STM professionals to launch overtime strike as talks stall

The Société de transport de Montréal (STM) will face an overtime strike by its professional staff over the holiday period, after members of the Union of Professional and Office Employees, Local 610 (SEPB-610), filed a strike notice with Quebec’s Administrative Labour Tribunal.

The measure, covering roughly 800 professionals, is set to run from Dec. 17 through Jan. 11.

“For our members, this is a fundamental breach of trust in management,” said Benoit Tessier, Vice-President of SEPB-610. “The employer wants to have the option to show the door to his professionals as he wishes, without justification and without limits. This is unacceptable. The overtime strike is only a first step. We will evaluate our other options in January, knowing that we have obtained a strong mandate from our members. Nothing prevents us from raising the pressure a notch, if the STM’s management remains as intractable at the beginning of 2026.”

The union had already voted strongly in favour of pressure tactics, 91 per cent supported a strike mandate during a vote held on Nov. 13. Since then, negotiations have failed to move forward. According to SEPB-610, the employer returned to the bargaining table after a two-week pause but continued to insist on removing job-security protections for permanent professional staff.

“Professionals such as engineers and architects have an ethical duty in their work to ensure the safety of the public,” stated Tessier. “They must therefore have free rein with their employer to question management decisions that would prioritize “economic” solutions that could affect public safety. To fully assume their professional autonomy and their ethical responsibility to protect the public, the professionals of a parapublic corporation such as the STM must be immunisé.es against possible undue pressure from their managers by being protected by real job security.”

Union representatives argue that the issue goes beyond working conditions. Many members belong to regulated professional orders and say that maintaining secure positions is tied directly to their ethical responsibility to ensure the safety and reliability of public transit services.

“We have been negotiating for more than a year and the employer has never been able to specify its needs or put a figure on its demands,” said Tessier. “This is the first time in our 31-year history that our union has had to strike. This is proof that this management is out of touch and refuses to work in collaboration with its employees. It persists with its ideological and unfounded demand that our members find unacceptable. We are ready to work in solution mode if the employer drops its ideological discourse and agrees to work on concrete scenarios. »

SEPB-610 represents professionals across a wide range of STM departments, including planning, engineering, architecture, law, accounting, procurement, communications, training, and real estate.

The union says its members’ expertise plays a central role in urban mobility planning and the upkeep of vital transit infrastructure.