GREATER LANDOVER, Md. — Union members employed by public transportation company Transdev who help run MetroAccess will go on strike Monday, Aug.1 for better pay and schedules at the Hubbard Road MetroAccess facility.
MetroAccess is a door-to-door, paratransit service for people who cannot use the bus or Metrorail due to a disability.
Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 - which includes more than 200 paratransit drivers, utility, dispatchers, maintenance workers and road supervisors at the facility - announced the plan to strike Sunday. The union said that 96% of members voted in favor of authorizing the strike weeks ago and that it will last, "however long it takes to win a fair contract that puts our members on a pathway to the middle class."
"Over the last month, Transdev has only doubled down on its bad faith bargaining and unfair labor practices that make a fair contract impossible," the union said in a statement.
"Despite Transdev already paying $20/hour as starting wages in Baltimore, they refuse to do the same for our members serving passengers around the nation’s capital . . . Hubbard Road Garage has been 100+ workers short for over a year and a half, forcing all drivers to work schedules of at least 48 hours per week. This is a company that is categorically uninterested in doing what is right for transit workers or riders. Transdev’s only interest is to skim public money into their pockets by underpaying their workers."
WUSA9 reached out to WMATA for a statement, and they confirmed that they are aware of possible MetroAccess labor disruptions and that they'll continue to monitor the situation. The agency said that plans will be in place to limit the inconvenience to MetroAccess customers, however, they did not specify what those plans might look like.
"Ultimately, WMATA should reconsider its relationship with private contractors for essential public services," the union concluded in their Sunday statement. " . . . We know that MetroAccess privatization has been a failed experiment that leaves transit workers and riders behind."