‘There Are Hundreds Of Bad Axles Lying Around In A Corner’

Those are the words of Jacques Racine, an OC Transpo employee and ATU 279 executive.

He has written an open letter to Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and Ottawa City Council concerning the unfortunate situation at the worker level at OC Transpo. The Bulldog has obtained a copy of the letter and it is below.

The following has been edited for style and length:

Hello Mayor Mark Sutcliffe

My name is Jacques Racine, the assistant business agent for maintenance and equipment for ATU 279.

I represent more than 585 garage staff at OC Transpo, 60 staff at Alstom and 40 staff at Royal Canadian Mint. I have been with OC for 15 years … two years as a garage attendant and 13 years as a general repairman. Over the last seven years I have been active in the union. I started as a shop steward, then moved into a part-time executive position as a grievance officer for ATU 279 and at present as full-time executive board member as ABA for equipment and maintenance. …

I wanted to give you some background information on myself so that you can understand what it is I do. The last couple years at OC Transpo have been difficult time for everyone due to the train not working properly, Covid and the economic uncertainty of increased interest and inflation.

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Meanwhile, the union has been advised that there will be layoffs within OC Transpo and that 27 of the most junior garage attendants will be affected. These layoffs are partially due to the $44.3-million deficit that OC has accumulated for the year of 2023 and could continue into 2024 says Renee Amilcar, the general manager of OC Transpo. Over the last four to five years management has doubled its team to help steer this sinking ship in a different direction.

Ridership is not back to where it was pre-Covid, the train continually breaks down or has faults that need to take the system offline, Service to the public is always being impacted and many are left at bus stations or shelters without transportation …

The train is a complete mess, Alstom has not been able to fix any of the issues. The train has been unreliable from Day 1. Alstom is a private enterprise and has been trying very hard to cut costs and departments to provide a reliable service. Please read that sentence again, as it makes absolutely no sense. Cutting costs, cutting corners to help make a profit, and they wonder why the system is unreliable. The bearings have been faulty and still have not been fixed.

How many engineers, consultants have been brought on board to help with this train and little to date has been improved. There are hundreds of bad axles lying around in a corner at the 805 Belfast Road compound, as Alstom has no idea on why the axles and bearings are not working properly. Alstom is blaming Rideau Transit Group and RTG is blaming Alstom. The City of Ottawa keeps pumping hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers money into this unreliable system. The city will just keep throwing money at it and hopes it works one day. The city management team overseeing this broken train is still at the helm and still making decisions. There needs to be a organizational change.

Meanwhile, the public is not receiving buses on time or at all and most days 50-100 runs are cut. Transpo has been unable to hire fully licensed mechanics, electricians, plumbers, body techs and HVAC mechanics in the last couple years due to low wages and shift premiums plus difficult shifts … I have been with OC for 15 years, when I started the shift premium was 60 cents. In 2016 it was increased to 65 cents through negotiations, and has remand the same since. It is 2023 but the shift premium remains 65 cents. How is anyone going to be enticed to want to work at OC with a 65-cent shift premium knowing they will have to be on those shifts for up to 10 years before getting days. We have requested many times that OC management increase the wages and shift premiums but to no avail. They wounder why no licensed trades want to work for OC Transpo.

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Our buses depend on garage attendants whose jobs are in jeopardy to keep them clean, fueled, and help make them ready for service. The buses that the public uses are treated like garbage cans and toilets. The garage attendants remove urine, feces, needles, garbage, and repair vandalism.

They are currently still hiring bus operators but, without these garage staff, there will be shortages of buses for these operators to drive, then these bus operators will be sitting around getting paid to be on stand-by.

The media and high levels of government said transit workers during the Covid pandemic were heroes, but yet these hero’s did not get any extra money. Instead they are brought to monthly meetings to talk about their attendance going back to 2020 through the pandemic stating that their attendance was awful from 2020 to 2022. There was a global pandemic with many staff getting sick from Covid and now are being put through the ringer because they had high attendance issues …

Please if you have any questions or comments or concerns, don’t hesitate to reach me either by email and or phone. Thank you, Mayor Sutcliffe, for your time.

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