35 Jobs Cut In OC Transpo Budget Squeeze

Published 02/06/2024 · Updated 06/10/2024

This is a release from the City of Ottawa:

The purpose of this memo is to inform the Mayor and members of Council about adjustments to OC Transpo’s management and administrative workforce that took effect today.

OC Transpo is continually evaluating its business needs based on current ridership levels. Based on our current projections, transit ridership is not expected to recover further than 75 per cent of pre-pandemic levels in the immediate future. The most recent update to the Transit Long Range Financial Plan estimates it may take up to 10 years before ridership fully recovers, closing the revenue gap. This loss of ridership has created a permanent gap in OC Transpo’s annual funding at the same time as operational costs are increasing.

As outlined in the 2024 Budget, OC Transpo has taken a number of actions to reduce costs and find efficiencies, for example, by retiring older buses, freezing discretionary spending and deferring capital costs. These measures are not sufficient by themselves to address the current budget realities.

Our operations and structure must adjust as we continue to identify ways of reducing costs. As a result, we have made the difficult decision to reduce our management and administrative workforce today. In total, 25 unionized employees and 10 management and professional employees have been impacted. All directly affected individuals were informed today.

Today’s changes ensure that management and administrative support levels are aligned with our department’s business needs and consistent with supervisory levels across the corporation. This adjustment does not affect our frontline employees, namely bus and rail operators, as well as mechanics and apprentices. We continue to have a need for new operators, mechanics and apprentices in 2024 and are maintaining our efforts to fill these positions. These new recruits will replace current frontline employees as they move to other positions, retire, or leave the organization, ensuring we can continue to deliver reliable service.

We understand the profound impact that workforce adjustments have on the affected employees and their families, as well as our entire department. We are working closely with Labour Relations and Human Resources to ensure that we are respecting the rights and options in the relevant Collective Agreements. Affected individuals are being offered support and options to find alternate placement through their collective agreement provisions or employment terms and conditions as applicable. The OC Transpo team is offering support to all our staff through our Peer Support Network and the Employee Assistance Program.

Should you have any questions, please contact me via email or at ext. xxxxx.

Original signed by

Renée Amilcar

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