The Thursday staff strike at Ben-Gurion Airport was the result of serious management failures and insufficient preparation for summer staffing shortages, former Israel Airports Authority chairman Maj.-Gen. (res.) Eliezer "Chiney" Marom told 103FM on Sunday.
"I don't want to point an accusing finger, but there is a management failure here. When you reach the summer without enough workers, and things deteriorate to the point where workers are collapsing from exhaustion, then there is a problem," Marom, who also served as Israel’s Navy commander, said.
"There is a major shortage of workers. It shows that preparations for the summer were inadequate."
Marom also addressed earlier warnings from workers' committee chairman Pinchas Idan about the labor shortage and the Airports Authority's failure to prepare for the summer months.
"There is a serious management problem here. There was a failure to prepare, and you can see it. There were warning after warning, and the situation kept getting worse and worse, but no preparations were made. This was not a surprise."
'A wildcat and unjustified strike'
According to the former chairman, when he returned from abroad earlier this month, he waited over two hours for his suitcase and was told there were not enough workers at the airport to move passengers’ luggage in a timely fashion.
"The matter is simple. Ultimately, this should not have happened. This was a wildcat and unjustified strike, even though Pinchas does not call it a strike," Marom said.
He noted that while he respected Pinchas and the two had worked well together, what happened at the airport was “completely unacceptable.”
"You don't stop work on the busiest day of the year, with tens of thousands of people," he stressed.
An exceptionally long tenure as chairman
Marom was also asked about Idan's exceptionally long tenure as chairman of the Airports Authority workers' committee.
"Ultimately, these are elections that are held regularly, and the man is simply elected time after time," he said. "One can ask whether the term should be limited, as, for example, with the prime minister's term. That is a very, very good question."
When asked about the employment of relatives at Ben-Gurion Airport and the subject of nepotism, Marom explained that the issue wasn’t always regulated in Israel
“A friend would bring in a family member, and so on. It wasn't only at the Airports Authority; it happened everywhere. At a certain point, the issue was regulated, and ultimately the Civil Service Commissioner established certain percentages of employees who may be hired despite being relatives, and so on. The Airports Authority complies with that,” he explained.
"The State Comptroller examines it from time to time. It stopped many years ago. But this is really history, and many family members came in. Not only Pinchas's, by the way. Family members worked at the railway, the ports, and elsewhere. That no longer exists."