“Unions have long supported Andrea Horwath for her opposition to privatization... We fully expect her to uphold this principled stance–and protect public services and the good union jobs that sustain them.”-OFL President Laura Walton
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#KeepTransitPublic

In 2022, Andrea Horwath, Craig Cassar and Esther Pauls committed to keeping LRT Operations with HSR on ATU Local 107's Election Survey.
Today they all broke that commitment and trust with ATU and organized labour. Their votes made the difference in contracting out ATU jobs.

Please join us May 1st at 4pm! We stand with ATU Local 107 and keeptransitpublic !

Disappointing decision made today by city council to give over 150 union jobs to private control.

It appears that the HDLC adopted boycott of a private operator for Hamilton LRT will be in effect for a decade. Councillors and the Mayor contracted out ATU Local 107 jobs to an unknown operator. Shameful display of wayward trusteeship over tax dollars!

#HSRnotLRT keeptransitpublic

Taxpayers in #HamOnt will be paying the operator of the LRT.

The City of Hamilton has the Hamilton Street Railway that has operated busses and light rail in the city for over 125 years and who the public wants to operate LRT.

Today, Hamilton Council decided to pay an unknown corporation to do it.

Environment Hamilton 'the municipality assesses all aspects of operational activities from the third party at the 10-year mark' twitter.com/JoeyColeman/st…

FINAL VOTE
PASSES 9-6
City's preference for LRT operation: Private operation for the first 10 years, with City of Hamilton (HSR) to take over operations in Year 10. #HamOnt #yhmcc
(Must be ratified on Apr 24 at Council)

John-Paul Danko keeptransitpublic Clr Tammy Hwang is differentiating between the Hamilton LRT and Waterloo LRT by saying Hamilton's LRT is owned by Metrolinx whereas Waterloo's LRT is owned by The City of Waterloo. This is a great point...

John-Paul Danko keeptransitpublic Tammy Hwang Clr Alex Wilson asked Michael Murray (former Waterloo CAO) if he knew what the profit margin of the Waterloo LRT was. Mr. Murray did not know.

Privatization in a nutshell folks. Let's blindly trust that the folks trying to maximize profit will allocate resources effectively.

YES Councillor Hwang, if we go with Option 2 we are giving up all control over LRT. Option 4 we will have operations in our control.

...if the costs to operate are slightly higher under the public model, that's because a public operator is more willing to pay for improving service instead of cutting corners to enhance profit.

...if the company negotiates a contract with an exit clause, the charges the city pays will reflect that (i.e. they will go up).

Also, under public ops we know costs the city pays for the project will at least go towards improving it. Not the case for private...

Now City Staff are talking about a plan that would allow the city of Hamilton to take full control of operations after 10 years.

As McMaster Professor Stephen McBride said, the private company will simply factor in risks to the costs of the contract...

Why not at least have a preference to avoid this if we can? #HamOnt

City of #HamOnt 's only established responsibilities are: pay for operations, set fares, fare enforcement. Worst case scenario:

- We're locked in on paying whoever Metrolinx chooses
- Fare deliberation could be impacted by operation cost
- Enforcement is pitched as necessary