http://MondeDiplo.com/2006/08/05offshoring
Le Monde diplomatique -- - English edition -- August 2006
COMMERCIAL AND POLITICAL EXPLOITATION OF STOLEN LAND --Offshoring to
West Bank
Residents of Modi'in Illit do not consider themselves settlers. The
housing shortage has pushed large ultra-orthodox families to the
settlement where they get public housing and government assistance not
available in Israel.
by Gadi Algazi
In Modi'in Illit on the West Bank, you can see where the old economy of
contractors and developers and the new hi-tech economy meet. Both are
closely tied to the state. Several software companies have opened branches
there; leading them is the services company Matrix, one of the largest in
Israel and part of the Formula Group. Matrix is valued on the Tel Aviv
stock exchange at $100m and employs 2,300 workers.
To compete with cheap programmers in India, Matrix decided to use
ultra-orthodox women as a cost-effective labour force, on condition that
the Israeli government subsidised it. If not, Matrix threatened to
relocate abroad. Ehud Olmert, then minister of trade and industry, went
along with this (1) and in 2005 Matrix opened a development centre in
Modi`in Illit employing such women. By the end of 2006, 500 of them will
work there.
Settlements such as Modi'in Illit, only 25 minutes away from Tel Aviv,
provide an alternative to cheap Indian labour: Matrix calls it offshoring
at home, in Israel's backyard. The colonial frontier is a source of cheap
(stolen) land, as well as state subsidies, public resources - police and
army to secure investments - and a captive, disciplined labour force.
Israeli capitalism is tapping into the country's old colonial project to
find new resources to enter the global market.
The women who work for Matrix in Modi'in Illit are diligent, efficient and
exceptionally productive staff: "What an assembler elsewhere can do in a
crazy week of pressure and sleeping at work, the girls here can easily
accomplish in three days," said the centre's head (2). Their wages are
low, and not only by international standards: workers starting at Matrix
get the minimum wage of about $4 an hour. In their second year, their
salaries are around $1,000 a month, and the state pays Matrix about a
fifth of that. Workers are tied to the company for at least two years and
there are no bonuses.
An ultra-orthodox spokesman said: "Our community is used to living on
nothing, so making a little is a lot for them" (3). Matrix says that the
wages paid to the women do not reflect their relative productivity or the
price of their services in the international market, but rather "their low
cost of living", a remarkable, if not wholly unfamiliar, theory of value.
The Matrix centre is strictly kosher and two local rabbis supervise the
site. Besides legitimate consideration for their workers' way of life and
values, rabbinical support plays a crucial role in this capitalist
enterprise: the women "live according to a complex religious and
professional code", a rigorous code (4).
"Although many are mothers of six, they miss fewer days of work than a
mother of two in Tel Aviv," said an Imagestore project director in Modi'in
Illit. "These women have no issues. They just work. No smoking or coffee
breaks, chatting on the phone, or looking for holiday deals in Turkey.
Breaks are only for eating or pumping breast milk in a special room. Some
women can pop home, breast-feed and come back" (5).
Visitors are struck by the silence at Matrix. Personal conversations are
forbidden in the workplace, not only between men and women, but also among
women. "They pay you for eight hours of work," said a worker, "so they
expect you to work. If someone is talking too much or surfing the web,
someone else will say hey, that's theft [ghezel], as though we're taking
from the company. Once we asked if we could take a break of five minutes
for prayer, but the rabbi said that the ancient sages didn't take a break
but would call out the shma [the essential daily prayer] while working,
and thus we can put off the prayer until after the working day."
The punctilious adherence to the rules is maintained even when the bosses
are not present. "We're accustomed to rigour and obedience," a worker
said, "and we've got used to not doing forbidden things, even when no one
is looking, because there is someone watching from above."
The ultra-orthodox women working for Matrix and its equivalent could find
ways to circumvent both the rabbis' injunctions and shop-floor control.
But there are practical reasons for the remarkable discipline. Where else
could they work? There is no other local work and the women do not have
cars to go anywhere else.
What is remarkable about this settlement is the way it replicates the
internal colonialism in Israel in the 1950s, when new immigrants, many
from the Arab world, were settled on the border both to secure the
territorial gains of the 1948 war and to serve as cheap labour in the
early stages of Israel's industrialisation. Integration into Israel's
colonial project, populating its frontier, was a condition for access to
fundamental social rights.
New immigrants from the Arab world were seen as no more than unskilled
workers.
Similarly, today's ultra-orthodox women workers are now depicted as
emerging from darkness to light, from consignment to the home to the
benefits of modern capitalism, although in fact they are often well
educated and have traditionally earned a living while caring for their
families.
Frontier colonialism reinforces dependence and subordination. In Modi'in
Illit, the poor are the instruments of the colonisation process and also
its victims.
It is sometimes suggested that Israeli capitalism, as it modernises,
should be able, even required, to abandon its attachment to old-style
colonialism. But Modi'in Illit proves that Israeli capitalism can be both
colonial and digital, and move back and forth between global markets and
colonial settlements, and between campaigns for unbridled privatisation
and heavy government subsidies. Left to itself, Israeli capitalism is not
able, or predisposed, to pull itself out of the colonial swamp or to exert
pressure on the state that sustains it.
Only resistance by those whose land it occupies and their allies seems
likely to force a change. At that point Israel's colonial project would be
seen to be a liability.
________________________________________________________
(1) Israel's government subsidises the salaries for five years:
http://www.tamas.gov.il/NR/exeres/1...
(2) Yoni Shadmi, "Globalisation Killed the Hi-Tech Star", Maariv, Tel
Aviv, 11 November 2005.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Galit Yemini, "Indian Labour? Matrix is hiring Orthodox women",
Haaretz, Tel Aviv, 17 January 2005.
(5) Ruth Sinai, "Modi`in Illit: The Zionist Response to Offshoring",
Haaretz, 19 September 2005.
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