Working people

Now that I am an independent consulting and design water engineer for more than a 1 1/2 years, I am coming into close working contact with the real working people of Israel. Most of my former career was within the framework of civil service organizations, or TAHAL, a government owned large consulting firm that operated on a cost plus basis. What I have discovered is that the working people in Israel ... works very hard. I can now compare teams changing or repairing street pipes in several European countries, China and in Israel. The Hungarian teams are made up by gypsies and they do no actual work. The German teams look very well ordered, delimiting a clean work area in the street and filling it with mechanical equipment and materials, doing much preparatory opeations but little actual work. In China there is much repartee and the work seems to be done without effort, but there is much disorder. In Latin America there are lots of people all around and the work is very sloppy. In Israel one can see teams working like possessed on the streets, very focused and organized, finishing the work very fast. It is all an apparent disorder, no one uses hard hats or security equipment, but the quality of their work is good, I think better than European standards.

I dont know how the establishment leaders made us used to work so hardly, so intensely. Israeli workers come from the Third World and are not known for their high IQ. In the pic, an Arab sub-sub contractor, working for the plumbing sob-contractor that is working for the management company contracted by the Supermarket chain to prepare a new shop in Rosh Ha Ayin. There are no European Jews in the whole operation: the supermarket is owned by a Bucharan Jewish family, the management firm is led by a "bad" tempered Moroccan Jew, the contractors are all very experienced and professional Oriental Jews and Palestinians. Most of the Palestinian workers seem to be illegal, in the sense that they speak little Hebrew and are afraid to be photographed. The preparation of a new supermarket is, in Israel, done by at least one hundred small independent tradesmen and engineers, the Moroccan coordinates everything from his head and I think it is very well managed. His oiginal name was Buzaglo, a mythical name in Israel for the lumpen. But this man works like hell, thinking in every detail, coordinating our work, giving orders in the exact level of aggression that are just tolerated, just one shade above the limit when his face risks being shattered in anger. I admire him. In my surprise supervision visit this morning I met this lonely Palestinian intensely concentrated in perforating the holes for the plumbing according to my design. The man was so totally concentrated in his work. Although all is in disorder and the man sits on an improvised plastic container, the holes were very clean and precise.