Striking workers at the Bombardier rail transit plant in Thunder Bay picketed the Toronto head offices of their main customers Thursday to force the company to back down on demands for pension plan changes that sparked the walkout a month ago.

The members of the Unifor union wrapped up three days of picketing and distributing leaflets in Toronto with protests at the Toronto Transit Commission and the GO Transit regional commuter rail operator. The two agencies are the main customers of the Thunder Bay plant, which was formerly owned by an Ontario government Crown corporation before it was sold to Montreal-based Bombardier in 1991.

The union wants to raise awareness of the strike and put pressure on the TTC to reject new vehicles assembled at the plant by replacement workers. The 900 striking workers build the Toronto Rocket subway cars, bi-level coaches for GO Transit, as well as the new TTC streetcars scheduled to be delivered to the transit operator for service by the end of this month.

The members of Unifor Local 1075 walked off the job July 14 in a dispute over wages and company attempts to set up a two-tiered pension system to cut pension plan costs. Their old contract expired May 31.

The factory is a key industrial employer in the northwestern Ontario city, which has been hit in recent years with restructuring in the forestry sector.

"We think it's important for Toronto transit riders and the general public in Ontario to know just where their public dollars are going," said Dominic Pasqualino, president of Unifor Local 1075.

The dispute over pensions is a trend occurring in many industrial sectors – from rail and steel to auto assembly and mining – as companies try to replace expensive defined benefit pension plans with cheaper defined contribution systems. Pension plan affordability is particularly acute in the steel industry, where major Ontario-based steel producers U.S. Steel Canada and ArcelorMittal Canada face big pension liabilities and are demanding workers make greater contributions or take lower benefits to ensure the plans are sustainable.

In many of these disputes, the rhetoric has intensified and the unions point out that executives get big pension payouts and profitable companies nickel-and-dime workers on their pensions.

"Bombardier is doing really well financially, with $32 billion in orders on the books and a leg up from the 'buy Ontario' policy that our union fought for," Pasqualino said. "For them to turn around and try to gut pensions and retiree benefits for the next generation of workers is just plain insulting."

Bombardier wants to shift all employees hired after the strike onto a defined contribution pension plan. Current employees have a defined benefits plan – where Bombardier contributes 100 per cent of the premiums – and which has grown in cost by 25 per cent in the past three years. A company official says Bombardier already has an established defined contribution plan in place at its other North American rail operations – Thunder Bay is the remaining holdout.

"Bombardier’s defined contribution plan is actually outperforming the defined benefits plan," Marc-André Lefebvre, a spokesperson for Bombardier Transportation, told QP Briefing this week.

Ron Frost, union chair at the Thunder Bay plant, suggested the vehicles being assembled at the northern Ontario plant may not be up to standards with replacement employees. The plant has about 400 white-collar workers and many are doing plant-floor work since the strike began.

"We know these vehicles better than anyone – every bolt and seam – and we work hard to make sure they're perfect when they leave the lot," Frost said. "I'm really concerned that Bombardier is using replacement workers who aren't as familiar with the work."

Earlier this week, the striking workers picketed TTC subway stations and Bombardier's aircraft plant in Toronto's north-end community of Downsview.

Unifor is Canada's biggest union in the private sector, with more than 300,000 members in a range of industries. It was founded nearly a year ago with the merger of the Canadian Auto Workers and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers unions.

Striking Bombardier workers picket TTC, GO Transit

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