Charlottesville’s unionized bus drivers reached their first agreement with the city after City Council passed a groundbreaking ordinance to allow collective bargaining for public sector employees. The focal point of the deal was a substantial wage increase for bus drivers.
Charlottesville Area Transit representatives, now members of the Amalgamated Transit Union, negotiated a tiered system of pay increases into the three-year contract.
In a statement, the local chapter said, “Before we won our union, there was no pay progression at CAT. Workers could spend decades at the city and make less than someone else newer than them. This deal fixes that and dramatically improves wages across the board for all job classifications.”
The new contract proposes a 2 percent pay increase for all job titles with an additional 2 percent increase for each year of service, up to eight years. That would raise the starting pay for an operator from $22.36 an hour to $23. But each year, the deal stipulates a wage increase for each level so that by 2026, starting pay would be $24.15.
The contract is now awaiting the City Manager’s signature and City Council’s April 9 approval of the budget, which would fund the pay raise. If approved, the new contract will go into effect on July 1, but wage increases won’t go into effect until January 1 of next year.
Both sides agree that bus drivers should be paid more—stagnant wages have forced many long-term drivers to need second jobs. Recruitment of new drivers has also hit a low point.
Matthew Ray, who has been driving for Charlottesville Area Transit for 10 years, says his pay will increase from $22.35 to $31 an hour. Ray’s wife has worked in the school bus division of transit for two and a half years. He says she will get a $5-an-hour raise.
“It’s definitely going to be life-altering money,” Ray says. “When you’re making five, 600 dollars more a paycheck, that is huge. For this area, that is getting people out of their second jobs where they only need one now.”
Ray has been involved in organizing the CAT workers under the Amalgamated Transit Union since the new legislation first came into view.
“Since the ATU’s first day showing up down here,” Ray says. “I was attracted to them instantly and got involved.”
Ray is now the shop steward of the Charlottesville chapter, which means it’s his role to represent the area’s bus drivers to city management. In negotiations, the union argued that bus drivers should be able to afford to live in the area where they are driving people around.
Ray says the number of bus drivers for the city has been declining for the past several years.
“We don’t have the people and we don’t have the buses to provide the level of service we did seven years ago,” Ray says. “At one time we were like 80-85 drivers. We’re down to like 50-55 drivers right now.”
That means CAT has had to reduce its routes and run routes less frequently. Currently, routes 1, 3, 6, 8, 10, and 11 run every hour and routes 2, 4, 5, 7, and 9 run every half hour. Route 12, a service that ran on Sundays, has been discontinued.
An hour can be a long time to wait, especially if you miss a bus or if the bus is delayed. As a result, Ray says, ridership has flagged.
“When you can’t provide the services to the public that you need to provide to get people to and from work, they stop riding your bus,” Ray says. “And that’s our current predicament. We don’t have the ridership we had five, six, seven years ago.”
CAT currently has 40 buses in its fleet, but only operates 17 and two trollies. In order for CAT to provide more service, the city needs more bus drivers.
The new contract could provide the push that the transit sector needs. Ray says the wage increase will put CAT among the most competitive transportation industry jobs in Virginia and turn the tide for the city’s bus drivers.
Before April of 2020, it was illegal for a municipality in Virginia to enter into collective bargaining agreements with employees. That year, a bill passed the Virginia House of Delegates repealing the prohibition on collective bargaining for public sector employees. The new bill left it in the hands of localities to decide if they would recognize labor unions as bargaining agents. In October of 2021, Charlottesville was among the first cities to do so. The city now recognizes bargaining units for the police department and fire department as well as public transit.
Matthew Ray is proud of what the workers have accomplished. “The City of Charlottesville is unionizing,” he says. “Not just us three, but everyone.”