Rostering vs. cafeteria style schedules

Scheduling is a large stumbling block in the contract dispute at Metro Transit. Workers want to keep the system they have now, but the city wants to switch to something it says will save a lot of money.

How it works now:

Transit workers pick their schedules "cafeteria style." This means they pick their shifts a day at a time, and those shifts add up to a week's worth.

For example, a worker can pick early-morning shifts for Monday and Tuesday, a later shift Wednesday, but go back to mornings for Thursday and Friday.

If they do eight-hour days, they have a five-day workweek. If they do 10-hour shifts then they work four days.

The order of picking is based on seniority, so the workers with the most years on the job get first choice. The schedule is set for three months.

Ken Wilson, president of Local 508 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, says the ability to choose shifts allows employees to balance their work and home commitments.

"Over 80 per cent of my people are divorced. The flexibility in picking our work is what keeps people sometimes together, it's what allows a single parent to be involved in a child's life," Wilson said.

A worker with 12 years of experience, for example, could get weekends off and be home by 4:30 p.m. on weekdays.

Schedules are designed to serve rush hour in the morning and again at night.

Workers whose shifts end earlier in the day can pick up extra hours after their shift is over, if no one on the spare board takes it. They get paid overtime for this.

There are about 170 people on the spare board. These employees work six days a week and are guaranteed 40 hours a week, but they're assigned day-to-day. The union says they choose to be there because of the variety.

Some shifts have overtime built in, partly because of the route. Drivers can't be relieved in the middle of nowhere so they have to drive to a central spot, such as the garages in Burnside Industrial Park or Ragged Lake Business Park.

Wilson says transit workers in Halifax have picked their schedules cafeteria style for 104 years.

What Metro Transit wants:

Metro Transit says the current system is too unpredictable and creates scheduling holes, which drive up overtime costs.

It wants to block-book work schedules a week at a time instead of day-to-day. The picking order would still be based on seniority and the proposed week-long blocks to be selected by transit operators would also be in effect for three months until the next shift pick period.

Metro Transit says it has difficulty covering 80 to 100 shifts a week, and switching to a rostering system would cut that down to five.

"What that allows us to do is reduce a lot of the open work that we're not able to cover because of the erratic way that the cafeteria picking is done," said Metro Transit director Eddie Robar.

Metro Transit says the scheduling process would take about two days to complete with the system they're proposing, while it currently takes 24 days.

The union says this would mean less flexibility for workers.