It’s a New Ball Game: Modern Interpretation of Old Mandatory Working Hours Legislation

The challenge: applying analogue legislation in a digital era

Israel’s labour legislation was largely enacted in the 1950s, based on the social and employment assumptions that characterised the State’s early years. Most of it is mandatory, and the scope for judicial intervention is therefore confined to exceptional cases. Owing to legislative inertia and the stagnation of the traditional parties to collective labour relations, the law has remained largely frozen in time, even as patterns of employment have become more varied and flexible and the boundaries between work, availability, leisure and rest have grown increasingly blurred. In these circumstances, the labour courts, led by the National Labour Court, are continually required to bridge the gap between outdated statutory provisions and contemporary working realities, while preserving the legislation’s original purposes.

The Israeli legislative limitations on weekend work

In the Jewish tradition, the Sabbath is a sacred day. Under Israel’s Hours of Work and Rest Law, 1951, the weekly rest period spans 36 consecutive hours, enabling Jewish employees to prepare for the Sabbath and refrain from work on the Sabbath. In addition, employers may operate during the official weekend only under a special permit. Even where a permit is granted, work performed during the weekly rest period is remunerated at a 50% premium. The Wage Protection Law further prohibits inclusive wage arrangements that purport to absorb the cost of work performed on the weekly rest day. The legislative message is clear: employees’ rest should be protected, and weekend work should be sufficiently costly to deter routine weekend work.

Professional football as a special case

Professional football differs materially from most other forms of employment. In Israel, as elsewhere, football matches are typically played at weekends, although in Israel this ordinarily means Saturday. The nature of the sport, therefore, requires players to perform their core duties especially during the weekly rest period. Unlike in sectors where work on the rest day is incidental or exceptional, in professional football it is a central and inherent aspect of the engagement. Clubs remunerate players chiefly for participating in competitive matches. This raises the judicial question of whether the agreed salary in the player’s contract should be taken to include compensation for Saturday matches, or whether a player may nevertheless claim separate statutory remuneration for work performed during the weekly rest period. Unlike in certain other football leagues around the world, professional football in Israel is not governed by collective agreements that regulate these core employment issues.

A game-changing ruling: the National Labour Court’s 2026 ruling

In January 2026, the National Labour Court allowed appeals brought by two professional clubs against two regional rulings that had required them to pay players additional remuneration for matches played on Saturdays. The Court held that, in professional football, participation in matches lies at the heart of the contractual engagement, whereas training is merely ancillary. On that basis and taking into account the high level of remuneration paid to professional football players, it found that the agreed salary was not an unlawful all-inclusive wage, but rather remuneration paid principally for the very activity at the core of the engagement. The Court further held that, even if the arrangement could prima facie be regarded as falling within the prohibition on all-inclusive wages, the exceptional features of the case – including the nature of the sector, the uniformity of the practice, and the practical impossibility of avoiding Saturday fixtures – justified a purposive rather than purely technical application of the law.

A broader perspective: a trend towards a purposive and modern interpretation of the law

The judgment is significant not only for professional football, but also for the broader interpretative approach it reflects. The Court recognised the purpose of protective labour laws – to secure weekly rest and protect vulnerable workers from exploitation – while adopting a modern, purposive interpretation that aligns legislative intent with contemporary employment patterns and the nature of the employees involved.

Employee Privacy in the Digital Age: The Limits of Access, Ownership and Use

Established principles for employee privacy in a new digital workplace

Rapid technological development is reshaping the workplace and expanding employers’ ability to collect information about employees and monitor their work. While workplace privacy once focused on relatively traditional tools, such as CCTV, corporate email and attendance systems, work now takes place across digital environments, often outside employers’ premises and across business and personal devices and accounts. This shift has been accelerated in Israel by successive crises, including COVID-19 and recurring security challenges, which have disrupted traditional working arrangements. Technology gives employers access to more information than ever before, yet greater access does not necessarily make its use more legitimate.

Despite the transformation of the workplace, Israeli courts continue to rely on the landmark Isakov ruling of 2011. Isakov recognised that employees’ right to privacy does not end at the workplace door, reflecting the power imbalance in employment relationships and blurred boundaries between professional and private lives. It established principles of legitimacy, proportionality, transparency and purpose limitation governing employer monitoring. Technological developments have not diminished the importance of these principles but reinforced it: the more the distinction between professional and private spheres blurs, the greater their significance. This approach is also reflected in 2026 guidance from the Israel Privacy Protection Authority on remote employee monitoring, which clarifies that employee consent cannot, in itself, legitimise disproportionate monitoring.

