The Dor Moriah expert conducted a journalistic investigation and went to for cleaning apartments, private homes and hotels. We wanted to know what new returnees and migrant workers experience when they encounter contractors. And how they make money on cleanliness in Israel.
“Get to work. Work, what are you standing around for?” – ordered me in English by a 30-year-old brunette boutique hotel receptionist. I answer her that all the hotel rooms are still occupied by clients. ПIf they don’t release them, I can’t go in there with a mop. But women do not care about such little things. “You can’t stand! Work!” – she yells. In the end, I can’t stand it. П imitating the German soldiers of World War II, I repeat several times: “Schnell! Schnell! Schnell!” Fortunately, the receptionist doesn’t understand what I’m saying…
55 shekels per hour
A small town in the north of the country. Barely every pole has an ad: “More than 50 shekels per hour. Cleaning houses, hotels, apartments…” I dial the phone number listed in one of the ads.
“Hello! Is it possible to get an official job with you?” – “You can. But why would you pay taxes? – the voice on the other end of the line answers. – You’ll get your shekels in cash, no problem.
My employer has lived in Israel for over 20 years. He sees no point in meeting with me in person before hiring me.
“Why? – he wonders when I tell him I’m ready to come to his office. – Give me your address. ЗTomorrow morning I’ll send our driver, and you’ll go for a cleaning inspection with your partner. She will show and tell you everything. If the work suits you, I will assign you permanent homes and hotels. You’ll be working in them all the time.”
The next day, at the specified time, a minibus actually arrives at my house. The driver is very nice: “When you start working, that’s what we’ll do with you. You clean the house today, and tomorrow I’ll give you the money. You’re lucky to have come to us. We will pay 55 shekels an hour starting in the New Year.”
Educational cleaning
I go to Caesarea for a “training” cleaning. A young Uzbek woman who came to Israel from Dagestan is waiting for me. She and her mother are now in their fourth year of backbreaking work in Israel. Her family – her husband and daughters – stayed there in Russia.
“I’m going to work a little longer and then go home (to Dagestan). I want to buy a new house there,” she says.
She has no education or profession. Officially she is considered unemployed here. So did many other migrants and repatriates employed in the cleanup operations.
“I’d rather take the money in cash than pay taxes. Maybe what I earn here will be enough to open a beauty salon in Makhachkala. I won’t work there, just manage others!” – she dreams.
He speaks ironically about the owners of the house. People with “oddities,” they say. They ask her to vacuum the furniture twice a week and to use chemicals when cleaning. But the money is paid on time.
“You don’t strain too much,” she teaches me. – I went over the tops with a rag, and that was it. But make sure that the taps and plumbing fixtures shine after washing. The owners love it…”
Two days later I am assigned my first independent work. The homeowners will probably want to see how I’m doing. I remind myself that I am only conducting a journalistic experiment. But it’s not reassuring. My legs still feel cotton. And not out of fear of not getting the job done. It’s about the feeling you get when you fall down the social ladder. This feeling is comparable to jumping off a high mountain. Just yesterday you were an established person. But in Israel, without Hebrew, all your achievements are null and void. In pursuit of a shekel, you take a step and you fall. In the blink of an eye you become just a wordless attachment to a mop or vacuum cleaner.
“Want some vodka?”
At first glance, the house entrusted to me is relatively small – about 200 “squares. It takes four hours to clean it. The owner of the house is a 50-year-old IT professional. His parents, like me, come from Ukraine. Perhaps their first years in their newfound homeland were not easy at all either. But he himself was born and raised in Israel, received a good education, lives well.
First he shows me where the mops and buckets are. Then he gives a training session on how to change the bedclothes. His unique method of “fighting” the duvet cover makes me laugh. First, the man puts the duvet cover over his head. Then blindly tries to pull on the blanket.
Apparently, I shouldn’t allow myself such joyful reactions. “Do you want some vodka?” – growls irritably in broken Russian from the depths of the duvet cover. He is clearly trying to demonstrate: cleaner, know your place.
After finishing here and getting paid, I go to another house in the next town. It also takes four hours to clean it. The owner of the mansion looks at me closely and immediately guesses that this is the first time I’ve ever cleaned.
“Are you happy in Israel? – she asks sympathetically in English. – What is your profession?”
I only shrug my shoulders in response. It’s embarrassing for me to talk about myself.
In each of the houses, the owners hand me 300 shekels after I finish cleaning. That makes six hundred. In the evening, a driver comes to pick me up. It turns out that he passes all my earnings to the firm. I have to put all my money in an envelope and give it to him. I have to write my name on the envelope
“Tomorrow I’ll give you your 400 shekels, ” says the driver. – If you want to earn more, you can take another house. You will work 12 hours a day. Then you’ll earn 600 shekels a day.
It turns out that the firm takes a third of the money I earn. Everyone who is a slave to her takes this state of affairs for granted.
