Jerusalem light rail chugs back to life after wildcat strike
Labor Court orders conductors back to work after shutdown disrupts service on capital’s mass transit system
Jerusalem light rail service sluggishly returned to normal on Wednesday, a day after employees called in sick in a wildcat strike that coincided with the arrival of thousands for the Sukkot holiday.
Rail service terminated Tuesday when most of the train drivers failed to show up for work, shutting down the system. Citypass accused its employees, many of whom called in sick, of orchestrating an unofficial strike as part of an ongoing labor dispute.
A Labor Court judge issued an order to all employees who called in sick to return to work, Channel 10 reported. Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat personally appeared before the court to appeal for train service to return to normal on the city’s behalf, city hall said.
Despite the ruling, trains weren’t yet running on a full schedule as of Wednesday morning.
“We’re making every effort to operate as many trains as possible,” the company said Wednesday, saying they’d keep the public up-to-date with any changes.
Citypass has asked the Transportation Ministry and the Jerusalem municipality to provide extra buses in Jerusalem to pick up the slack caused by the disrupted light rail services.
In a statement, the company suggested that the sudden onset of illness among so many employees was connected to a dispute with the workers’ committee over changes to timetables and wages.
“We regret the irresponsible and organized behavior of the committee, which chose to impact the service for passengers and to interrupt their lives specifically during the festival, while contravening the District Court’s ruling,” Citypass said, apparently referring to a decision from August that ordered drivers back to work several hours after they initiated a strike.
The company also took the national Histadrut Labor Union to task for letting the drivers get away with the alleged protest, the Hebrew-language Walla news site reported.
“Likewise, we regret the incompetence of the Histadrut, which isn’t acting on its legal authority and isn’t acting to stop the illegal actions of the drivers against the public.”
The ongoing dispute is over a new program aimed to increase the frequency of the trains, so that they would be arriving every six minutes during most hours of the day.
Workers claim the new program was decided on without their agreement and argue it will have a negative impact on work conditions and prevent workers from being able to take breaks, decreasing the safety of passengers and pedestrians.
At the time of the August walkout, the Citypass administration claimed the strike was called “for tactical reasons” as part of the workers’ demands for higher wages, even though light rail wages are higher than similar jobs in the field.
The administration insists the new program would improve, not harm, the workers’ conditions, and that the workers were only striking in order to “hold onto a bargaining chip.”
Josefin Dolsten contributed to this report.
