Transit workers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin are up in arms over city plans to bring in a private company to operate a new fleet of streetcars.  The Amalgamated Transit Union is calling on the city to staff the streetcar system with workers from the County Transit System, one of few major employers in the city that provides jobs to a predominantly minority workforce.  Instead, the city is currently considering front-runner Transdev, a French-based multinational.  James Macon, President of ATU Local 998 noted that TransDev has a long and sordid history of antagonistic labor relations and lowballing of contracts which should disqualify them from the bidding process, and says that sending millions of dollars to an out-of-state company would greatly reduce the economic impact of the program:

James Macon: “If you know their history, they’re having problems across the United States.  They treat their employees like crap. You’ve got a company that’s taking money off the top.  The money’s going to be paid to the firm itself and it’s leaving the state.  You need to keep our money in place…in house.  This company is known to eventually underbid the contract to just make sure they get the contract.  They get the service, they know they can’t run the service at the price they asked for, so they start laying off people or they make the city or the county give them more money.  Is this a backdoor deal going on, because financially it makes no sense.  It should go to the public and let the public decide.  Since it’s the public’s money.”
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