Currently bus drivers in Japan are on strike, continuing to drive their routes while refusing to take fares from passengers.
Although bus drivers did take this industrial action in the Japanese city of Okayama during 2018, the protest has since ended.
A post on Facebook which claims that bus drivers in Japan are currently carrying out a creative form of industrial action is misleading.
The post, shared on 8 August 2022, says: “Currently bus drivers in Japan are on strike continuing to drive their routes while refusing to take fares from passengers! So keeping Japan on time, but costing the bus companies gas on top of lost revenue. Dear world, this is how a protest is done.”
The claim does not specify where in Japan the strike took place and gives the impression that the action is ongoing.
While it is true that drivers in the city of Okayama in western Japan did protest in this way, during the spring of 2018, there are no reports that suggest the strike is still ongoing and some sources say it ended during the middle of May that same year.
According to reports published at the time, action began after drivers expressed concern that the launch of a rival bus company in the city might impact their job security.
Similar actions were taken by bus drivers in Brisbane, Australia, in the summer of 2017.
Image courtesy of Heshan Perera
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as partly false because the industrial action by bus drivers in Okayama dates back to 2018 and ended in May that same year, so it is no longer ongoing.
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