MONTREAL – A little less than 40 Société de transport de Montréal (STM) inspectors have been sent home Monday for wearing camouflage pants.
“They were sent home because they weren’t wearing their uniforms and this could compromise their safety, as well as that of commuters,” STM spokesperson Isabelle Alice Tremblay told CTV News.
She added officers from Montreal police’s Metro department have been called in to offer assistance.
This comes after the unionized inspectors started wearing colourful pants to protest the STM's plans to implement split shifts as part of their next collective agreement.
Kevin Grenier, head of the Fraternité des constables et inspecteurs de la STM, said the plan to have inspectors work 12-hour shifts with a two-hour break in the middle is damaging to their work-life balance.
"It's totally unacceptable," Grenier said, adding that the 170 inspectors will wear camouflage pants until a new schedule is agreed upon by both sides.
The decision is both a legal pressure tactic and one that was voted on by the union's members, Grenier said.
The STM says, for now, it will "tolerate" its inspectors wearing the camouflage pants, as long as it doesn't impede safety or services on the network.
"We are watching this situation closely," Tremblay said.
A request for mediation, she adds, was made last Friday.
-- with files from CTV's Basem Boshra
