Login / RegisterHandyDart strike leaves disabled passengers out in the cold
Since the onset of the HandyDart strike, UBC counselling psychology instructor Vaughan Marshall has been teaching three-hour classes in her rain gear.
How would you assess TransLink’s handling of the HandyDart strike?
Tim Louis
“If I had to give it a grade, I’d give it an F. When you put a contract out to tender”¦surely one of the elements”¦that you assess the vendors on is the ability to deliver the service. If you are so poor at labour relations that you are unable to deliver the service, because you cannot work with the people that deliver the service for you—the employees—surely that’s the deal breaker.”
Vaughan Marshall
“TransLink hasn’t handled the HandyDart strike. TransLink is claiming an inability to intervene in the strike and seems to overestimate MVT [Canadian Bus’s] current performance and future potential.”¦It’s unfortunate that the system was set up this way, and it speaks to the problems of privatization. That’s my response in a nutshell to that.”
Raj Chouhan
“I think TransLink, by contracting out the HandyDart services, has shown very poor leadership. These are very important services. Thousands of people, it seems, are now neglected by this private company. It doesn’t look like they handled it well. Even though they are trying to wash their hands off, TransLink still has the responsibility. They should ask MVT and the union to come back to the bargaining table.”
Jane Dyson
“I think it’s unfortunate that TransLink hasn’t been more involved with trying to encourage the two sides to get together and sort out this problem.”¦[BCCPD] is very concerned about the impact that this is having on the people with disabilities and seniors, particularly with respect to the social isolation that can occur when people are not able to get out into their communities.”
A single mother who has suffered from rheumatoid arthritis since she was a teenager, Marshall told the Georgia Straight that she regularly used HandyDart—a service set up to help people disabled to the extent that they can’t use regular transit—before its drivers began striking on October 26. She commutes from the side of the campus she lives on to the other. Now she has to travel the whole distance in her power wheelchair.
Marshall also has to get to the G. F. Strong Rehabilitation Centre on Laurel Street so she can teach vocational rehabilitation courses part-time. Things were supposed to be better for people like Marshall and the system’s estimated 30,000 users, after TransLink contracted out the 27-year-old HandyDart service to the for-profit MVT Canadian Bus Inc.
In October 2008, MVT—a subsidiary of California-based MV Transportation Inc.—was awarded a $113-million contract to run the HandyDart system in Metro Vancouver for three years. Within 10 months of MVT’s takeover of the system on January 1, however, the HandyDart operators went on strike.
“For several months, I thought, ”˜Okay, we’re in a transition period and things are going to get better,’ ” Marshall said of MVT. “Things have not gotten any better. I’m really busy, I work more than full-time, and I’m a single parent. I don’t have time. It’s so disrespectful of people’s time to keep people waiting.”
HandyDart’s Vancouver founder, Tim Louis, called it “utterly dreadful” that MVT is in a labour dispute with Local 1724 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents HandyDart workers. Assessing the impact of the work stoppage on people’s lives, the former Coalition of Progressive Electors city councillor and park board commissioner recalled the 2001 transit strike.
“As bad as that was, there were other alternatives: hitchhike or hop in a car with a friend,” Louis told the Straight. “With the thousands of people in the Greater Vancouver area that use HandyDart, people that don’t have the ability to hitchhike or to hop in a car, the alternatives are very few or none. What that means is we have got thousands of people literally homebound as a result of the labour dispute.”
Louis added in a later call that Vancouver never had a HandyDart work stoppage before MVT came into the picture.
ATU Local 1724 vice president Tim Johnston told the Straight that HandyDart workers have always supported Louis’s vision of having several nonprofit societies running the service. Now TransLink has brought about the amalgamation of the regional nonprofits into a private “one-service provider,” he noted.
MVT has proposed hourly wages of $21 “upon ratification” and $21.25 effective January 1, 2010, according to figures MVT spokesperson Zdenka Buric e-mailed to the Straight.
But Johnston said this is not retroactive, and he added that a SkyTrain worker makes $28 an hour standing on a platform checking tickets. Johnston has driven for HandyDart for 17 years and has two sisters in the same job. He said they try not to talk shop with each other in private because of how steamed they are about what’s going on in the workplace.
