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New Flyer bus enjoys 60% increase in cash flow; plans to fire 350 workers

Long time bus supplier to TransLink enjoys increased profits, so why is it firing hundreds of employees?

Executives at Winnipeg bus maker New Flyer Industries Inc. (NFI.UN-T9.840.010.10%) have not been complaining about the high Canadian dollar. Instead, the company reported a 60-per-cent jump in cash flow from operations (before adjustments) over the comparable period a year ago in its third-quarter earnings report.

New Flyer has announced plans to fire up to 350 workers. (Globe and Mail)

Revolt of the HandyDart Riders

ED. TransLink’s management incompetence is evident in it’s incapacity to negotiate a proper service agreement with the American firm MTV now running the HandyDart services.  The agreement allows MTV to reduce service reliability, increase profits however it wishes, and completely ignore customer  needs. An agreement like this should never have been signed. This is just another example of how TransLink treats ALL it’s customers and how the current government bends over backward to give business whatever they want.

By Todd Brayer, Yesterday, TheTyee.ca

Demanding end to strike that keeps them at home, 50 storm Translink’s office.

More than 50 HandyDart riders from all over the Lower Mainland flooded TransLink’s Metrotown head office yesterday to protest in support of striking drivers.

So many came that while protesters met with TransLink communications director Ken Hardie in a board room, more than 20 waited outside in the small waiting area on the 16th floor of the Metrotower II building. Office workers looked on as elevator after elevator unloaded people in wheelchairs, on walkers and on foot.

Frozen wires delay Vancouver trolley buses

Vancouver Sun

TransLink staff once again demonstrates their collective incompetence by not watching weather forecasts, causing havoc.

Commuters were late for work and school Wednesday morning as trolley bus service was delayed for several hours after power wires froze overnight.

Translink said commuters faced the long delays because the company didn’t look at Tuesday’s short-term weather forecast that stated sub-zero temperatures overnight and because the only available de-icing truck it had broke down.

Specifically, the #19 and the #10 trolley bus service experienced the most delays this morning.

Snider said the de-icing truck was “scrambled” late Tuesday night but because of a mechanical malfunction it couldn’t remove the ice from the wires.

Ottawa Council approves Light Rail

ED. Unlike Vancouver, Ottawa chose Light Rail over heavy rail SkyTrain technology for seven good reasons….

This past summer, the City of Ottawa hosted a Technology Forum that brought together manufacturers, operators and transit experts from across North America to discuss various transit systems, best practices and lessons learned, with the objective of identifying optimal rail technology solutions for Ottawa. The result of the Forum was the identification of the two rail technology options appropriate for consideration by the City of Ottawa: Light Rail Transit and a Light Metro System.

To select the appropriate transit system technology, the City decided that it must:

• Accommodate the predicted passenger volumes
• Fit into Ottawa’s urban environment
• Minimize capital, lifetime operating and maintenance costs
• Be able to respond to future land use changes within the city and the demand for travel
• Take advantage of the most current proven technologies
• Have a proven service track record
• Be suitable for Ottawa’s climate

Skytrain workers: $5 per hour

In the lead up to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver migrant workers are being similarly exploited. During the construction of the Canada Line Skytrain route, there were at least 50 workers from Costa Rica, Peru and Colombia whose pay, after long hours, worked out to be five dollars per hour.

Construction of the Canada Line was carried out by an Italian corporation named Seli Tecnologie. The primary contractor is SNC Lavalin, one of Canada’s largest arms manufacturers. In November 2007, the BC Human Rights Tribunal ruled that 30 foreign workers from Costa Rica, Colombia and Ecuador working on the Canada Line had been intimidated and coerced by Seli Tecnologie.

In December 2008 a group of migrant workers won a discrimination suit against SELI Canada, SCNP-SELI Joint Venture and SNC Lavalin Constructors (Pacific) Inc. for substandard pay and housing. The Tribunal found that “for two years the respondents’ treatment of the [workers] conveyed to them the message that they were worth less and less worthy than other employees because they were Latin American.”

Evidence included paying Latin American workers $10 less per hour for similar tasks and being crammed into motels while European workers were housed in upscale False Creek condos. The Tribunal found that “so long as they continued to work on the Canada Line project, they were unable to escape the discriminatory treatment that pervaded every aspect of their working and leisure lives.”