Transit strike hitting SeaBus again this weekend
Credit to Author: Jennifer Saltman| Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2019 16:31:29 +0000
Passengers travelling between downtown Vancouver and the North Shore on the SeaBus this weekend will have longer waits thanks to sailing cancellations due to job action by Metro transit workers.
On Saturday morning, TransLink spokesman Ben Murphy said they expect 20 SeaBus sailing cancellations in the afternoon between 4:15 p.m. and 9:15 p.m., which means sailings every 30 minutes instead of every 15 minutes.
Gavin McGarrigle, western regional director for Unifor, which represents 5,000 Coast Mountain Bus Company employees, said Saturday that he had heard from the company’s lead negotiator that it has no plans to budge so it was unlikely the two sides would be retuning to the bargaining table on the weekend.
There is no plan to escalate job action this week, but he said the backlog of service will get worse.
“We are staying at this level for now but this job action will escalate and end in a full work stoppage,” he said.
“We are prepared to be patient. If it takes four, four, six, nine months then that is what we we will do…we will continue to fight until we get a fair contract.”
Bus service will likely be hit with trip cancellations. McGarrigle said he heard that five buses has already been pulled out of service. The busing situation is expected to worsen through next week as bus mechanics, who are refusing to work overtime, fall behind on maintenance and repairs.
Contract negotiations between the union and Coast Mountain Bus Company broke off on Thursday, prompting job action that began at 8 a.m. Friday.
The union started with what it described as “a measured level of strike action,” which involves transit operators refusing to wear uniforms and an overtime ban by the company’s technicians and other skilled-trades workers.
The immediate impact of the strike was a smattering of bus trip cancellations on Friday morning that affected routes from Vancouver to Langley. More trips were expected to be cancelled throughout the day.
Coast Mountain Bus Company president Mike McDaniel said the company had about 1,300 buses on the road on Friday, and 150 spare buses scattered throughout its six depots that could be brought into service if needed.
“We’re ready for service disruptions. However, once we get past those 150 buses that are spares, we will see some service disruptions on the road,” said McDaniel.
The SeaBus was the first service affected by the transit strike.
SeaBus took a bigger hit, with 14 sailings cancelled during the afternoon rush on Friday. This summer, TransLink added a third vessel, which had been used as a spare, into the rotation to provide more service during peak periods. This is the boat that was taken out of service, which meant that instead of 10-minute intervals between boats, it was back to the 15-minute intervals of a few months ago.
“We just simply can’t deliver that with the overtime ban,” McDaniel said of the 10-minute intervals.
According to data from 2018, the weekday afternoon rush — between 3 and 6 p.m. — is the busiest time of day for the SeaBus, with the highest passenger volumes. In the fall, during that time period, the SeaBus carries a high of 238 passengers northbound and 245 passengers southbound.
On the weekend, there are 248 SeaBus sailings planned in both directions — 134 on Saturday and 114 on Sunday. McDaniel said he didn’t have specifics yet on which SeaBus sailings would be cancelled, but that information would become available.
Smith said he had been advised that a bus bridge between Lonsdale Quay and Waterfront would be added on Saturday between 4 and 9:30 p.m.
“Already within a few hours, a couple of days of our actions the shortage of trades are showing through,” Smith said.
SeaBus trips are being cut because each sailing must have an engineer on board, and those engineers work overtime every day because there is a shortage of skilled workers.
The overtime ban also means that regular maintenance and emergency fixes are not being done on buses, and Smith said they won’t put unsafe buses on the road.
“The issue why we’re relying on overtime in maintenance is because we just can’t keep up. We physically can’t keep up because we don’t have the staff to do it. We’ve lost so many people because of wages being higher in other areas of the Lower Mainland — people are leaving and we can’t retain people,” Smith said.
When asked if Coast Mountain relies too much on overtime, McDaniel said every transit agency has overtime shifts built into their schedules because of the nature of the business and the ebbs and flows it experiences. However, he conceded that there are challenges recruiting skilled trades and there is a shortage of those workers.
TransLink was unable to provide figures for how much overtime is worked by maintenance and SeaBus staff.
McDaniel said the best way to stop service disruptions is to negotiate a new contract.
“The union’s job action is causing the service disruption and we want that to stop. We want to get back to the table and negotiate a responsible deal,” McDaniel said.
The two sides are far apart in negotiations, according to information released by Coast Mountain on Friday.
The union has asked for better wages and benefits, along with measures that would improve working conditions for transit operators, by reducing overcrowding, increasing service and allowing for more reasonable break times for its members.
The company said it has offered a 12.2-per-cent pay increase over four years for skilled trades, and 9.6 per cent over four years for transit operators, plus improved benefits and changes meant to improve working conditions for transit operators, including building more recovery time into the schedules.
According to Coast Mountain, the union’s demands would cost TransLink an additional $608 million over 10 years and put transit expansion plans in jeopardy.
McDaniel said he is disappointed that bargaining has come to this point.
“We have put a reasonable deal in front of the union and they have walked away from the table,” McDaniel said. “They need to come back to the table, they need to bargain a reasonable deal that is fiscally responsible. This is public dollars. We take that very seriously.”
When asked if he thought bargaining would resume anytime soon, Smith said it won’t happen “until they change their demands and come up with a fair, equitable agreement.”
Many services are not affected by the strike, including SkyTrain, West Coast Express, HandyDart, the West Vancouver Blue Bus and other contracted services.
For information about cancellations, transit users are being advised to sign up for transit alerts at translink.ca and to follow @TransLink on Twitter.
— With files from Tiffany Crawford
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