“Our main issues are definitely pension,” Johnston said. “They are trying to eliminate our pension. They are trying to eliminate, or reduce, our benefits.”¦There are several other issues, but they are insignificant compared to these major ones.”
Both Marshall and Louis agree with Local 1724’s position that MVT should agree to binding arbitration.
The Straight asked Buric if this was a possibility, and she replied: “Not at this time.”
TransLink spokesperson Ken Hardie told the Straight the regional transportation authority’s hands are tied.
“We have no legal right to do that,” Hardie said by phone of bringing MVT to arbitration. “They are a contractor. We don’t run their business.”¦We have no legal standing in this regard.”
Marshall said she is so furious about the strike that she wants TransLink to punt MVT and negotiate a new contract with another party.
Numbers behind the HandyDart strike
> HandyDart drivers’ current hourly wage: $20.25
> Wage MVT is offering: $21 upon ratification, $21.25 in 2010
> Wage ATU Local 1724 is demanding: $25.35
> Percentage of HandyDart employees covered under existing pension plan: 60%
> Percentage of HandyDart employees ATU wants covered under pension plan: 100%
> What MVT is offering: all employees move to self-directed RRSPs in lieu of pension plans
Sources: ATU Local 1724 vice president Tim Johnston, MVT spokesperson Zdenka Buric
YET THEY CONTINUE TO DEDUCT MONEY FROM MY PAYCHEQUE UNDER THE CATEGORY MPP.
So they have not honoured their original promise to keep employees covered by MPP. In addition, they say that the monies that they are deducting from our cheques are held in a Trust Fund until we get the pension/rrsp situation resolved. BUT THIS IS APPARENTLY A NON-INTEREST BEARING TRUST FUND. so the 60% of employees previously covered by the MPP have now 1. lost their MPP, and 2. lost out on the interest on that money. This from a company that says they treat their employees like "family".
Even more important, in my mind, is the fact that MVT, itself a contract, wants to be able to contract out itself, so even if we get everything we ask for in the contract, we still might be out of a job.
This is completely unacceptable.
Thanks to Vaughn Marshall for her show of support - she is a dynamite lady whom I admire immensely.
Please feel fre to publish my reply online or in hard comp. Thankyou.
They do not live in the community, have zero interest in the community, and are sending Canadian tax payer dollars to the USA.
The company has shown its disdain towards the clients and workers, and now there is a backlash.
MVT should be send packing back to where they came from and HandyDART should become a wholly owned subsidiary of TransLink. HandyDART should be treated the same as Coast Mountain, Skytrain and Seabus, etc.
Having driven for HandyDart since it's inception and for the Easter Seal program prior, I have seen the mean spirited manner in which, initially B.C. Transit and subsequently Translink have treated our passengers as well as employees. It seems that they will continue this course until something is done to dissuade them. The public at large need to be reminded that people who rely on HandyDart are grandparents, parents, and children of ours with the distinct possibility that we too may become a part of the ridership.
They lie. Translink and MV are holding People with Disabilities hostage. They simply don't care.
first one to the tune of "Oh Christmas tree":
Oh Handydart, Oh Handydart
How lovely are our drivers.
Oh Handydart Oh Handydart
We are Canadian Survivors
We went on strike
we had no choice
the media is now our voice
Oh Handydart Oh Handydart
We only want our jobs back
but with a fair contract.
To the tune of "We wish you a merry xmas' :
We wish you fair contract, we wish you a fair contract
we wish you a fair contract before the new year
good timing for sure, cause we just can't wait
good timing for a settlement that we'd surely take
We wish you a fair contract , we wish you a fair contract,
we wish you a fair contract before the NEW YEAR!
thank-you to all our wonderful passengers, thank-you for your patience and support, Wendy Wall
People should not be left waiting and wondering if and when someone will show up for them, they should not be denied transportation because they didn’t arrange it several days in advance, and they should not be held captive on buses because of ridiculous trip combinations that take people far, far out of their way so as to get as many passengers on a bus as possible. If any other group in society had to put up with what Handydart passengers put up with, there would be a huge outcry.
