Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has instructed Prime Minister’s Office director general Raanan Dinur to set up an inter-ministerial committee with the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor to formulate an alternative to the Wisconsin plan. Olmert has acceded to the unequivocal demand by Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor Eli Yishai to cancel the current program, which he called a “slave market”. Olmert gave the committee one month to come up with an alternative welfare-to-work program.
Olmert’s decision contradicts the government’s official position filed last week with the High Court of Justice in response to a petition by welfare organizations. The organizations claim that the government supports expanding the Wisconsin plan to more areas and extending it by another year.
The Wisconsin plan has legal standing on the basis of the 2004 Economic Arrangements Law. The government licensed four private companies to run the program, signing contracts with them through August 1, 2007, with an option to extend for one year. The plan was launched when Olmert was minister of industry and MK Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud) was minister of finance.
The main criticism of the Wisconsin plan was directed at its financing method, under which the private companies’ profits were mainly derived from deductions on income support payments, rather than from actual job placements.
Political sources believe that Yishai wanted to eliminate the Wisconsin plan from the moment he was appointed minister of industry, because his party, Shas, promised its constituents to do so.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on February 5, 2007
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