Your trade unionship, sir?
Yair Lapid recalls his first highly unpleasant encounter with a Histadrut member
It was at the start of the eighties; in the framework of one of my earlier, stranger military responsibilities, when for a few months I was put in charge of overseeing the IDF newspaper "B'Machaneh" (On the Base).
It was exactly when computers were
Those five-ton machines printed the newspapers with the help of heavy lead letters, which the printers in ink-stained blue overalls would painstakingly place on huge trays. The computers on the other hand, inputted the texts and in a few seconds outputted it into orderly columns, ready for printing.
The only problem was that the printers’ trade union refused to recognize the existence of this fabulous new system and thus, we were forced to go around them.
We would type the newspaper on the computer, then take the pages to the printer - located on a small street near the old Tel Aviv central bus station - and there the workers would pull apart everything we had done and reassemble it according to the old system.
Unpleasant first encounter
Micha was in charge and we were scared to death of him. He was from Romania, huge and totally nuts, with short chubby fingers like sausages and four strands of brownish orange hair which were pulled across his shiny bald head.
His permanent headquarters were a tiny room in the print shop. There he would meet us in his gray apron covered with ink stains that looked
like the Rorshach test of Jack the Ripper. Apparently he had a bad memory for names because he would call everyone "dog" "Oh, here's the dog," he would say every time I went there. He must have been that I even dared to enter.
"Leave it here," he would order and return to his telephone conversation or to cleaning his nails with a screwdriver, or anything else of importance he was doing at the time.
From time to time, when an urgent article would arrive, I would be sent to ask Micha to speed things up a bit. "Micha," I would beg him, "we need to print the paper."
He would lift his eyes from the screwdriver and glare at me. If he was in a good mood, he would chuck whatever came to hand at me and announce he was off to eat his lunch.
One time the newspaper's editor, a man whose name we would only whisper, decided he'd had enough. He grabbed the computer-set pages and drove to the old bus station for a confrontation with Micha face to face.
"This has got to stop," he roared.
Micha looked up at him with surprise. "Want to tell me why, dog."
The editor turned blue. "The newspaper is being printed late," he continued to scream. Micha thought about this for a moment. We could actually see his three brain cells working, bumping in to one another.
"Nu," he said. "So it won't be printed, so what?"
Protected by the Trade Union
My major confrontation with Micha was still ahead of me. It was when Israel was still mired in Lebanon and we had constant problems getting articles, which arrived by military helicopter from Beirut.
One evening, we received an article (from a young reporter named Emmanuel Rozen) a half-hour after deadline. I took it and ran as fast as I could to the printer. Because of the late hour, I found Micha organizing a pile of the metal trays covered with the leaden letters.
"Micha," I said, "I know I am late, but you HAVE to do me a favor and print this."
He slowly turned and looked at me. Suddenly I understood how the iceberg looked from the deck of the Titanic. "I HAVE to, dog?" he asked. "You say that I HAVE to…?"
I don't know what got into me, maybe it's the long months of abuse or knowing that Emmanuel risked his life for this article, but suddenly this really high voice came out of me. I still hear it in my head, a cross between Tiny Tim and the sound of the squealing braks of an overloaded truck.
"Yes," I yelled, "Yes, you HAVE to; for once in your life you are going to do what you are asked. It won't kill you and besides - taaaaaaaaaaa."
The last sound was spontaneous of course. It came from the fact that Micha picked up one of the heavy metal trays and without early warning slammed it into my face. Luckily, I managed to raise my right hand in defense of the sudden shower of lead letters. The only damage was to my chin where the tray hit.
To this day, if you look closely you can see a small scar. On a good day, after a few beers, I am ready to tell people how I got it. My version is a little more elaborate - a Bengal tiger, Australian beauty queen and the day I won a world title in boxing.
But at that time, I couldn't think of anything but to get the hell out of there. Micha was 30 kilos (66 pounds) heavier than me, at least, but I took off down the stairs while I was still intact.
I returned to the newsroom wounded and miserable, the blood still trickling from my chin. I had no idea it could swell up so much. It looked as if someone had built a sunning porch on the bottom of my face.
Nevertheless, I ignored everyone's' stares. I went right to the editor's office and told him that Micha needs to be fired because he attacked me. The editor pulled out a white tissue and gave it to me for my bleeding chin. He then said something I will never forget. "We can't, he's a member of the Trade Union."
Peretz's real test
I won't sicken you with details of what happened afterwards. Suffice to say that when management and the union reps met, they came up with the following compromise: No action was taken against Micha. I was demoted to reporter and lost my only chance to acquire a real profession.
Many years have passed since then. The scar has healed and from the perspective of age, I can even understand Micha. No one likes it when kids who think they know it all begin hanging around.
On the other hand, I learned another lesson: trade unions are there to protect their workers and not to run the company.
Now that Amir Peretz is the Chairman of the Labor party, his real test will be his ability to come to the major trade unions, those who took the time and trouble to vote for him and tell them: "Thanks for everything, but from the moment I won the election, I don't owe you anything."
After all, that is exactly what Sharon did to the Jewish settlers.
