What seems to be the issue, Dan?
It is compensation related? Has there been a wave of retirements? (unexpected?); is there any workplace/working condition related issue driving dissatisfaction? Are more new hires not working out?
Just curious if you have any insights.
Typically I would have thought of these jobs as decent paying for someone w/o a University education.
It seems to be a whole host of issues that have managed to come together. But part of the problem for me in analyzing it, as frequently happens, is separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to the rumours.
For instance, one rumour I've heard is that they lost a lot of staff and crews due to the vaccine mandates. And yet, I've been told by people in head office that the actual number of employees (and contractors) lost due to non-acceptance of vaccines is something like 9.
One thing is that is certain is that Alstom has continued the trend of Bombardier by paying less than what VIA and the freight railways pay. Yes, there are very serious lifestyle advantages to working for GO over the other railways (always home every night, more consistent schedule, more room for upwards growth), but for those that are just looking for that filthy, filthy lucre the freight railways will always win.
Early on in the lockdown, Alstom was doing a pretty good job of managing to keep crews retained. Rather than laying people off, they were rotating them in and out of service (3 weeks on, 1 week off) to try and spread the pain. And from what I had heard, it was working quite well, and they lost very few people. But then they got lazy, and stopped the rotations about a year and a half ago. At that point, the writing was on the wall - senior guys pushed out more junior guys into crappier work or lower positions, the most junior were laid off and a lot of them went looking for other work to make ends meet.
It's not that Alstom hasn't been trying - they've hired about a dozen classes worth of CSAs so far this calendar year. But now the problem is that with the progression of the positions, the first of those CSAs won't be ready to move up to the head end for a full year after their starting dates.
Dan