The article says I’m so furious because of the strike that I think “Translink should punt MVT and negotiate a new contract with another party.” Actually, the company’s behaviour leading up to and during the strike is just the last straw. MVT has consistently demonstrated its disregard for passengers over the past 11 months. When I have discussed problems with Translink, they have expressed faith that the company would eventually sort things out and provide a better service than has ever existed. However, there will clearly be no improvement until (or unless) MVT owns up to the problems that exist, rather than trying to manufacture a “reality” that everything is well. Right now, MVT continues to claim that they are “providing the same excellent services [we] have come to expect,” and that they are providing “on-time service.” This is frankly ludicrous
I am not a lawyer, so I don’t know whether Translink has the power to intervene in this strike, and to force the parties to reach a resolution. However, I’m pretty certain that there must be clauses in the contract between MVT and Translink that allow for discontinuation of the contract in the event of failure to meet performance expectations. How much evidence does Translink need of MVT’s inability or unwillingness to provide a decent standard of service to passengers? How long are we expected to be patient in the face of an abysmal service that limits people’s ability to live their lives?
I’m concerned that drivers have been demonized in the media because they’re out on strike. The drivers are the heroes of the operation. They work extremely hard to provide good service to passengers. They know the passengers, and see us as human beings, not as mere pixels on a display terminal, or numbers on a spreadsheet. They know that, just like them, I cannot arrive at work “whenever.” They are given impossible schedules, and they must get very tired of apologizing to people.
Salaries to Ken and his friends are obscene and unjustified to run a very simple business, transit. Transit in this city doesn’t serve transit users; transit serves Ken and his friends and they are insensitive to people who are suffering on account for their indifference!
Authorities would cry if you go against PPP, but please stop here. Unlike many other ones this one is not even a real PPP. One has betrayed his own like-minders by claiming so. It is a contract to privatize a subsidized public service. On one hand you put the public property and money into a service and subsidize it and on the other hand you take the public control off this subsidized service by privatization and then forget about your subsidy, your capital investment and most important of all, your duty to provide service to the most vulnerable people.
Yes this is the main dilemma in this mess."Privatizing a SUBSIDIZED public service". Mr. Hardie!, are you really saying that you (Translink as a public agency) has signed a contract, handing out free public property, with no provision to control the public interest? How ”¦ it is.
Two examples come to mind where my "Captaincy" has saved my clients innumerable, needless time and suffering. One trip started in Maple Ridge with a client going to Langley via White Rock. VIA WHITE ROCK???" It would have entailed a 1 hour and 30 minute trip, provided of course, that the rush hour traffic worked with me. Fortunately, my client received the service she deserved and I altered my routing to go to White Rock via Langley. My client got home in 20 minutes and I was still 'on time' to pick up my next client in White Rock. And even better yet, I now had 40 minutes of 'free' time in which I could assist other drivers and clients. It also resulted in not burning an additional 40 minutes of diesel fuel needlessly.
The other and far more troubling trip involved a wheel chair client, on a respirator. The 'schedule' called for me to pick up the client and travel 32 blocks northbound where I was to pick up a second client and then reverse my trip 41 blocks to pick up another single client southbound. Once more, I was instructed to reverse my run another 47 blocks northbound to pick up another single client. At this point I was to start dropping off my clients. Take note.....the first client on board was to be my final drop off and was scheduled to spend 1 hour and 45 minutes in his wheel chair riding over top of the bus's rear axle. The worst possible place to ride a HandyDART. Fortunately my training once again kicked in and upon consultation with our dispatcher, I made an unscheduled 'direct' trip to the clients residence. This is not a case of getting preferential treatment, but more a case of doing what's best for the most needy.
Scheduling mistakes like these NEVER..... EVER happened before MV Canadian Bus won the contract in the lower mainland.
I am ashamed of the way we drivers are forced to treat your parents, grandparents or children.
I suppose the moral of the story is...."If I as a driver, was properly screened to make sure I was suitable to carry our most valuable of citizens...why was MVT not screened by Translink in the same manner"?
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