Client updates /  employers

In Israel, many employers customarily employ teenagers during the summer vacation. Since the school year is coming to a close, we are recapping highlights of the Youth Employment Law to remind employers about what is permitted and prohibited when employing teenagers.

Employers employing more than 518 employees obligate to prepare two annual reports specifying the gender wage disparities in the workplace, publish publicly and internal.

On April 25, 2025, the public transportation fares were updated in the second phase of the “transportation justice” reform. The new fares may affect the rate of reimbursement of employees’ travel expenses.

The Freeze and Reduction of Convalescence Pay Law was approved in 2025.  As in 2024, employers will be obligated to reduce the convalescence pay payable to their employees and to transfer the reduced sums to the tax assessor, accordingly. The purpose of this law is to redirect these sums for the provision of benefits to reservists.

The account-settling must include wage components based on seniority, actual work (like overtime or rest-day work), and qualifying events.

A new extension order signed in March 2025 applies to employees in the construction, infrastructure, heavy equipment, public works, civil engineering and renovation sectors and came into effect on April 1.

A new extension order for the institutional catering sector took effect on April 1, 2025, applying the 2022 collective agreement to all employers and employees in the industry. The order improves conditions for one of the most underpaid and overworked groups in the labor market.

From now on, recipients of contract workers’ services must periodically review the wages paid to the service contractor’s employees working on their premises, set up a mechanism for clarifying workers’ grievances, and fulfill a series of other obligations designed to protect contract workers’ rights.

Due to the recent increase in incidences of COVID-19, there has been an update to the guidelines on quarantine payments to employees. Here are the main points of the update, for your convenience.

One of the possible contractual forms between parties is the provision of services as an independent contractor (in colloquial terms, a freelancer). This type of contracting is not particularly favored by labor courts, which seek, as a policy matter, to apply employment relations in cases involving claims of the existence of an employee-employer relationship. Once in a while, labor courts establish new rules on recognizing employment relationships and on retroactive calculation of the rights of independent contractors as employees.