that numerous permit advertisements remained visible on social networks.[20] A separate small-scale Kav LaOved survey from 2021 found that most surveyed workers learned about the reform from other workers rather than official sources. Some respondents welcomed the change in the hope that it would end permit brokerage, while others remained skeptical.[20]

After October 7, 2023, Kav LaOved reported that the government blocked the vast majority of Palestinian workers from the West Bank and Gaza from entering Israel and that some Palestinians who had previously worked in Israel or settlements did not receive wages owed to them afterward.[18] In 2024, the organization reported assisting 950 Palestinian workers in the West Bank with outstanding labor-rights issues, including unpaid wages and work-injury compensation claims, as well as East Jerusalem workers facing dismissals it characterized as illegal and discriminatory.[1]

Foreign caregivers employed in home-care arrangements have been among the groups represented in Kav LaOved's caseload, and conditions documented in that sector have driven several of its advocacy campaigns. The organization operates a hotline for foreign caregivers, while a 2011 human-rights report described the live-in nature of home-care employment and the lack of regular labor-law inspections as contributing to risks of exploitation.[21]

In 2011, Kav LaOved filed 830 complaints on behalf of foreign caregivers alleging underpayment of wages, physical violence, sexual harassment, and unsuitable employment conditions.[21] In 2012, it filed 119 complaints, with the government stating that most concerned salary disputes and were forwarded for criminal or administrative enforcement.[22] A report covering 2013 said the organization had filed hundreds of complaints during the preceding three years raising overlapping categories of alleged abuse. It also documented complaints from Bulgarian construction workers about insufficient pay, long hours, and poor living conditions.[23]

A 2023 Times of Israel investigation quoted Kav LaOved's 2013 report as stating that Israeli law allowed recruitment agencies to charge employers up to NIS 2,000 upon hiring and NIS 70 monthly but prohibited other fees, and that this provision was not enforced. The investigation also reported worker testimony alleging fees of thousands of dollars.[24] Kav LaOved has argued that foreign caregivers are entitled under Israeli law to pension contributions on the same basis as Israeli employees.[25]

When the government introduced a Deposit Law in 2017 requiring employers to deduct 20 percent of refugees' and asylum-seekers' salaries — with the funds held in a state account until the worker permanently left Israel — Kav LaOved and Tel Aviv University's Refugee Rights Clinic petitioned the High Court. On April 23, 2020, the court overturned the deduction requirement, and the organization's report states that more than 200 million shekels was subsequently returned to over 14,000 workers.[26]

A separate legal battle concerned social contributions for migrant workers more broadly. Kav LaOved petitioned alongside the Association for Civil Rights in Israel against a law allowing migrant workers' deposited social contributions to be confiscated if they stayed beyond their authorized period. The High Court struck down the confiscation provision, finding it violated property rights.[25] Kav LaOved legal-department head Aelad Cahana subsequently warned that a proposed bill exempting employers of new foreign caregivers from pension obligations might later be extended to other sectors.[25]

Workers' reluctance to complain was a recurring theme. A 2010 Jerusalem Post report described the caregivers' hotline as a contact point for workers reporting alleged sexual abuse, noting that three women called in a single day. The organization took testimonies, passed them to ministry officials, and encouraged police complaints, while acknowledging that workers often feared job loss or deportation.[27]

Kav LaOved characterizes Israel's agricultural sector as an especially abusive labor environment, particularly for migrant and student workers who may lack minimum wage, overtime pay, rest days, paid leave, accurate payslips, social benefits, adequate housing, and workplace-safety protections.[10]

In 2010, the organization identified several dozen agricultural workers held in conditions it characterized as slavery and subjugation and facilitated their release to government-run shelters.[28] It also filed a police complaint alleging that Thai agricultural workers were underpaid, made to work 14-hour days with only one day off every two weeks, and required to sign falsified records of their hours and salaries. The State Department reported that authorities subsequently moved the workers to a shelter and found them new jobs.[28]

In 2011, Kav LaOved filed hundreds of police complaints alleging labor-rights abuses at moshavim and kibbutzim throughout Israel, including health and safety violations, prolonged exposure to pesticides, unpaid overtime, excessive working hours, and poor living conditions.[21] A July 2011 strike by hundreds of Thai agricultural workers at Moshav Achituv, who alleged underpayment, excessive hours, and employer coercion, was followed by administrative orders and a government investigation.[21]

By 2019, a Kav LaOved survey of Thai agricultural workers found that 83 percent said they did not receive the legal minimum wage, 48 percent said they worked seven days a week, 72 percent said they did not receive legally required overtime pay, and 95 percent said they had not encountered an enforcement official.[29] The published account did not provide the survey's sample size or methodology. Kav LaOved had argued as early as 2007 that "as long as inspectors run inspections without interpreters, and fail to collect evidence from workers, systematic violations of minimum wage will continue."[16]

The 2021 report cycle brought particular attention to physical safety. Kav LaOved found that agricultural workers at sites in southern Israel lacked sirens and proper shelters. During the May 2021 military campaign, an Indian caregiver whose employer's Ashkelon home had no shelter was killed, as were two Thai agricultural workers when a rocket struck their farm; eight additional workers were injured in that strike.[30] On May 19, the Migrant Workers Administration instructed private recruitment agencies to permit temporary transfers for agricultural workers seeking to move to another region for security reasons.[30]

In 2024, the organization reported assisting 780 migrant agricultural workers whose labor, social, or human rights had been violated.[1] It reported that six migrant workers were killed by rocket fire on the Lebanon border and nine were injured while working in fields where they could not hear sirens and had no shelter.[1] After intervening on behalf of agricultural workers from India who reported high recruitment fees, unsafe housing, and wages below Israel's minimum wage, Kav LaOved reported improvements in wages and the beginning of suitable housing construction following its complaints to authorities.[1]

