Political report of the Executive of the Jewish Agency submitted to the ... Zionist Congress and the ... session of the Council of the Jewish Agency · 1937-08-01 · 8.1937 · p. Seite 54

54 was also made to come to a definite agreement with Government in regard to the fixation of the share of Jewish labour in works carried out by the Public Works Department and the methods of ensuring that this share should actually accrue to Jewish labour. It will be remembered from previous Congress Reports that though this share had been fixed by the High Commissioner in the year 1932 at 30 to 33 of the wage-bill, it had never materialised even to that limited extent. Moreover, the Government regarded even this fixation as having been merely experimental. The Jewish Agency on its part could not be satisfied with this ruling. The ratio of one third of the wage bill failed to ensure what it regarded as the fair share of Jewish labour as expressed in men-days. Moreover, it applied only to "public works extraordinary", i.e. to the construction of new buildings and roads, and did not include the large expenditure on "public works ordinary," i.e. the maintenance of the existing road system. The claim put forward by the Jewish Agency was for thé distribution of employment on Government works and services between the two communities in proportion to their numerical strength. Finally an arrangement was suggested by the Government to divide employment according to the racial character of the neigbourhood in which the works would be carried out, so that in predominantly Jewish areas all works should go to Jewish labour and in predominantly Arab areas to Arab labour, while in mixed areas employment should be so divided as to bring the share of each of the two communities up to the required total. But even after this tentative arrangement, no definite instructions appear to have been given to the Public Works Department regarding the allocation of jobs, and the Political Department found itself again and again faced with the irksome necessity of making separate representations in each individual case. Such representations were by no means always successful. The result was that although the year 1936/37 witnessed a relative increase in the share of Jewish labourboth on account of the Arab strike and because of the speeding up of road building in predominantly Jewish areas — the total even of one third of the wage bill was hardly reached, while in terms of men-days worked the Jewish share does not appear to have risen beyond one sixth of the total volume of employment. 73. A great deal of the energy of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency was expended on the introduction of Jewish