Thunder Bay’s Alstom plant has wrapped up the final order of commuter cars in its contract for Metrolinx.
President of Unifor Local 1075 Dominic Pasqualino says they recently completed an order of 36 BiLevel GO Transit cars.
“It was very important to the plant that we got them, because it was able to sustain it up to this point. Fortunately, we have some work for the U.S., those are similar cars, but after that we’re definitely going to be short of work,” he says.
Pasqualino says while the plant will be moving on to that order for an unnamed American state immediately, he’s more focused on what will come after that.
“It appears that Alstom is bidding on refurbishing 212 of the same type of cars,” he notes, but isn’t sure when that work could begin.
Plant General Manager Lindsay Fenton hosted an event marking the milestone on July 16th.
“For us, a very important, bittersweet milestone in our history with that customer over the last many years. It’s been 45 years of history with Metrolinx GO Transit,” Fenton explains.
Fenton confirms the plant is set to build 60 Light Rail Vehicles for the Toronto Transit Commission, starting in 2022.
The plant is currently employing around 300 Unifor workers.