Digital assets: a new intersection between ownership and privacy

Alongside privacy concerns, questions are emerging over ownership of digital assets created or managed within employment relationships, such as WhatsApp groups, Facebook pages and other social media accounts. Such assets may be personally associated with employees while serving the employer’s business and acquiring commercial value. In recent years, Israeli courts have begun to address their ownership. The emerging case law examines ownership not simply by reference to who created the account or group, but based on factors such as its purpose, connection to the business, how it was managed and the resources invested in it.

An earlier 2025 Israeli Magistrates’ Court decision concerning interim relief indicated that ownership does not necessarily end the privacy analysis. The court observed that even where a digital asset belongs to the company, this does not grant it an unlimited licence to use the employee’s personal content, including photographs and messages. Relying on Isakov, the court reiterated that personal information does not lose privacy protection because it exists within a work-related digital space. With the main proceedings pending, it remains to be seen whether this approach will be reflected in the final judgment or adopted by higher courts. Nevertheless, the decision highlights an important distinction: ownership or technical control of a digital asset does not necessarily confer the right to use the personal information it contains; that right requires separate legal consideration.

The next challenge: AI and employee privacy

AI may make these issues more complex. These tools not only expand the information available to employers, but also enable them to analyse data and draw conclusions about productivity, working patterns and employee conduct. If the traditional question was primarily what information an employer may access, the AI era raises another: what may an employer infer from information it is entitled to access, and for what purposes may those inferences be used?

AI raises a question about the meaning of “access”. An AI system may analyse data on an employee’s activities and provide the employer with conclusions about productivity, working patterns or conduct, without revealing the underlying data. Israeli regulatory guidance recognises that the collection and retention of personal information may interfere with privacy even where it is not exposed to another person. AI adds a new dimension to this question: where an AI system processes personal information but only its conclusions are presented to the employer, what are the privacy implications of the automated processing itself? A further question is how far employers may rely on AI-generated inferences when making decisions about employees. Even where the underlying information has been lawfully obtained and processed, when might an automated assessment of an employee’s performance or conduct require meaningful human assessment?

Together, these developments demonstrate why principles established more than a decade ago may become increasingly relevant as workplace technologies evolve. Technology is changing how information is collected, held, processed and analysed, but technological capability cannot, in itself, define the boundaries of legitimate use. In a world where employers can know more about their employees than ever before, the central legal challenge is not simply what technology makes possible, but where the law draws the line between what can be known, what may be inferred and how that knowledge may be used.

Expanding Employer Responsibility for Sexual Harassment: A Further Step Beyond the Statutory Framework

The existing legal framework: responsibility for a safe workplace

The Israeli Prevention of Sexual Harassment Law, 1998, imposes extensive duties on employers to take reasonable measures to prevent sexual harassment and retaliation in the workplace. It requires employers to address incidents and adopt procedures for handling complaints, including interim and disciplinary measures where necessary.

The statutory framework extends beyond the employer’s employees. It imposes duties where the perpetrator acts as a supervisor on the employer’s behalf, even if not formally employed by the employer. Israeli case law has interpreted this concept substantively, focusing on the individual’s actual authority, influence, and connection to the workplace rather than employment status. Courts have treated business partners, employees of other entities, loaned employees, contractors and public officials as falling within this broader concept where they exercised sufficient authority or influence in the working environment.

This reflects an established principle of Israeli labour law: employer duties as to workplace safety do not end at formal organisational boundaries. The statutory framework nevertheless remains subject to defined limits.

A further step: harassment by a genuine third party

A Regional Labour Court judgment takes this principle further. The case concerned a psychiatrist sexually harassed by a patient in a psychiatric ward. The Court held that the Prevention of Sexual Harassment Law did not apply because the patient was neither an employee nor a supervisor acting on behalf of the hospital.

The Court nevertheless rejected the proposition that direct statutory inapplicability left the employer without responsibility. Instead, it examined the hospital’s conduct under general employment law, focusing on the heightened duty of good faith arising from the employment relationship. The employer’s managerial responsibility remained engaged, including a duty to take reasonable measures to protect employees from harmful third-party conduct and to respond effectively once the incident became known.

