I do not believe that the duty to "act with self-restraint" is equivalent to giving a restrictive interpretation to the concept of an employee, or dictating a restrictive interpretation of the term "worker" while adhering to the principle of a rigid definition within its scope. Precisely because this is a unique court designed to provide a solution to problems in the field of labor relations and employee protection, the emphasis should be on providing a solution for all types of workers, without leaving certain employees out of the fence. IINational Labor Court Hearing 45:3-96 The Construction Department of Kibbutz Artzi - AbedIn Pidgin 29 151, President Adler said the following:
"In the absence of legislation protecting workers - who are employed in complex labor relations, which include a number of legal bodies - it is the duty of case law to free itself from a formal approach, to strive to ensure the rights guaranteed to employees in the protective laws of labor law, and to promote the goals of these laws" (p. 161).
Even though the circumstances there were different, the rationale behind the matter is also relevant to our case. IILabor Appeal 300245/97 Asulin v. Broadcasting Authority, PD 66 689 (2001) (hereinafter: The Asulin Affair) the court said that "The tendency of this court is to prefer the real engagement over the formal one in cases where we are dealing with the unusual employment patterns.". Exposing the "real engagement" there is equivalent to determining the "true" nature of the employment relationship between the elected official and the local authority (or the state in our case), perhaps it is another of the "unusual employment patterns" behind which the employee-employer relationship is hidden. In the matter Leibowitz To which the state referred, there was a dispute among the judges of the panel regarding the question of whether claims arising on the employee-employer relationship should be excluded from the framework of the law, "when one or both parties to the proceeding are not the employee or the employer himself, but his survivors or the executor of his estate." The minority judge was of the opinion that the legislature did not intend to exclude these claims from the framework of the law, and that accepting the opposite opinion would be illogical and contradicted the general purpose of the law and even other parts of it "... We are dealing with a social law that must be interpreted liberally in order not to thwart the clear purpose of the legislature". The majority opinion (to which the state referred) also accepted that where it is a matter of interpretation one way or the other, the court will exhaust its full powers. It seems to me that for our purposes - the exhaustion of the full powers is consistent with recognition of the authority of the court to hear the issue.