Page 4 - Issue 3
P. 4
Abe Chiswick of Kvutsat Yovel asks the question, “How
do you define the monetary value of someone's time?”
Running a peula or some other activity with a towns you can not do four in a day. So, let's
specific starting time and length begs one set say three. But that still isn't enough because
of questions, but activities that have less set you need time to prepare, and it is only fair to
parameters open a whole host of other pay someone for the time they need to spend
questions too. preparing.
When Shnat Hachshara (or Workshop to our When you have someone walking across the
friends in HDNA) was ten and a half months street and someone else driving for two hours,
on Kibbutz only, there were two people we had and one person creating a course from scratch
to worry about: The madrich and the rakaz. and another running a course they developed
As the program grew and developed, more and last year, how do you compensate each of
more people where needed to run things. As them appropriately while still having a system?
we spread out, we also expanded our
responsibility to pay more people. We spent a good amount of time thinking over
some of these issues. We tried to take our
Without any structure in place people were ideals and mesh them with some of the
paid according to other people's pay scales realities of the society around us. One of the
and a hierarchical tree was born. A rakaz was solutions we have come up with is to make
paid more than a madrich, a Hebrew teacher everyone a 'full time' movement worker.
was paid less that someone who taught a While that effectively ends the question of
course of Socialist Zionism. The rakaz was how much should a specific person get paid, it
the madrich's boss and the educator's boss. opens up other questions.
That seems to 'work' in the capitalist society What is full time? Forty hours per week?
around us, but when the rakaz, the madrich Fifty? Thirty five? Who decides? Does Yom
and the educator all live in one kvutsah... What Kvutsah count as part of the working week?
does that mean about the relationships Are different types of tzvatim categorized
between them? Can one member of a kvutsah differently?
fire another?
Every new step is a new door with many new
The system was untenable, and needed to be questions behind it. There is something quite
changed. We decided that everyone working thrilling about building and developing and
in the movement would receive the same salary exploring.
independent of what specific tafkid they held.
We chose a sum that seemed to be I feel like a real Chalutz
reasonable, and began paying that to everyone.
If someone was doing half time in the By Abe
movement, they got half; quarter time, a
quarter. We even calculated how much time
one session per week was. We assumed a 20
working day month, and a possible four
sessions in a day. But that works if you are in
one place all day, and the reality is that if you
have to travel between two different Kaveret
