Israel Court Nixes Planned Egged Strike

A planned strike of Egged bus drivers for Monday was called off at the last minute, after the Jerusalem Labor Court acceded to the request of Egged management that the strike be halted.

The court allowed bus drivers to conduct the strike on one line – the number 59 bus line in Yerushalayim – for one hour, instead of shutting down all bus service in the city between 10:00 AM and noon, as originally planned.

The strike was called as a protest over what drivers called a lack of police interest in instances of violence against drivers. Bus drivers have been subject to numerous violent incidents in recent weeks, a spokesperson for drivers said, the most recent being several days ago in Yerushalayim, when bus driver Fahmi Jabar was attacked by the driver of a passenger car. The details of that incident are in dispute, and on Sunday the police Internal Affairs Department said it would investigate the incident, as it involved a police officer who arrested Jabar for disorderly conduct.

Egged spokesperson Ron Ratner said that the court “placed the issue in its proper perspective, and restricted the strike to a minimum, thus preventing what would have been an excessive action that would have negatively affected hundreds of thousands of travelers using the public transportation system.

With that, we must fight against the phenomenon of violence against drivers, without compromise. We will work with workers committees and the police and other public bodies in order to achieve this goal,” Ratner said.