STM reverses course on refuelling of its buses
The city’s transit agency has reversed course on a controversial new cost-cutting procedure following reports by the Montreal Gazette that hundreds of buses were being towed because they ran out of fuel. The Montreal Gazette obtained two emails sent on Nov. 20 to supervisors of the Société de transport de Montréal’s bus maintenance centres. The first one, sent by Luc Mercier — the director of the STM maintenance centres — informed his staff that the agency would have to go back to the old method of fuelling buses at the end of the day. The email stated that the STM’s executive director of buses, Renée Amilcar, was being called to the office of Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante to offer explanations. “The pressure has been enormous in the last two weeks on the subject of ‘out of fuel’; Renée has to again defend the issue to the mayor’s office on Thursday,” the email read, punctuated with a sad face emoji. “We are in the process of losing all our credibility on this issue. If the (new method) turns out to be a failure, too bad, but at least we will stop the hemorrhage.” In a subsequent email, sent later in the day, Mercier added: “At the risk of repeating myself: all the hybrids have to be fuelled up starting now. It’s an action that is part of an action plan that Renée has to present to the authorities this week.” Reached last week, STM spokesperson Isabelle Tremblay denied the agency had changed any of its procedures regarding the fuelling of buses. And on Wednesday, STM spokesperson Philippe Déry said the agency was not asked to come up with an action plan for its buses. The Montreal Gazette reported last month that the STM reduced the number of people who clean, fuel up and do checks of the buses at the end of each day. Under the old procedure, a team would clean, check the oil and ensure all the buses were fuelled up every second day. The new procedure reduced that to a single employee who would fuel up buses on an as-needed basis by keeping track of how many kilometres they travelled. Because the STM’s buses don’t have fuel gauges on their dashboards, it is difficult to tell exactly how much fuel is in the tanks. Amilcar told the Montreal Gazette in November the agency cut back on staff for refuelling buses, which has saved $1 million annually in overtime rates on the STM’s $1.46 billion budget. While Amilcar said it was rare for buses to run out of fuel, the STM confirmed to the Montreal Gazette that in a three-month period, buses were running out of fuel on average 1.3 times per day. STM director general Luc Tremblay contradicted Amilcar in an interview with Mario Dumont on the French-language TVA network, suggesting that unionized employees unhappy with the new work procedure were not filling up buses with enough fuel to make it through the day. In reaction to that statement, about 500 unionized maintenance employees walked off the job, an action that was later ruled illegal by Quebec’s workplace tribunal. In his decision, Judge Guy Blanchet said Tremblay’s statements in the interview were a provocation. Both Tremblay and maintenance union president Gleason Frenette declined interviews on this subject this week, saying they were in negotiations for a new collective agreement. However, a non-unionized maintenance employee speaking on condition of anonymity said there has been a renewed push at the STM’s bus maintenance centres to ensure the buses are fuelled every day, even if it means neglecting such tasks as cleaning or checking oil levels. The source explained it requires many hours to fuel buses because the STM’s maintenance centres don’t have enough gas bays, with some having only two. Even with all the buses fully fuelled, the STM’s aging fleet is breaking down at an unprecedented rate, according to statistics obtained through an access-to-information request. The statistics showed Montreal’s buses break down twice as often as those in Laval and twice and three times as frequently as in Toronto and Manhattan. The situation has worsened in the last two weeks, as the STM has not been able to get enough buses out in the morning to meet its posted schedules, falling short by up to 10 per cent. The STM says there is a backlog of maintenance that has piled up because of pressure tactics by the union, while union president Frenette has said the only job action that would have affected maintenance was a six-day overtime strike back in May. The STM has said it needs more maintenance workers on nights and weekends when fewer buses are on the road and available for repair. The overtime issue is one of the main sticking points in the current negotiations.