JNF boss accused of spying on workers to face hearing
Board to probe administrative failure allegations against Meir Spiegel, as workers demand his dismissal
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
Board members of the Jewish National Fund non-profit organization decided Monday to set up a committee to determine the future of its director general, who has been accused of administrative failures and hiring private detectives to spy on employees.
The decision on how to move forward on the accusations against Meir Spiegler was reached following a no-confidence vote in him, the Walla website reported Monday. The committee, to be headed by JNF chairman Daniel Atar, will give Spiegler a hearing and reach a conclusion within 30 days.
JNF employees demonstrated outside the meeting, calling for Spiegler’s dismissal, according to the Calcalist newspaper.
Spiegler, who became director-general in 2013, has put backs up within the organization, hiring investigators and installing cameras to monitor workers he suspected of making false claims about the hours they worked.
He reportedly instructed a detective company, Information Services for Israel, to follow a senior employee who was subsequently called for a pre-dismissal hearing.
Former director general Yael Shaltieli and regional JNF managers lobbied Atar to ensure that the individual at the center of that probe was not dismissed.
Board member Dalia Tibon Lagziel last month called the investigations a violation of proper workplace relations, which could be illegal, Haaretz newspaper reported.
“I’m under the impression that the workers and their union representatives are feeling disconnected, to say the least, from the management in general and the director general in particular,” she wrote in a letter at the time.
The Calcalist newspaper reported Monday that the undercover checks had in fact revealed that one employee did not bother to turn up for work.
Calcalist said the board meeting discussed a host of administrative failures with which Spiegler has been accused, among them failing to follow criteria for the distribution of funds, employing people without tenders, not implementing decisions made by management and the board of directors, and harming the principles of corporate governance.
After the board meeting, Spiegler said he did “not intend to deviate from the continued implementation of normative processes at the JNF, including a requirement for all workers to report their presence via an online system.”
The JNF told Haaretz last month that “In response to reports of unreliable or false worker hour reports, the director general asked that the matter be examined, and when there were discrepancies between reported hours and actual hours, an organized hearing was held, as is done in any properly run organization.”
The JNF, which was originally founded in 1901 as a private company aimed at promoting Jewish settlement in pre-state Palestine, currently controls over 600,000 acres of land — nearly 13 percent of Israel’s total territory – worth a reported $2 billion.
Despite its wealth, its financial records have been kept under wraps for years, giving rise to accusations of a lack of transparency.
In July 2015, the organization released financial details for the first time, admitting that it had generated some $567 million in revenues during the previous year, with donations accounting for about 6.2 percent of the total amount ($35.2 million). Close to 57% of those donations, roughly $20.2 million worth of revenue, came from North America.
Attempts have been made in the past to legally revise the JNF’s status and define it as a public-benefit corporation in order to force the body by law to make its records public. Nevertheless, last year, the Knesset rejected a bill aimed at increasing transparency in the organization, with 55 MKs voting against the motion and 35 voting in favor, the Marker business daily reported.
Adiv Sterman contributed to this report.