Kav LaOved publishes regular reports on workplace accidents in Israel and presses for stronger enforcement. In 2018, together with the International Labour Organization, it counted 38 workers killed in accidents in Israel's construction industry, including more than 20 Palestinians.[31] That November, following threats of a general strike, the government reached an agreement with the Histadrut to improve construction safety through additional site inspections, safety training, improved standards, and sanctions against contractors who violated requirements.[31]

The organization documented a broader enforcement gap in the years that followed. A police unit established in 2019 to investigate workplace deaths and severe injuries had conducted only 39 investigations from its founding through June 30, 2021, while approximately 900 construction accidents occurred during that period, 331 of them severe or fatal. Kav LaOved reported that fewer than 1 percent of accidents resulted in cases reaching the prosecutor's office.[30]

In the first half of 2022, Kav LaOved counted 270 accidents involving injuries of medium or greater severity, 259 workers injured at those severity levels, and 34 fatalities, including 15 in construction.[32] Falls from height accounted for 44 percent of fatal accidents and workers being struck by a work vehicle for 23 percent.[32] Among the fatalities, 32 percent were Arab citizens of Israel, 18 percent Palestinians, 12 percent Chinese workers, 16 percent Jewish Israelis, and 19 percent were of unknown identity.[32] The report identified agriculture as the sector with the steepest increase in deaths, recorded five fatalities from vehicle rollovers, and noted that 14 safety orders had been issued to agricultural employers.[32]

Alongside its work for migrant and Palestinian workers, Kav LaOved has consistently advocated for low-income Israeli workers and documented failures in wage enforcement. A 2009 report prepared by organization attorney Michal Tag'er, based on approximately 5,000 complaints from non-unionized Israeli workers, found that 65 percent of complaints related to the economic crisis. Workers reported wage cuts, dismissals, withheld pay, worsening conditions, and pressure to increase productivity, and the complaints came from workers earning medium or average wages as well as low-paid workers.[33]

Director Hanna Zohar stated in 2010 that more than 30 percent of Israel's workforce received minimum wage, estimating that roughly one million of 2.8 million workers were minimum-wage employees.[12] A Bank of Israel report cited in the same article found that the share of people classified as working poor had risen from just over 20 percent to 36 percent between 1997 and 2009.[12]

A 2020 Kav LaOved analysis, drawing on 2016–2019 data from the Regulation and Enforcement Administration, the National Insurance Institute, and the Central Bureau of Statistics, found that 429,550 workers — approximately 11 percent of the workforce — did not receive the legally mandated minimum wage.[34] The organization further found that warnings and sanctions for minimum-wage violations were issued to only 0.09 percent of employers in 2018 and 0.05 percent in 2019, while the estimated noncompliance rate had risen from 9.5 percent in 2012 to 11 percent.[34]

In 2014, the organization tracked more than 30 cases of alleged unlawful termination involving workers at private companies, municipalities, and a state-owned medical center. The workers were reportedly dismissed because of political opinions expressed on social media during Operation Protective Edge.[35]

Beyond individual casework, Kav LaOved has pursued strategic litigation before Israel's Supreme Court and High Court of Justice, seeking rulings affecting entire categories of workers. Yuval Livnat represented low-income Israeli and Palestinian workers, migrant workers, and asylum-seekers from 2003 to 2012, first as Kav LaOved's legal advisor and later through Tel Aviv University's Refugee Rights Clinic.[36] His work included impact litigation concerning a migrant worker's right to give birth and remain with her newborn through the end of her work visa, the social rights of long-stay migrant workers, and proceedings connected to the 2006 anti-trafficking legislation.[36]

The 2006 Supreme Court petition on employer-tied permits, the 2007 High Court ruling on Israeli labor law in settlements and Judea and Samaria, and the 2020 High Court ruling overturning the refugee Deposit Law deduction are among the organization's most consequential legal cases.[4][15] In 2024, the organization reported litigating six strategic cases, publishing 55 reports and position papers, and appearing in more than 159 media items.[1]

Kav LaOved has also worked through legislative and regulatory channels. It collaborated with the Forum for the Enforcement of Workers' Rights on government legislative proposals from 2002 and supported bilateral labor-recruitment agreements with Thailand, Bulgaria, and Romania.[9][5] Its 2006 petition seeking limits on recruitment commissions was followed by a court requirement that the state report on enforcement and promote government-to-government recruitment channels; Kav LaOved links the process to the 2009 Israel–Thailand agreement.[14]

Debate surrounding Kav LaOved's work has focused principally on immigration policy, Palestinian work permits, and the enforcement of labor law in Judea and Samaria. An INSS preliminary evaluation found that the 2020–2021 permit reform had not reduced permit trading or permit prices during its first months. It cited a Kav LaOved survey indicating that trading continued and that advertisements for permits remained visible on social networks.[20] Some surveyed workers welcomed the reform, while others remained skeptical about its likely benefits.[20]

The enforcement of the 2007 labor-law ruling has also remained contested. Kav LaOved and human-rights reports have described continuing wage and workplace-injury disputes, a lack of Israeli labor inspections in settlements, and disagreement among labor-court judges over whether the judgment applied retroactively.[15][17]

Roy Wagner's 2007 description of Israel's migrant-worker system as structurally exploitative, and his argument that it facilitated trafficking, reflected the analysis of an author who was then a Kav LaOved board member. His broader characterizations of state policy and the role of employers and brokers should therefore be understood as advocacy analysis rather than as findings independently adjudicated in the article itself.[13]