Public Pay Excesses Down 40 Percent Since 1997

The Finance Ministry has announced that a longterm effort to curb pay excesses in Israel’s public sector has paid off handsomely.

The ministry’s Wages Commissioner’s Department has produced a report saying that whereas some 62 percent of public entities were guilty of pay excesses, that figure was down to only 10.5 percent as of 2017, Globes reported.

Wages Commissioner Kobi Bar-Natan, who submitted the report to Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, credited the enforcement unit with the success of the project. The unit is headed by Etty Gabbai-Morali, senior deputy to the wages commissioner for enforcement.

According to Bar-Natan, the enforcement saved the state NIS 309 million in 2017 alone, and has led to a total actuarial saving of some NIS 6 billion since the unit was set up in 1997.

The worst excesses were found in non-profit organizations and universities, but there too a major improvement was recorded. Only in 17 percent of supported entities were pay excesses found, compared with 33 percent the previous year.