The News Behind The News
January 7, 2001
Questioning Israel's High-Tech AssumptionsThe chairman of the Knesset Labor and Social Committee, MK David Tal (Shas), accepted an interim report dealing with labor shortages in high-tech, which was prepared by a panel of “experts” headed by Professor Shmuel Ben Zakai. Professor Zakai’s panel concluded that (1) importing a flood of cheap, foreign workers in the high-tech sector posed social and economic dangers to Israel and (2) it was an illusion that the start-up industry is a solution for economic independence.
Mr. Uri Bendori, president of Avaya Software, concurred with the report, stating that “one good, yet expensive Israeli employee is preferable to ten foreign, cheap yet average foreign workers.”
The panel identified three negative side-effects to the import of foreign, highly qualified workers that companies might subsequently try to dismiss: (1) Israel is not an immigrant country, unlike the U.S., which admits foreign workers with the goal of accepting them as citizens with equal rights; (2) these highly qualified workers will have no affinity to Israel and will leave as soon as they get a better offer overseas, taking with them training and skills acquired in Israel; and (3) in a slump or crisis, they will flood the job market, become a burden on social services, and force expensive Israeli workers to leave the country.
The panel recommends that low level workers, mainly inexperienced programmers, be given accelerated training in conjunction with academic institutions. Professors teaching knowledge-intensive professions should receive higher wages (note that professors wrote the report), and the government and industry should pay the associated costs.
It is tempting to stop at this point, and let this NBN speak for itself. The absurdities in the report are obvious and reach all-time new levels. But, for the sake of clarity, let’s review the obvious.
(1) Does anyone really believe that an Israeli employee is ten times as productive as a foreign programmer?
(2) Must foreign workers become slaves to the State, having to remain in Israel if they can receive higher compensation elsewhere. Indentured servitude has long been abolished. Moreover, if foreign workers cannot gain citizenship in Israel, how can they possibly develop an affinity to the country?
(3) How can foreign workers flood the job market if they are already inside Israel, having been admitted on work visas in limited numbers? How can they burden social services, since they will be required to leave the country if they are unemployed, a condition of their visas? How can foreign workers force expensive Israeli workers to leave the country? They are leaving in droves already.
(4) Further absurdity is found in the shifting back and forth language describing high-tech foreign workers as “cheap, yet average” on the one hand, and “highly qualified” on the other hand.
(5) Finally, the idea that inexperienced programmers can fill the shortage of high-tech personnel in the short term, and that paying professors more will rapidly supply new trained high-tech personnel, is absurd.
In marked contrast with Israel, the U.S. Congress recently approved a large increase in H1B visas, nearly doubling the import of skilled high-tech personnel from overseas. It is these imported, highly-skilled personnel who play a large part in the growth and success of Silicon Valley and other centers of high-tech in the U.S.
In response to the report, MK Tal said that his committee would formulate recommendations for short- and long-term solutions to the shortage of high-tech personnel. Shortly after visiting Kiryat Atidim, a high-tech park in Ramat Hahayal, Tal stated his belief that there is no choice other than importing a limited number of workers “to prevent companies from collapsing because of a shortage of skilled programmers.”
Evidently reality has interposed itself on MK Tal. The professors may want the Knesset to appropriate more funds for professors. But Tal has seen enough to know that higher salaries for professors do not fill current vacancies. Even under the best of conditions, it will take several years to train a large cadre of information-technology specialists, assuming they don’t head off for the U.S. after completing their education.
Tal insists that importing foreign workers would be contingent on government spending money to train demobilized soldiers by defining high tech as a preferred sector.
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if Tal suggested cutting taxes and reducing bureaucratic obstacles, rather than spending more public funds, to resolve the shortage of skilled personnel in high-tech? Wouldn’t it be encouraging if Tal emphasized high-tech as a solution to Israel’s economic independence, and proposed the necessary economic reforms, rather than accept the report’s claim that start-ups are not a solution? Perchance to dream.
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