Israeli unions are running up one organizing victory after another in a series of campaigns that would be the envy of trade unionists everywhere — if only so many of them weren’t busy boycotting the Histadrut.

The latest win is a huge campaign to organize one of the country’s largest mobile phone carriers, Cellcom.

Hundreds of new members have been signed up, initially in a secret campaign and now openly, as the company is compelled by a recent court decision to remain neutral during an organizing drive.  That court decision opened the gates to a number of very successful organizing drives.

Cellular telephone companies have been very difficult targets for unions in some other countries.  See for example, this campaign by the Communication Workers of America who are struggling to unionize T-Mobile, or the difficult fight Britain’s Communications Workers Union has had with Virgin Media.

Full details on the Histadrut campaign at Cellcom are in this article on the Globes financial daily newspaper website.

According to the article, “A Histadrut source said that the very serious move included the establishment of a provisional workers committee. The union’s effort is complicated: in addition to recruiting a third of Cellcom’s employees, it must also unionize employees at 013 NetVision Ltd., which is an integral part of the company. The union must recruit one third of 7,500 employees. ‘This is really complex, but we love to break records,’ the source told ‘Globes’.”