Political asylum for $2,000
The very next day I go to clean the two-story guest house. My partner, a 30-year-old migrant from the north of Russia,
“My wife and I have been working here for four years, – he says. “My wife washes mansions, and I’m only on the cleaners on weekends. The rest of the time I install interior doors on construction sites. I have two higher educations. When I was working in Russia in my profession, I was getting paid $250. Of that amount, I paid $200 for housing.”
“Do you and your wife have a work permit in Israel?” – I ask.
“We recently ran out of visas. We’ll ask for political asylum.“
Apparently, migrants do not know much when they come here. According to Israeli law, none of them can get a visa. Labor law lawyer Victoria Goltzman explained the nuances to me. It is only a document that allows migrants to stay in the country. When it expires, they do have to apply for political refugee status.
“What do you say to getting refugee status?” – I ask my partner.
“We’ll think of something. Let’s say Putin has had enough of us.“He laughs. “Recently two of our girlfriends, also Russians, were caught by the police right at the bus stop and deported. So we’ll have to deal with the issue.
This is how illegals arrive
The intermediary firm I was illegally hired to work for employs about 150 people. This is according to my calculations. There are firms in Russia that cooperate with local “kablans” and hire people for them.
“We flew in as pilgrims,” says one of them. – We called the phone number we were given in advance. We found out which Israeli city we should go to. Here at the beginning we were settled five or six people at a time. We lived in tiny apartments of no more than 40 square meters. Later we rented our own place…”
The first years in Israel, he said, the Russians worked in factories. One of the plants produces bread, the other produces plastic products. Work for 12-14 hours a day. One week is night shifts, the other week is day shifts. For ten months they had to give a local contractor 1,000 shekels from each paycheck. They paid to have the contractor’s lawyers draw up documents allowing them to stay in Israel. In addition, the “cablan” immediately began to take from them a third of their salaries – as their own “profit”.
Today, the firm offers migrants who have expired their stay in the country to go to “their” lawyer. That one must come up with a story for each of them to get political asylum and apply for it. But not all migrants want to go to a lawyer.
“You’ll have to pay $1,500 to $2,000 for that again. It’s better to try on our own. But so far we are afraid to even go out for bread once more. We travel only in company cars, to and from work. Otherwise, what if the police catch us?
“Don’t you want to go home to Russia?”
“What’s there to do? It’s cold and hungry…”
“Gotta swallow!”
The next morning I get a call from my supervisor. It turns out he has a claim.
“You went out to smoke twice in four hours of cleaning. Customers are complaining! – he declares. – Besides, you left the house ten minutes early.
“But I did everything!”
“It doesn’t matter. The customers have paid for the hours and they want you to work them off! Couldn’t you just pretend to work and wave a rag for ten more minutes?!”
I remember the stories of new repatriates from Ukraine who had lived in Israel for a year longer than I had. “No one is interested in the outcome here,” they explained to me. – You just have to serve the hours. It’s shocking at first. Then you get used to it.
Having been reprimanded, I’m off to a five-hour shift at a two-story hotel. My job is to help a widow from Ufa. She works here every day for eight hours for 45 shekels an hour.
“Hotels pay less because it’s easier to work here. And in mansions, you don’t just have to work, you have to please the owners. That’s why an hour there costs 55 shekels,” she says.
The two of us have 14 rooms to clean. It’s noon, but the customers have not yet vacated their rooms, and we have nothing to do.
The woman sighs, “We have two hours to get the rooms ready for the new guests.” She’s in her fifties. “And the receptionists will yell at us,” she adds.
“Why will they scream?” – I wondered.
“I think they just don’t have anything to do,” she replies.
Hotel and operation
There are two administrators at the hotel – a man and a woman. I’m going to throw an unfinished bottle of wine in the trash. They notice it, and the man snatches it out of my hands and puts his hands on the neck. Later, the receptionist notices a canvas bag on my shoulder and starts shouting something in Hebrew. I don’t understand what she’s trying to do, but my partner comes to the rescue. She explains to me: the receptionist demands that I leave my bag in the locker at the gatehouse. I refuse and call my firm.
“In this hotel, the cleaning ladies were stealing leftover drinks from the refrigerators! – explain to me. – Therefore, you must immediately leave your bag where the receptionist says.”
“Why didn’t you warn me?” – I wondered.
“Are you going to put conditions on me? – my interlocutor explodes. – We won’t pay you for the five hours you worked in the hotel! Who do you think I would listen to? To the executives of the hotel that gives me 300 hours a month, or to you?”
Mission Impossible?
I hang up and realize that I am no longer able to continue the “game. I can’t play a role called “I’m a janitor.
“What can you do, in this job you ‘have to swallow ,'” my partner tries to reassure me. – Do you know how many insults I have taken? Once the receptionist at the hotel where I worked demanded that I go to bed with him. I complained to the “kablan,” and he yelled at me, saying, “If you want money, you have to take it. So I put up with it. My documents have been expired for a year. I once came to work in Israel with my sister and her husband. But they are already back in Russia.
