JERUSALEM, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Tnuva and Osem, two of the largest food companies in Israel, announced on Thursday that they would join the LGBT community strike on upcoming Sunday and allow their employees not to work that day.
The heads of the LGBT movement in Israel announced the strike on Wednesday after the Israeli parliament (Knesset) passed a law allowing single women to receive surrogacy services, without including individual men.
The law was approved by the Knesset two days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised that individual men would be included, in accordance with an amendment proposed by Knesset homosexual member Amir Ohana of Netanyahu's Likud party.
The pharmaceutical company Teva also announced earlier that it will allow its LGBT employees to strike, as well as Facebook-Israel, communications companies Bezeq, Cellcom, Yes and Hot, credit card companies Leumi Card and Isracard, and dozens of other companies.
Microsoft-Israel, which would also join the strike, has even announced that it will grant every worker to start a surrogacy process, man or woman, with 60,000 new shekels (about 16,000 U.S. dollars).
Municipality of Tel Aviv, the largest city in Israel, and Ichilov, largest hospital in the city, also took a similar step allowing the LGBT workers to strike.
Meanwhile, Israir Airlines announced that it would allow its employees to work on Sunday in black shirts in protest.
