Veoila Transportation, the French company that manages Escambia County Area Transit, has labor issues in other parts of North America.
The Phoenix New Times reported last week that union leaders there were trying to negotiate a contract for bus drivers in Phoenix and Tempe but the workers weren’t making any progress with Veolia Transportation.
A common tactic for Veolia appears to be to publicly declare it wants to negotiate, but privately stall. Here is a quote from the PNT article:
While executives with Veolia Transportation keep publicly saying the want to negotiate, union leaders say that corporate representatives are uninterested in reaching any common ground.
“We sat down at the table with Veolia Tempe in hopes of negotiating a contract for the Veolia Tempe operators, within 10 minutes of sitting down at the table Veolia passed us a best and final offer to take back to Tempe operators,” says Bob Bean, the union vice president.
Union officials have described similar “negotiations” with Veolia here.
On Oct. 4, the Amalgamated Transit Union in Tempe will decide if they want to walk off the job, and they could do it together with Phoenix drivers.
In February, a bus drivers strike was averted in the Toronto area.
Here is what the local union president said about Veolia:
“This is consistent with Veolia’s anti-union behaviour around the world. They come into a country and suck up as much in tax subsidies as they can get away with. And the less they pay the local work force, the more profit they can send back to France. Currently, York Region has the highest transit fares in the GTA at $3.25. On top of that fare, York Region subsidizes every ride by about an additional four dollars. Where is all that tax money going? Certainly not to the workers.
“These Veolia workers are the lowest-paid in the GTA, by far. Their wages are as much as 30 per cent less than those paid to transit workers in neighbouring Brampton, Mississauga and Durham. They are also lower than Veolia employees who drive the Viva express buses. They work longer shifts than any other group of transit workers, some over 14 hours a day.”
Sounds a lot like the working conditions in Escambia County. Taxpayers are subsidizing the French company, workers are paid less than their peers in the state and repeated grievances have been filed over working conditions.