Witness the security and maintenance contractors (as published this week in Haaretz). Witness the Manufacturers' Association.

The one supposed to do something about it is the state. For example, Oded Tyrah suggested the government establish a police force, like the one responsible for deporting foreign workers, to enforce the minimum wage law (the same government the manufacturers want reduced, its services privatized and its nose kept out of the business world).

In any event, an economic police already exists, set up this year at the behest of the treasury to deal with people who fraudulently obtain National Insurance allowances. Its mandate was expanded to cover economic crime, but this police force doesn't tackle minimum wage offenders and the state is failing in its duty to enforce the law. A force of 22 is tasked with enforcing all labor laws and protecting 2.4 million workers against exploitation.

Tyrah's revelation that 40 percent of employers break the minimum wage law is overly generous to employers. According to various assessments, between 50-70 percent of employees who are supposed to receive minimum wage do not.

Dr. Daniel Gottlieb, a senior adviser to the Bank of Israel governor, has reviewed the situation and found that minimum wage law offenses are particularly rife in small businesses, with the victims commonly being foreign workers, Arabs and women.

The manufacturers' confession has a single purpose - removing the spotlight from the Histadrut labor federation's demand to raise the minimum wage to $1,000 a month. The manufacturers oppose any increase, even though minimum wage is at least NIS 1,100 lower than the established poverty line for a family with two children. The minimum wage level does position Israel midway on a list of 20 countries with minimum wage laws - after Japan, the United States and Western European countries; ahead of Spain, Korea and Turkey - but the percentage of minimum wage earners in Israel is among the highest on the list.

According to National Insurance Institute figures, some 12 percent of full-time employees and 32 percent of all employees earn minimum wage. Nonetheless, Tyrah claims that the wage is already too high and does not enable companies to compete with employers who moved production to China or India, drastically reducing wage costs. Israeli employers, struggling to keep up, are already failing to comply with the minimum wage law, Tyrah charges; if forced to raise wages, noncompliance will only increase. In short, blame the Chinese.