The service cuts announced yesterday by the TTC are irresponsible, unacceptable and an affront to both transit workers and transit riders.
The Amalgamated Transit Union has been advocating since the beginning of the pandemic, in co-operation with our locals to procure, promote and enable vaccinations for all transit workers. Instead of working with us on this, the TTC has resorted to policies that hurt not only workers but the public as well.
Cutting necessary TTC services and trying to pit the public against employees is disingenuous and misleading. Exploiting the cover of a deadly pandemic to make cuts, while villainizing frontline workers is unconscionable. Our members have been working tirelessly to make sure that residents and essential workers are able to get to where they need to go. They deserve gratitude from the public and their employer.
If the TTC truly cared about protecting the health and safety of transit riders and maintaining “reliable and predictable services” they would do what other municipalities have done like Brampton, Mississauga and Hamilton who have all navigated mandatory vaccination mandates without resorting to service cuts.
The TTC should instead work with ATU Canada, along with numerous public interest groups to advocate for more operational funding from different levels of government. With sustainable and much needed funding, they would not be in the mess they are in. Instead of working with us to find a solution like others have, they are choosing service cuts.
We have heard from our members and transit advocates that busses are crowded, mask mandates are seldom enforced and that they feel less safe on transit than they did at the beginning of the pandemic.
To fight this virus, we need to expand and strengthen transit services not cut them.
This mismanagement cannot continue. We are more confident than ever that CEO Rick Leary must tender his resignation. The TTC needs to regroup and stop blaming hard-working transit operators for creating their own mismanagement.
John Di Nino, President
ATU Canada
For Media Inquiries:
Sam Hersh
514-867-0799
