Lapid goes after nepotism in government companies
Seven years after a state comptroller's report on nepotism, Finance Minister Yair Lapid imposes new regulations designed to reduce corruption in Israel's major public companies.
In 2007, then-State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss revealed that almost a quarter of the employees in the eight largest government companies were linked by family ties, and warned against “the formation of clans in the public corporations.” In his annual report that year, the state comptroller described in detail the nepotism thriving in the big seaports, in the Israel Electric Corp. (IEC), in Mekorot (the national water company of Israel) and in the Israel Airports Authority (IAA) — all of them workplaces known for their rather lucrative wages and good working conditions.
Following the report, an effort was made to minimize the phenomenon by means of special regulations that required, for instance, an ad-hoc approval by the board of directors of a government company for hiring new employees who were relatives of company employees. However, the effort failed. As it turned out, the percentage of employees in the companies who were family members was not reduced.
In fact, no government entity made any real effort to enforce those regulations, which were designed to put right the injustice inherent in the unequal opportunities for employment by the “strong” public corporations. And this failure may be directly attributed to the Israeli political party structure of these bodies and, in particular, to the primaries system.
Those were the bad years of the mega censuses conducted by the major parties — Likud, Labor and the then newly established Kadima. The latter, upon being established, became immediately afflicted by the same illnesses. The big labor unions were quick to realize where the wind was blowing, and wandered away from the Likud and Labor parties, on to Kadima, so as to get close to the power center. Thus, the Knesset members of the new party, which had been set up to promote “new politics,” became captives in the hands of the major census enumerators — the labor union leaders of Israel Railways Co., IEC, the bus company Egged Israel Transport Cooperative Society and the seaports, to name but a few.
