As thousands of soldiers and other commuters were preparing to board trains home for the weekend on April 12, the Israel Railways Corporation suspended all services. According to management, the decision was prompted by a sudden “sick out” by eight of 21 safety controllers responsible for preventing collisions. Management claimed that when it tried to call other controllers to replace them, no one answered.

Service resumed two hours later. The head of the workers union, Gila Edrei, denied management claims that she had instigated the event, accusing the management of halting service to fuel public anger against the union. She even threatened a libel suit against the management, which in turn demanded that the Histadrut Labor Federation punish the rail workers union.

The union is convinced that management tricked it in order to further tarnish its battered public image. “What happened on Friday was an outrageous manipulation by management designed to incite against the union,” union spokesperson Na’ama Katzir Shmueli told Al-Monitor. “Contrary to management’s claim, only two controllers did not show up for work, not eight. I have never heard of a serious organization that could not find replacements for two absent workers. It was a planned provocation designed to obfuscate a series of failures by management, a damning report by the State Comptroller and outrageous safety flaws.”

The Friday stoppage was the latest in a long string of failures, outages and strikes. Last month, the State Comptroller issued a scathing report about a public transportation crisis in Israel, detailing at length the chaotic train service. Israelis need no government watchdog agency to tell them about the shortcomings of what is probably the country’s most hated public service. Israelis know all about the severe shortage of rail cars and tracks, antiquated equipment and huge financial losses that result in poor service such as chronic delays, cancellations, unbearable overcrowding, dozens of strikes a year and safety violations. To top it all off, the long-touted high-speed rail service from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv has been plagued by failure since its launch last September.