The popular food delivery service 10Bis – an Israeli branch of the Dutch company Just Eat Takeaway.com – will pay 80,000 shekels ($25,000) in compensation to their employees after the Tel Aviv Regional Labor Court ruled two to one that the company had harmed the unionisation of its workers under the Histadrut. In addition to compensation, the company was also ordered to pay the costs of the legal expenses in the amount of 15,000 shekels ($4,600). Notably, the court recognised the Histadrut as the representative body of the company’s employees and ruled that 10Bis must negotiate with them with the goal of signing a collective bargaining agreement.
The majority ruling determined that the 10Bis management sought to fire the chair of the workers’ union and resorted to disproportionate disciplinary measures that violated their own terms. It was also determined that management took harmful actions against the organising workers and the leaders of the union, encouraging employees who acted to thwart the unionisation. Judges noted that “this conduct constitutes a violation of unionizing in terms of the message it conveys to employees who wish to organize, with regard to the attitude of the management towards them, in various aspects of working life.”
The ruling noted that management acted illegally when it established its own internal workers’ union to compete with workers’ efforts to organise under the Histadrut – but noted that it decided to stop its convening before the ruling was made.
The court rejected the management’s claims that the Histadrut violated the employees’ privacy or harassed them in violation of the provisions of the Spam Law, a 2008 law regulating the sending of commercial marketing to recipients without their consent by way of email, SMS or automatic calls. 10Bis claimed that the Histadrut sent advertisements to employees in violation of this law, but the court ruled that a workers’ union is not a product, and therefore the Histadrut’s act of informing workers about the union did not violate the Spam Law.
The court also rejected the claim that the Histadrut exerted “illegitimate influence” on the workers when it offered a benefit in the form of a coffee and pastry voucher to those who joined the union.
10Bis employees first unionised with the Histadrut in October 2020 after two previous failed attempts with another trade union, Hapoel Mizrahi. 10Bis employs some 1,500 people, more than a third of whom joined the union when it initially formed.
