Egged officials report that barring any last-minute agreement, the threatened nationwide bus strike will begin on Tuesday morning 23 Adar 5777 at 5:00AM.
Egged continues to call on the government to change its position, which it has maintained during recent months.
The agreement by which Egged received government subsidies ended in 2016 and the government is unwilling to resume funding Egged as it has in the past. Egged maintains it can afford to continue operating with the subsidy and it cannot remain competitive against other companies operating today.
Egged last month held a warning strike in the hope of persuading treasury officials it means business but Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon is uninterested in returning to the old agreement.
Histadrut National Labor Federation head Avi Nissankoren announced he have given his approval for the strike and unless the government steps forwards and signs a deal, all Egged bus service nationwide will halt early Tuesday morning.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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3 Responses
Uch stupid bus stuff….
How an I supposed to get to school?
While Egged provides essential services, those services come at a cost, which increasingly is not covered by government subsidies. There are new market entrants that provide services over the most profitable Egged routes bleeding away badly needed revenues. Egged is asked to provide service on sparsely used routes and those where the buses are subject to major security threats. At the same time, Egged is not efficiently managed and pays some of its workers above market wages for limited hours. It has to renegotiate some of its agreements with the union to reduce its costs. Finally, the fares charged for service on sparsely used routes and/or those to remote locations must be increased to cover a large percentage of actual costs or those services must be eliminated. The status quo is untenable.
It is wrong to run public transportation in such a manner. Our government gave a contract to Eged for a certain amount of time but apparently the subsidies ended before that contract was over. So the government let the public be subject to Eged’s management failures! That is unconscionable. At any rate, Eged should not get the contract next time around because of their mistreatment of the public. And the government should learn how to give incentives to bus companies to be respectful, courteous, professional, and helpful.