Strike at Rafa: Management offered a 2,000 shekel bonus, employees want more

Employees of the pharmaceutical manufacturer Rafa, owned by the FIMI fund, are striking today, demanding bonuses for their role in increasing the company's value and leading it to an IPO. The strike began after a labor dispute was declared two weeks ago with the backing of the Histadrut. Rafa has 200 unionized employees out of 260. The company is managed by Ido Leshem, and Uri Yehudai serves as chairman.

In July, the company went public at a valuation of 1.65 billion shekels, with FIMI and other shareholders selling shares worth about 600 million shekels. According to the workers' committee chair, Dalit Haikusler, Rafa's management offered a one-time bonus of 2,000 shekels per employee, but the workers are demanding a bonus higher than this amount for each year of seniority.

According to Haikusler, the company has many vacant positions, and the existing staff is forced to work many more hours than usual. She added that the employees heard about the IPO from the media and then requested to meet for negotiations, a meeting that was scheduled after some waiting:

"They told us that Rafa is not profitable, and then, when the prospectus was published, we saw that the company distributed dividends in the hundreds of millions of shekels, and managers received bonuses. The employees are full partners in the company's success."

Rafa's response will be provided when received.