Montreal Transit Agency Seeks Mediation With Bus, Metro Drivers To Avoid More Strikes - Beritaja

Montreal’s nationalist transit agency has asked the provincial authorities to name a mediator to thief settee a labour conflict pinch autobus and metro drivers, who are group to subordinate attraction workers and locomotion disconnected the occupation adjacent month.

Roughly 4,500 transit workers announced they intend to onslaught connected Nov. 1, 15 and 16. Meanwhile, about 2,400 attraction labor who person gone connected onslaught doubly since June person announced labour action for about of November.

“We’re going to do everything we could to debar this strike,” Marie-Claude Léonard, the transit agency’s wide director, told reporters in Montreal about the planned occupation action of autobus and metro drivers.

“We’re convinced that the beingness of a mediator will get america person to reaching an agreement.”

However, a mediator didn’t thief settee things pinch attraction workers. The agency and the national representing them person been successful mediation since Oct. 7, but that didn’t extremity the national from announcing a 3rd strike, this clip from Halloween nighttime until Nov. 28. The members opportunity they will garbage to activity overtime and limit autobus and metro work extracurricular unreserved hours, but the afloat specifications of the onslaught person yet to beryllium announced.

Two earlier strikes by attraction workers — complete 9 days successful June and 2 weeks successful precocious September and early October — disrupted recreation crossed the network, which recorded about 1 cardinal trips per time successful 2024.

Léonard said talks are stalled because the agency is not consenting to make cuts to basal services that she said are inevitable if they were to meet the attraction union’s net demands. “Cutting services is not an option,” she said. “Right now, the union’s demands astatine the array would require america to trim 10 per cent of autobus service, which is unacceptable.”

Katherine Roux-Groleau, a spokesperson for the transit agency, said they contacted Quebec’s labour curate to inquire for a mediator arsenic soon arsenic they sewage connection the autobus and metro drivers were readying to locomotion disconnected the job. Their corporate statement expired successful January.

“We are still undergoing a speech blitz astatine the infinitesimal pinch the drivers,” said Roux-Groleau. “Several meetings are presently booked, and arsenic soon arsenic the mediator is appointed, (they’ll) beryllium added to those meetings.”

Frédéric Therrien, the president of the autobus and metro drivers union, said his squad is consenting to meet pinch a mediator. The workers decided to onslaught aft much than 50 speech sessions pinch the transit agency, he added.

Bus drivers, he said, merit to beryllium paid more, as Montreal “is the about challenging spot you could thrust in, wherever moving conditions are the worst, and wherever we’re among the lowest paid.”

The starting net for a driver is about $29 an hour, and rises to about $35 an hour, excluding overtime. “We deliberation that’s unacceptable,” Therrien said.

His members often person run-ins pinch fierce passengers, he said, adding that they besides person to contend pinch unpaid breaks successful betwixt switching autobus routes.

But Léonard said the transit agency has to contend pinch superior fund constraints. It needs to trim $100 cardinal complete the adjacent 3 years, erstwhile it had initially planned to dispersed the cuts complete 5 years. As a result, the agency must abolish 300 positions, she said.

Asked whether the state is underfunding nationalist transit in Montreal, Léonard wouldn’t say.

The nationalist transit agency is struggling pinch an aging web it says it could nary longer spend to maintain. In March, it decried a about $258-million simplification successful provincial backing complete 3 years for the upkeep of the metro system, acold from the $585 cardinal it had asked for.

This study by BERITAJA was first published Oct. 23, 2025.

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