The significance of the judgment lies not in expanding the statutory concept of a supervisor acting on behalf of the employer, but in recognising a separate basis of employer responsibility even where that route does not apply. No appeal was filed, and the judgment is final.

The spill-over of statutory standards

Although the Prevention of Sexual Harassment Law did not impose liability on the hospital for the patient’s conduct, the Court relied on the standards set forth in the Law and its regulations to assess the measures expected of the hospital in fulfilling its duties.

These standards informed the Court’s examination of whether the hospital had properly investigated the incident, heard the employee, acted without delay, taken protective measures, prevented further exposure to the harasser and followed up appropriately on the employee’s welfare. The Court found substantial shortcomings in the hospital’s response, including no meaningful meeting with the employee and inadequate investigation and follow-up.

The hospital was therefore found to have breached its duty of good faith, from which flows the employer’s duty to provide and maintain a safe, appropriate, equitable and respectful work environment, including one free from harm and sexual harassment, and was ordered to pay the plaintiff compensation. In assessing quantum, the Court had regard to the statutory compensation available under the Prevention of Sexual Harassment Law without proof of actual damage, although the statutory regime did not directly govern the claim.

A broader trend: protection beyond formal boundaries

The judgment is best understood as part of a broader development in Israeli labour law. It does not suggest that previous case law was merely formal or technical: employers have long been required to take substantive and effective measures to maintain a safe workplace. The further development is that these principles may operate even where the statutory regime does not directly apply.

The practical significance is particularly strong in workplaces involving patients, customers, visitors, contractors and the public. The identity of the perpetrator is no longer the end of the inquiry into the merits. The focus will also fall on what the employer could have done to prevent the risk, protect the employee and respond effectively once the risk materialised.

In this sense, the judgment illustrates a potential “spill-over” from the statutory regime: although the boundaries remain intact, the standards reflected in that regime may inform broader duties imposed on employers under general employment law. The judgment therefore points to a further development in the allocation of responsibility for ensuring a safe working environment.

The Duty of Fair Representation: Balancing Trade Union Autonomy by Raising Accountability

The tension between collective goals and individual demands

The duty of fair representation reflects a central tension in collective labour law: preserving trade union autonomy while ensuring accountability to all employees represented. A trade union must retain sufficient independence to set collective priorities and bargain effectively. At the same time, its exclusive representative status creates obligations towards all employees in the bargaining unit, including non-members.

The Israeli fair representation concept

Israel provides an instructive case study of this tension. Israeli labour law combines a strong tradition of collective representation with a limited statutory framework, leaving fundamental concepts to judicial development. Legislation did not define the duty of fair representation; the courts developed it, holding that a representative trade union must represent all employees in the bargaining unit fairly, in good faith and without discrimination.

This obligation is especially significant because the threshold for representative status is relatively low. A trade union may become the exclusive bargaining representative if it represents one-third of the bargaining unit. Consequently, employees entitled to fair representation may substantially outnumber union members.

Israeli courts’ latest rulings maintain the non-interventionist approach

Three recent decisions reflect a consistent approach: courts recognise fair representation but remain reluctant to interfere with union decision-making, emphasising union autonomy.

The first case concerned a collective agreement between El Al, the Histadrut and the pilots’ council regarding early retirement arrangements for senior pilots who were required to leave active service due to age restrictions. The arrangement was partly financed through a mutual guarantee fund funded by active pilots.

Following the COVID-19 crisis, El Al and the pilots’ representatives concluded a restructuring agreement reducing active pilots’ wages and future payments to retirees. Retired pilots claimed that the union had breached its duty of fair representation, arguing that they were a vulnerable group reliant on existing benefits.

The Regional Labour Court rejected the claim, holding that the duty was owed to the entire bargaining unit and required balancing competing interests. Although retirees suffered financial harm, the crisis required collective compromises, and the union had acted within its legitimate discretion. The National Labour Court affirmed this.

The second case, which reached the Supreme Court, concerned an employee who initiated a class action against his employer and later withdrew it under a settlement in which the representative union undertook to address the issues raised. He argued that the union’s failure to fulfil its commitments breached its duty of fair representation.

