The formal part of the process of dismissing the CEO of the Broadcasting Corporation, Eldad Koblenz, has ended – the corporation council has officially decided to dismiss him. To him on the termination of his term.
By law, an alternate can be appointed for a period of three months, and if necessary, it can also be extended to six months. During this period a locating committee is to be set up to choose who will run or manage the corporation.
Despite the decision on the dismissals, the saga between Koblenz and the council is far from over: Koblenz is expected to go to labor court and seek a restraining order against the move. The corporation council has recently conducted simulations regarding the possibilities in such a scenario, and it is estimated that even if Koblenz succeeds in obtaining a restraining order, it will take at most months until the date of a discussion on the matter.
Koblenz’s affair with the public broadcaster is long – he was, among other things, the director of the Galgalatz station and in 2011 was appointed by the then Minister of Education Gideon Saar as the director general of education. And together with Gil Omar, who was elected chairman of the council, the two fought the battle for survival in the face of political attempts to torpedo the establishment.
The council became an opposite
In order to prevent the political intervention that characterized the Broadcasting Authority, an administrative structure was established that should completely protect the new body from political involvement. A council that is not subordinate to any minister and is elected by a locating committee, which in turn appoints the CEO. In the first years of the corporation’s operation, council members and Koblenz worked in synergy.
Allegations of contempt for staff and turnover of executives characterized the corporation from day one and over time these became complaints about inappropriate tenders tailored to the size of candidates, but for most of the time the previous council responded to the CEO – even after blacklisting and humiliating nicknames. It referred to some of the employees of the former Broadcasting Authority who wanted to move to the corporation that was established.
For most of her tenure, the previous council was considered “lying in Koblenz’s pocket.” The first to recalculate the route were Chairman Gil Omer and Councilman David Alexander who voted against his appointment as permanent CEO. In the last months of the previous council, however, most of the council members began to change their attitude, and as the complaints, investigations and criticisms increased, Koblenz received a council that became more and more oppositional. However, following the political situation in Israel, the term of office of the previous council ended without the search committee being able to complete the appointment of the new council. It took another months to recruit a functioning council and when in practice Koblenz functioned as a director without a board of directors. Not all members of the previous council were elected to the new council which now has nine members.
Next stop: Labor Court
When the new council began operating, its members sought to examine the corporate culture of the corporation. At first the corporation’s internal auditor found it difficult to carry out the inspection, and announced after several months that many of the corporation’s senior executives who were afraid even long after their departure were afraid to comment on the reasons for their departure. Later, following an investigation by journalist Tamar Kaplansky in time that revealed sexual harassment and a problematic organizational culture, the council appointed an investigative committee to examine the corporate culture of the corporation. The committee’s conclusions revealed a difficult organizational culture of abuse, found Koblenz responsible, among others, but refrained from recommending personal conclusions against him and suggested mediating between him and chairman Gil Omer. Be the one who restores the corporate culture.
But it seems that at this point the mistrust between Koblenz and the council was already too deep. Following the conclusions, the parties began an exchange of letters culminating in letters sent by Koblenz through his lawyer Ayala Honigman to council members two letters in which Koblenz accused Omar of trying to harm the corporation and himself, when in the second letter he even threatened to take legal action against Omar.
In response, council members sent a letter to Koblenz, demanding that he withdraw the letters he sent as well as attach a clear and unequivocal apology, which would make it clear that he was trying to return to the course of action assigned to him as CEO of the corporation, and engage in proper dialogue with the council.
After Koblenz refused, most of the council members – even the moderate ones, who initially thought that the dismissal process should be waited for – could not continue to deal with it without severely harming the corporation’s day-to-day operations. The dismissal process began, and the letters were cited as grounds for summoning for a pre-dismissal hearing.
Koblenz was later summoned to a pre-dismissal hearing. His lawyer asked to be allowed to end his term, which is expected to come to an end in 10 months anyway. She argued that the letters could not constitute grounds for dismissal, and that it was incorrect to dismiss a manager due to harsh letters sent by his lawyer. It was further alleged that the council members tried to get Koblenz to retire even before the conclusions of the Procaccia Commission report, through relentless intervention and attempt to discredit him in front of the workers, and that the council decided to run the organization and not oversee it.
It can be assumed that the significant stop will be in the Labor Court, where it will be decided whether to issue a conditional order and withdraw the saga in a few weeks or send Koblenz to a civil court and refer the council to elect a new CEO.