Press Release: MetroAccess Workers at Transdev’s Hubbard Road Garage Required to Work Mandatory Overtime
(Greater Landover, Maryland) February 7th, 2022 – ATU Local 689 members working for Transdev at the Hubbard Road MetroAccess facility have been forced to work long schedules with built-in mandatory overtime for over half a year. Workers are forced to choose from schedules with up to 58 hours of work each week. First instituted by Transdev and sold to their workers as a temporary measure to address their short-staffing, it is now clear that Transdev has no real strategy to address their worker recruitment and retention issues. Local 689 members complain about low pay, mismanagement, mistreatment, and poor working conditions.
“The so-called ‘Transit Worker Shortage’ is really a shortage of employers willing to pay their workers wages and benefits that respect their value to the company.” said Raymond Jackson, President and Business Agent for ATU Local 689. “The shortage has been most noticeable at low-wage employers like Transdev and others in the paratransit industry. These companies relied on underpaying their workers in order to skim profits off of an essential public service. But this pandemic has made many workers rethink their time at these companies. Transdev could fix its recruitment and retention issues tomorrow if they would be willing to put their money where their mouth is.”
ATU Local 689 repeatedly approached Transdev with proposals for retention bonuses to help them keep their existing employees. Transdev delayed and then claimed they miscalculated their own past proposals and couldn’t afford to implement those either. Around the holidays, they unilaterally implemented a one-time bonus payment to thank certain, but not all, employees for their hard work. Thanks to the incompetence of their management staff, they failed to pay some workers that qualified and paid out a bonus to a worker that didn’t qualify under their rigid system and had the audacity to ask for their money back. Instead of further investing in their workforce, Transdev has tried to close the gap with expensive transit subcontractors that fly in workers and pay for their hotels to help meet the requirements of their service contract with WMATA.
“Right at the moment when they’re most desperate for more help, they continue to make decisions that drive their workers away.” said Gary Rouse, MetroAccess Driver for Transdev. “I’ve never seen a company that has its head in the sand more than Transdev. We don’t need employee appreciation gift cards and raffles! We need better pay and benefits to provide for our families.”
Transdev is most well known among transit contractors in this region for being the company that provoked the 85 day long strike at the WMATA Cinder Bed Road Bus Facility and the strike at Fairfax Connector. Since then they lost their Cinder Bed Road contract and those workers were brought back in-house to become WMATA employees. Local 689 believes that privatization of public services like transit inevitably leads to lower quality service for the riding public and hardship for the transit workforce. WMATA needs to do what’s right and bring MetroAccess work in house and provide a pathway for MetroAccess workers to become direct WMATA employees.
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Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 is comprised of more than 15,000 members and retirees performing occupations within the many skilled transportation crafts for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), MetroAccess, DASH, and the DC Circulator and Streetcar among others. A member of the Amalgamated Transit Union (AFL-CIO/CLC), the largest labor organization representing transit workers in the United States and Canada, Local 689 was established on January 19, 1916. For more information please visit our website at atulocal689.org.