“Have you bought a ticket yet?” – I ask.
“What do I need a ticket for? – she smiles. – I’m going to turn myself in to the police, and I’ll be deported at Israel’s expense.
“Aren’t you afraid to do that? Deportation is a very unpleasant procedure.
“We have such a mess in Russia that we’re not afraid of anything anymore.
Once outside, I am relieved to have a cigarette. After me, the administrator appears. When he looks around and sees no one but me, he starts… kicking green trash cans. Apparently, he really has nothing else to do.
Migrants have rights
According to lawyer Victoria Goltzman, migrants do not know their rights and the laws of Israel. They allow themselves to be robbed. This is what black labor contractors make their money on.
“Of course, intermediaries benefit from not officially registering migrants to work,” says the lawyer.
“First, in this case they do not need to get permission from the Ministry of Labor to use foreigners. And deposit a considerable amount in a bank account as a guarantee. Guarantees that contractors will be able to pay these people.
Secondly, it is possible not to pay social benefits to migrants. Who wants to pay severance pay on termination, holiday compensation, travel expenses and recuperation. As a result, these contractors save 30-40% of their wages on each illegal alien. The kablans also profiteer by not providing people with all the social benefits stipulated by law. And these payments can make up to a third of each employee’s salary.
The trouble is that many people simply do not know their rights. After all, according to the law, if they are officially employed, the employer must pay them all benefits. All that working Israelis also receive. Migrants can turn to lawyers, nongovernmental human rights organizations, or the Ministry of Labor for help. There have been precedents. People go to the country of origin, and the lawyer wins the trial in their favor in Israel. However, such cases are isolated.
Migrants as a source of income
According to her, it is not only middlemen who profit from migrants. Business owners who hire migrants also have their own income.
“Most Israelis do not want to go to ‘black’ work, especially in shifts. This does not apply to new returnees while they have not yet learned Hebrew. They, like migrants, agree to everything. If something happened to one of them in production, it would not threaten the company. You don’t have to pay a large amount of compensation for a work-related injury. After all, the contractor is responsible for everything,” says Goltzman.
At least 50,000 migrants live in Israel today(there are much higher numbers). They come from Eritrea, Sudan and other African countries. A significant number are also from the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, and other states. How many of them, where and how do they make a living? The state has no such statistics. Apart from a few employees officially registered with intermediary firms, there are simply no others for the state authorities. But if one of them claims their existence and tries to assert their rights in court? The contractor can always say that he does not know him, and other migrants will refuse to be witnesses. They fear deportation and loss of employment in Israel.
“We hear about fines, and even criminal cases have been brought against intermediaries. But all the same, the benefits outweigh. Especially since illegals can be treated any way they want. They won’t go anywhere to complain,” says Knesset member Tatyana Mazarskaya.
Not surprisingly, thanks to all of the above, the “black middlemen” are sleeping peacefully.
Stealing from the state
Of course, the coronavirus epidemic has created some difficulties for intermediaries. The country has long been closed to tourists, and new migrant workers simply could not get here. But as soon as the epidemic is over, they will flood back into Israel.
“The proximity of Africa and the economic difficulties of many of the countries from which illegal immigrants come to Israel must be taken into account. I think that the problem will worsen immediately after the full restoration of flights, – says Tatiana Mazarskaya.
The questions is, how does the state block the flow of illegals? What can the state offer businesses and construction contractors to replace “easy” and “illegal” human resources? Resolving all these issues will be difficult. It seems to me that Israel will continue to use this cheap labor resource. And they will continue to ignore the quality of labor and the ‘dark’ sides of this economy.
The Knesset now has a special commission for foreign workers.
“Those firms that hire foreign workers usually hire illegals as well,” says the deputy.
“According to the law, there should be labor contracts and state control. But for many years the previous government did not deal with this topic (as well as many others). Now to solve this problem it is necessary to coordinate the work of several ministries. The Ministries of the Interior, Labor, Economy, and Welfare should work in constant coordination. Such intergovernmental cooperation is possible within the framework of an agency, which should organize control. This agency should have the authority to impose sanctions on violators, whether an employee or an employer. Only this approach will ensure respect for human rights and “illuminate” the shadow economy.
Regulatory issues
Mazarskaya does not deny that hundreds of returnees in Israel are also in a difficult situation. Unlike migrant workers, most of them know their rights. But are willing to sacrifice official employment for the “long shekel” – from 50 to 60 shekels per hour. After all, where they are willing to work legally, they are paid no more than 30-35 per hour.
“It is certain that after repatriation, the olim find themselves on the lowest rung of the social ladder. Newly minted citizens experience cultural and psychological shock as they discover Israel from “the wrong side. Some of them just end up not being able to bear the burden of the problems and return to the country of origin. Tatiana Mazarskaya emphasized that this problem requires the intervention of both government agencies and public organizations. Israel needs a strong and effective mechanism for exposing and punishing “black contractors. This is a business that does significant damage to the state and destroys people’s lives.