Lethbridge Transit users may have noticed several service disruptions this week.
For example, the 2 cityLINK Blue line had 10 cancelled buses out of a 42 scheduled buses yesterday. That’s basically 1 in 4.
And that wasn’t the only route. Lethbridge Transit announced on their website and their mobile app that 3 other routes would receive service disruptions.
- 2 cityLINK Blue: service interruptions (07:00–16:13 & 17:53–24:01)
- 62 College: no service (07:10–13:35)
- 3 cityLINK Green: service interruptions (11:39–15:48)
- 4 cityLINK Orange: service interruptions (15:08–16:04)
What Lethbridge Transit failed to mention is the reason why they decided not to run buses to cover the dozens of cancelled runs.
You see, bus drivers in Lethbridge are currently on a work to rule action. Work to rule is a way for workers to withhold labour without going on a full-on strike. The workers refused to take on work not found in their contract.
In this case, that work happens to be driving buses.
What Lethbridge residents might not realize is that Lethbridge Transit has lost dozens of workers since their previous contract. Granted, some of those were school bus drivers (Lethbridge Transit managed school buses until the city council ordered that the contract be cancelled and the school district was forced to contract it out to a private company: Southland Transportation), but the fact still remains is that they have fewer drivers than they used to have.
As a result, the only way they can cover the routes with fewer drivers is if some of those drivers work overtime.
But the drivers aren’t contractually obligated to take overtime; it’s something they volunteer for. And right now, only 3 drivers have volunteered, according to one source.
The fact that dozens have been cancelled as a result of this work stoppage tells you how much Lethbridge Transit relied on their workers taking on overtime hours, including coming in on their scheduled day off.
But that still leave us with why are these workers even taking work to rule action in the first place? Well, I reached out to Travis Oberg, president of Local 987 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents these workers.
Oberg told me in a phone interview that Lethbridge Transit hasn’t been meeting some of their contractual obligations to the workers.
According to Oberg, the workers and Lethbridge Transit settled on a new contract last October (even though this contract has not been made available to Mediation Services yet). He also said that during negotiations, the two parties drafted and signed a memorandum of understanding that included 15% recovery in the scheduling of routes.
The recovery time would give workers a chance to stretch, go to the washroom, and take a quick mental health reset. This recovery is important given that stress and physical injury have been on the rise over the last three years.
In August 2021, Lethbridge Transit, after receiving approval from the Lethbridge City Council, redesigned all the transit routes and renamed it cityLINK. It replaced a comprehensive network of bus routes with a few main routes and some connecting feeder routes.
Unfortunately, the routes were poorly designed, leaving several neighbourhoods with no scheduled bus services and routes that were too long for bus drivers to meet stop times while driving safely, picking up and dropping off passengers, and finding time to rest.
Oberg said that this has resulted in an increase in sick leave from 13% prior to the cityLINK implementation to 17–18% in 2023. In fact, he said sick leave at Lethbridge Transit is higher than at any other department within the City of Lethbridge, driven primarily by burnout and physical injury.
Despite the MOU, Lethbridge Transit management has refused to move forward on 15% recovery, according to Oberg. The union had given them until this past June to implement it. When that didn’t happen, they filed a grievance, and it now is awaiting arbitration.
However, the workers are tired of waiting and they’re tired of being ignored, so they launched their work-to-rule action, without prior approval of the union. That being said, Oberg assured me that the union supports their initiative.
In addition, the workers want to safeguard their voluntary overtime, which Lethbridge Transit management wants to make mandatory and built into the runs. As well, the workers want shift signups to return to being based on seniority, where it used to be.
Oberg told me that 57 of 62 transit operators his local represents have signed documents saying they support seniority-based signup and 15% recovery.
He also indicated that all operators (except 3 to 5) are participating in the work-to-rule action. And that can have significant effects on the efficiency of the local transit system.
The ball is in Lethbridge Transit’s courts.
Will they redesign a long-term system that respects worker health, as well as the need for passengers to get where they need to go in a reasonable timeframe?
Because band-aid solutions, such as cityLINK, that attempt to provide transit service over a larger geographical footprint but with fewer drivers certainly don’t seem to be doing it.
8 replies on “Lethbridge bus drivers launch work action”
Very interesting since ridership is down, is the Bus service really needed?
Why do you think ridership is down?
I have been annoyed by the lack of service this week but now that I know the reason behind it, I am sympathetic to the drivers and I will make do with the inconvenience.
Since the start of the school year, the route I usually take (Route 2) has been running far behind (up to 15 min) and has been very full of people (a good problem to have). I can’t imagine how the drivers would never have time for a washroom break. I overheard a supervisor tell a driver that if the bus was full or if they were too far behind, they were to turn on the Out of Service light and drive by the stop without picking up passengers. It’s a rough go for sure.
The #2 had been the worst performing route since switching to cityLINK. That’s also my main route.
I bus all over town for work, including using the on demand service. If anyone at 311 is keeping track I probably have a record for complaints about transit since this fiasco began.
The new system is heavily dependant on closely timed transfers, often leaving people stranded or waiting outside (often in inclement weather, or in the dark) for long stretches of time.
Sometimes you can’t even book the on demand – if too many people are requesting at once the server can’t handle it and produces an error and tells you to try again in 5 minutes. Sure, you can call 311 and book it through them, but then you have no way of knowing when it will arrive.
Once they cancelled it but hadn’t sent out alerts it had been cancelled that morning so I was stranded halfway to work.
In addition, you cannot take children in a stroller on the on demand, they must be in a booster or car seat. Some of the vehicles have a built in booster seat but according to transit (I called and asked) there is no way to find out beforehand or guarantee it’s presence.
Thanks for the added context, Kirsten!
It would be nice if the city would hire a bus company that actually pays it’s worker to actually have them work.
It would be worse if it was a private company. They would have the added cost of profit to consider in planning routes, buses, and workers.