Israel/Palestine

Israel’s Coffee Bean workers win first-of-kind agreement

I posted in January about a strike by workers at a branch of the Coffee Bean restaurant chain in Tel Aviv.

CoffeeBean.jpg

Now there’s good news. The International Union of Food Workers reports that the Israeli labor federation the Histadrut has signed an agreement with the Coffee Bean’s management covering 300 workers at 14 branches throughout Israel.

It is, the IUF reports, the world’s first countrywide union agreement in the growing coffee shop sector. And it is, by any standard, an extraordinary achievement in the notoriously hard-to-unionize restaurant industry.

You’d think this would be be major news at even the most Israel-phobic leftwing publications and websites.

But then, of course, you’d have to think again.

(Hat tip: LabourStart.)