Reports of violence at transit depots as some tram drivers strike
Prague tram drivers called a one-day strike today to fight for wage equality with their bus driving counterparts. However, the strike has not gone as smoothly as planned and has even been marked by violence.
In a last ditch effort to avoid the strike, Prague's mayor Pavel Bem met with the head of the Tram Drivers Federation, Antonin Dub, last night. However, Mr Bem failed to resolve the dispute, and he said that the city would use the courts to put an end to a strike which he called "illegal."
However, as Prague Transport Company spokeswoman Michaela Kucharova said, the majority of Prague's trams were running this morning:
"We expected that at 6 o'clock we would have 250trams running and we had 171 trams, so that means that almost 70 percent of the network was functioning. The main problem is not that people are not coming to work, it's the fact that a small amount of people are preventing them from doing their jobs."
She added that the Prague Transit company considers the strike illegal because even though the drivers have the right to strike, they do not have the right to block anyone who does not want to strike, as they did in several instances.
Later this morning, Mr Dub announced that the tram drivers' strike will end prematurely at noon because a private security agency acted on orders from the Prague Transit Company and assaulted striking drivers. There have also been reports that a number of violent incidents occurred at tram depots this morning between tram drivers and police. Here's what Mr Dub had to say:
"There were some people here who beat our members, a number of people were injured. From our point of view the strike was the right thing to do, but this is going to far. I am saying that this country is not a normal democratic regime but, regrettably, a police state."
But a spokesperson from Prague's police administration told Czech Radio that the police reject the notion that anyone was assaulted or harmed. The dispute is far from over, and the dissatisfied tram drivers have warned that more strikes can be expected in the near future.