The Supreme Court rejected the claim, holding that representational strategy falls within union autonomy. Pursuing alternative means of improving employees’ conditions, rather than the course sought by the claimant, did not constitute unfair representation.

The third case involved teachers in Christian schools in Nazareth who claimed that their union breached its duty by failing to secure conditions granted to public-sector teachers. The union argued that it lacked representative status among them and had pursued alternative methods to advance their interests.

The Labour Court found that the union had actively represented the teachers by engaging with governmental authorities, supporting collective action and negotiating on their behalf. Failure to achieve the desired outcome did not constitute a breach.

Broad in principle, narrow in practice

Taken together, these decisions reveal a striking feature of Israeli doctrine: despite its broad normative scope, findings of breach remain exceptionally rare. Internal union procedures often require such disputes to be addressed within the organisation before reaching the courts. More importantly, judicial review is constrained by freedom of association.

Israeli courts have therefore reserved findings of breach for exceptional cases involving bad faith, misuse of union resources or improper arrangements with the employer. This commitment to union autonomy comes at a cost: the wider the discretion afforded to the representative union, the narrower the practical protection afforded by fair representation.

Yet freedom of association is, first and foremost, the right of individual employees – not of the organisation representing them. Union autonomy should therefore serve that right, rather than shield the union from meaningful scrutiny. Granting unions extensive power while limiting external oversight risks reversing the relationship between the right-holder and its representative. The challenge is not to weaken union autonomy, but to ensure that power is accompanied by accountability. Ultimately, even those entrusted with protecting employees’ collective rights must remain subject to effective oversight.

The New Duty of Consulting With a Trade Union Prior to a Public Services Tender Issue

The purpose and principles of public tender law in Israel

Israeli public tender law rests on the premise that the State, in both of its capacities – as the party responsible for providing essential services to the public and as the trustee of public funds – has broad discretion to set the tender terms in accordance with the needs of the service, efficiency and the public interest, subject to the principle of equality among bidders. Public tendering is therefore governed by two core aims: securing efficiency and value for money while protecting public funds and ensuring equal treatment and fair competition among bidders.

The tension between tender law and the right of collective bargaining

A State tender for services provided by workers represented by a trade union may raise competing considerations. Tender law requires the State to design the tender fairly, professionally and efficiently, while protecting competition and securing value for money. But where the tender terms may affect workers’ rights, especially freedom of association and the right to enter into binding collective agreements, a careful balance is required between the competing interests.

A landmark December 2025 ruling: the State must consult the representative trade union before issuing a tender

In December 2025, the court delivered a landmark judgment. The case concerned a State tender for emergency facilities for at-risk youth. The representative trade union of the employees that had long provided these services sought prior consultation before the tender was issued. It argued that the proposed terms introduced significant changes that could harm workers’ acquired financial rights and long-term security of employment.

The State argued that the arrangement was a lawful case of outsourcing services through a public tender. It therefore denied any duty to consult the trade union before issuing the tender. The State noted that it acted within the scope of its governmental capacity and was neither the employer of the operator’s employees nor a party to the relevant collective labour relations. It further argued that the tender terms were set on professional grounds, including service quality, efficiency and public interest. In its view, consultation at the drafting stage could undermine equality and procedural fairness.

The National Labour Court held that the State had a prior duty to consult the representative trade union before issuing the tender, notwithstanding the absence of formal employer status. This duty applied to any tender term affecting employees’ rights. The court relied mainly on the State’s practical substantial role in setting the workers’ terms and conditions, despite the absence of a formal employer-employee relationship, and on the tender’s direct effect on their rights and security of employment.

Because the State had not engaged in any prior dialogue with the representative trade union, the court set aside the tender and ordered the State to conduct such dialogue before publishing a new tender.

The implications of the new judgment

The ruling marks a significant – and arguably controversial – extension of the duty to consult beyond the classic bilateral employment relationship, and in a manner liable to materially affect public tender processes.

In practical terms, it requires public authorities, already at the tender preparation stage, to consider the employment consequences of the tender terms. At the same time, it may complicate the preparation and publication of the tender, prolong timetables and add a further layer of complexity to public procurement. The ruling may also increase uncertainty for public authorities and require them to strike a delicate balance between administrative efficiency, the needs of the public service and the obligation to engage in prior consultation.