Montreal transit agency seeks mediation with bus, metro drivers to avoid more strikes

If a deal can't be reached, they will walk out with about 2,400 maintenance workers who have gone on strike twice since June and have announced labour action for most of November.

Montreal’s public transit agency has asked the provincial government to appoint a mediator to help settle a labour dispute with bus and metro drivers, who are set to join maintenance workers and walk off the job next month.

Roughly 4,500 transit workers announced they intend to strike on Nov. 1, 15 and 16. Meanwhile, about 2,400 maintenance employees who have gone on strike twice since June have announced labour action for most of November.

“We’re going to do everything we can to avoid this strike,” Marie-Claude Léonard, the transit agency’s general director, told reporters in Montreal about the planned job action of bus and metro drivers.

“We’re convinced that the presence of a mediator will get us closer to reaching an agreement.”

However, a mediator didn’t help settle things with maintenance workers. The agency and the union representing them have been in mediation since Oct. 7, but that didn’t stop the union from announcing a third strike, this time from Halloween night until Nov. 28. The members say they will refuse to work overtime and limit bus and metro service outside rush hours, but the full details of the strike have yet to be announced.

Two earlier strikes by maintenance workers — over nine days in June and two weeks in late September and early October — disrupted travel across the network, which recorded about 1 million trips per day in 2024.

Léonard said talks are stalled because the agency is not willing to make cuts to essential services that she said are inevitable if they were to meet the maintenance union’s salary demands. “Cutting services is not an option,” she said. “Right now, the union’s demands at the table would require us to cut 10 per cent of bus service, which is unacceptable.”

Katherine Roux-Groleau, a spokesperson for the transit agency, said they contacted Quebec’s labour minister to ask for a mediator as soon as they got word the bus and metro drivers were planning to walk off the job. Their collective agreement expired in January.