Thunder Bay Bombardier union waits on fallout from streetcar delivery changes

Union officials at the Bombardier plant in Thunder Bay, Ont., say they're waiting to hear from the company about how a recently revised delivery schedule of streetcars for the Toronto Transit Commission will impact the workforce.

On Monday, the company announced "decisive action" to address the delivery of the new low-floor mass transit vehicles to the TTC, which has seen numerous targets missed.

• Bombardier will only deliver 16 new streetcars to TTC this year
• TTC boss frustrated by yet another streetcar delivery delay
• Thunder Bay Bombardier job losses may be around 300: spokesperson

Part of the announcement was the scaling back of how many vehicles would be delivered this year down to 16, which has Unifor local president Dominic Pasqualino a little concerned about potential layoffs.

"Certainly, that's always a possibility," he said. "If you're scheduling to ship [for example] 20 cars, you need a certain amount of manpower for that. If you're going to be shipping 10 cars, you're going to need a different rate on the line and maybe you don't need as many people."

Pasqualino added he's waiting to hear back from company officials and noted nothing has been announced yet. He said some workers have been transferred from another project at the plant, which is building subway cars for the TTC, to the streetcar line.

Parts coming from Quebec facility

Paqualino pointed to one piece of good news for the union: the company has pledged to provide components of the streetcars, such as underframes and cabs, from a facility in La Pocatière, Que.

The Thunder Bay plant has been receiving those and other parts from a plant in Mexico, Pasqualino said, which have often have been of poor quality or delivered late.

"La Pocatière has produced our side walls and our roofs for our rocket [subway] cars," Pasqualino said of the parts delivered to Thunder Bay for another contract Bombardier has with the TTC.

"We've never had a quality issue, and they've always been on time. If we can get our parts on time, we've always said that our plant can deliver to whatever schedule they can come up with."

Pasqualino said he doesn't know if Thunder Bay will continue to get other parts from Bombardier's operations in Mexico, but he noted the components that will now come from Quebec are the underframes and cabs. Those components from Mexico have been "really sore spots for us in the past," he added.

Setting up the new system will take time, Pasqualino noted, which likely contributed to the decision to reduce the number of streetcars to be delivered this year.

Bombardier commits to 2019 deadline

The company has expressed "manifest resolve to deliver as committed all 204 vehicles by the end of 2019."

The announcement from Bombardier comes after TTC CEO Andy Byford said last week that he had expressed his "complete frustration and dissatisfaction with Bombardier's current performance" to the company.

"I am unable to confirm a delivery schedule, but it is evident that Bombardier will not hit the four vehicles per month that we were promised as recently as last month," Byford said in a monthly report.

"Bombardier acknowledges the disappointment of the TTC with regards to delivery of this project so far, but is still committed as ever to support its customer in the full delivery of this order," the company responded Monday.