Workers' and employees' rights under the COVID-19 pandemic

The guest of the episode of the radio programme “Gaza in the face of Corona” distinguished between the legal condition of the rights of workers and of employees in Palestine: workers are governed by the Palestinian labour law, whereas employees are governed by the civil-service law. The labour law rests on the principle that the contract is the law of the contracting parties — meaning what is agreed upon is what is executed between the two parties; on the other side, what governs employees' work is the law itself, which organises their relationship with the bodies within whose frame they work. With this comparison the lawyer and legal researcher Hijazi al-Qurashli opened this episode, which took up in its axes “The rights of workers and employees in light of the coronavirus pandemic”, carried out by Pal-Think for Strategic Studies within the project “Gaza in the face of Corona”, funded by the Atlas institution.

The former legal counsellor at the personnel bureau commented that the employees in the Gaza Strip have suffered, from the Palestinian division until this moment, many problems — among them the deduction of parts of their salaries, their deprivation of allowances, the non-execution of their promotions, the non-granting of leadership ranks to them, the non-appointment of new employees, their non-enrolment in courses to develop their skills and impart experience to them, and the referral of enormous numbers of them to retirement while in the prime of their youth. He pointed out that the workers were in no better condition: since the internal Palestinian division, Palestinian workers from the Gaza Strip have been prevented from entering “Israel” and working in it or in the West Bank, and accordingly more than 100 thousand workers were referred to the list of the unemployed — with 45% of the Gaza Strip's inhabitants representing its unemployment rate, from fresh graduates and those out of work — alongside the scarcity of work opportunities with the population growth and the high population density in the Strip.

Al-Qurashli mentioned that the coronavirus pandemic added a new burden upon a condition loaded with the problems and circumstances from which workers, employers, and employees suffer. It had health effects: some workers were on the front lines in facing Corona, as workers in the field of health and services — accordingly they are in contact with the sick and exposed to infection and to catching the disease. And it had material effects resulting from the declaration of the state of emergency and the closures of the institutions and companies and of movement, so that those working in them became, even if partially, out of work — especially those who earn their wages by the daily system. As for the employees of the Gaza Strip, 50% of their salaries was disbursed to them — salaries that already suffered from deductions as a result of the wranglings of the Palestinian division; not to mention the family and social effects from which all citizens suffer, including workers and employees.

On the legal side and the law's treatment of the problems that touch the rights of these categories, he made clear that the labour law did not organise how to act during states of emergency and the spread of epidemics: the law defines work as all the mental or bodily effort the worker exerts in return for a wage, whether the work is permanent or temporary — accordingly the wage is tied to the worker working, and there is nothing that obliges the employer to give the worker a wage while he is not working, and the whole law applies only in the case of the worker working. Indeed, if the employer incurs a loss, he has the right according to the law to reduce the number of workers and lay some of them off, or to close the business. He affirmed that until this moment there is nothing in the labour law that protects the worker's rights in states of emergency and closure — but there are other laws that work on that, such as the social-security law for workers in all the world, and this law exists in Palestine but is not applied. In return, employees' rights are guaranteed in states of emergency by the insurance and pensions law, which is a very good law.

The legal researcher added that the texts and articles of the laws organising work in Palestine are considered good if we compare them with the laws in force in the other states, yet they need the development and updating of some of their clauses to harmonise with the age's developments. On another side, what must be worked on is the enforcement of these laws and their application to guarantee the rights of employees and workers and even of employers and institutions. He qualified that what must be done now, and cared for, in order to deal with the legal rights of workers and employees in light of states of emergency and the coronavirus pandemic, is implementing the law — especially Article 121 in the general retirement law — and preserving the dignity of the workers who have passed the age of sixty; in addition to applying the social-security law at the fastest possible time. Work must likewise be done to find local or external sources, or even from the state's budget, in order to provide urgent and steady help.