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After a long-fought battle by the NIF Family, the Israeli government has scrapped the contentious Wisconsin Plan, a pilot welfare-to-work program for the unemployed in Jerusalem, Ashkelon, Hadera and Nazareth begun in 2005. The campaign was spearheaded by Wisconsin Watch, set up by NIF grantees Mehuyavut: Commitment to Peace and a Just Society and Community Advocacy: Genesis Israel with assistance from SHATIL and other NIF grantees Sot El Amel – Laborer's Voice, Rabbis for Human Rights and Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
The NIF family mobilized in opposition to the program after Wisconsin Watch exposed how the private companies operating the program would deem many of the participants – disproportionally from NIF constituencies including women, new immigrants and Arab citizens of Israel –"unsuitable for employment" and withdraw their unemployment benefits instead of retraining them. Barbara Epstein, Executive Director of Community Advocacy: Genesis Israel said, "This is a major victory for the social change movement in stopping a program that the government had invested so much in both financially and ideologically. A new program will take its place and we must ensure that it is not privatized, includes proper training and that participants are guaranteed the right to live in dignity." Avi Dabush, Head of SHATIL's Environment and Community Project, was a community organizer for Human Response, a grassroots organization in Ashkelon set up to oppose the Wisconsin Plan. "I think there is enormous relief that the program is gone," Dabush noted. "But we must propose an alternative program to assist the unemployed or the vacuum will be filled by a similar government initiative - a program that is flexible and sensitive in meeting the needs of different populations including men and women in the Arab, ultra-Orthodox, and new immigrant sectors. The program must be based on incentives to work, not punishments by withdrawing social benefits." |
