The Société de transport de Montréal (STM) announced Thursday the abolition of 230 positions as well as a reduction in the budget for goods and services in order to make up for a shortfall of $36 million. The organization, however, assures that this slimming treatment will not have an impact on the services in its network.
In its last budget, the STM was able to generate savings of $50 million by notably optimizing services. But it was still struggling with a shortfall of 46 million for 2024. This is why last November, it announced its intention to eliminate 255 positions, or around 5% of its workforce, in order to generate savings.
The abolition of 230 positions announced Thursday, which will reduce the payroll by 25 million, will not affect user services, assures the STM. “For us, the priority was to keep our bus and metro mileage and our adopted number of transport trips. It was important,” underlined the general director of the STM, Marie-Claude Léonard, during a press scrum. “It will even result in a little more mileage for buses in 2024, a little more for the metro and we will honor requests for paratransit trips. »
The STM will also reduce the budget for goods and services by $9 million and will make a $2 million adjustment to its special operating budget for certain projects. For 2024, the cuts therefore reach 86 million, which are added to the budget reductions of 79 million made in 2022 and 2023.
Unfilled vacancies
Mme Léonard indicated that all employees affected by the cuts had been met. Around twenty manager positions among the 230 positions cut. In fact, said Mme Léonard, 70% of the positions abolished were already vacant, which means that around sixty employees lost their positions. According to her, this reduction in staff will force the STM to “do things differently”. “There will be consequences […] in terms of quality, but it will be short-lived,” she said.
“When we make these decisions, we don’t do it with joy of heart. But we want to be there for the customer,” she added, recognizing that the STM’s financial situation was becoming more and more complex.
Because even if the budget cuts made in recent years are recurrent, Marie-Claude Léonard said she fears for the service offering in the coming years, especially since the STM is committed to generating spending reductions totaling 100 million in the next five years. “There is a limit to what a transport company can do in reducing its expenses. It is wrong to think that we will be able to optimize ourselves to reduce the metropolitan deficit which is around 500 million,” she said.
Remember that last October, the mayors of the Metropolitan Community of Montreal (CMM), including Valérie Plante, from Montreal, Stéphane Boyer, from Laval, and Catherine Fournier, from Longueuil, launched an appeal to the Minister of Transport and of Sustainable Mobility, Geneviève Guilbault, so that Quebec absorbs a larger share of the deficits of transport companies. At the time, there was talk of closing the metro at 11 p.m. as a cost-saving measure. The minister responded that the Quebec government did not intend to absorb 75% of the deficits of transport companies, as requested by municipal officials, stressing that transport companies should tighten their spending before considering service reductions.
Quebec finally agreed to absorb 70% of the deficit of transport companies for 2024, but had imposed performance audits on the 10 transport companies as well as on the Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority (ARTM).