The Histadrut (General Federation of Labor in Israel) today announced the signing of a collective labor agreement with the Egged Israel Transport Cooperative Society Ltd.. The agreement improves the wages of thousands of drivers from NIS 39 to NIS 43.50 an hour. The Histadrut asserts that the agreement makes Egged drivers the best paid drivers in the public transportation sector.
The Histadrut added that employees who began working at the company more than six years ago would receive a 1% increment for each year. For example, the base pay of an Egged driver with 37 years of seniority in the company will be NIS 11,000 a month, amounting to NIS 60.40 per hour.
Egged itself is to pay for this 10% wage increase. The cooperative's financial situation has not been good in recent years. "Egged will have to find ways to pay for this," a government source told "Globes." "They are not the first ones to raise wages; Metropolitan and Superbus have already done it."
One of the reasons for the poor service in public transportation in Israel is a severe shortage of drivers - Israel currently lacks 3,000 drivers. The profession is regarded as not worthwhile, given the difficulty and responsibility that it entails. The financial state of many public transportation operators is dismal, preventing them from raising drivers' wages in order to overcome the shortage. A solution to this problem should come from the Ministry of Transport, which has not managed to solve it to date.
Hurrying to take credit for Egged's agreement with its drivers was Minister of Transport Yisrael Katz, who lent his support to the measure. He said, "During my term, I raised drivers' wages by 60-80%, now that today's agreement boosted the drivers' pay to NIS 43.50 per hour. I gave instructions that all public transportation tenders should include incentives for operators to pay even more."
Katz stated that in view of the shortage of drivers for public vehicles, the Ministry of Transport had acted over the past year to shorten the training period for truck and bus drivers. Among other things, times for handling requests for licenses to drive heavy public transportation vehicles will be reduced from a few months to just three weeks. "Improvement of public transportation in Israel is one of the main goals that I have been promoting since I became minister. It is a national goal that contributes to the economy, society, environmental protection, and the quality of life for all Israelis," Katz added.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 30, 2018
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