CAT employees negotiating wages with city

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - Charlottesville Area Transit has been meeting with the city to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement for months.

But so far, no union contract has been formed.

New CAT operators make a little more than $22/hour.

Many of them say that’s not enough considering Charlottesville’s cost of living.

“The city’s expensive. A lot of our folks don’t live here, CAT operator Matthew Ray said. “They have to commute here.”

Ray says after ten years with CAT, he’s only making a little over $1/hour more than brand new employees.

“We have a lot of folks that are 10 to 30 year employees that aren’t at the top of pay scale, that’s a problem,” Ray said.

CAT also includes Charlottesville school bus drivers, who soon won’t receive the same benefits because they are not considered full time employees.

To advocate for themselves, Ray and other CAT employees unionized and started negotiations with the city back in October, 2023.

They were able to do this because of a collective bargaining ordinance that went into effect on January 1st, 2023.

“We want to come to a fair and competitive agreement for all of our employee groups,” Charlottesville Director of Communications Afton Schneider said. “Without our people, we can’t do anything, we get nothing done, and we can’t serve our communities.”

The two groups have not found that common middle ground yet.

According to labor law expert and professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, Ann Hodges, that’s not uncommon.

“It can take some time, depending on the positions of the parties,” Hodges said.

Collective bargaining for public groups was only brought back in Virginia in 2021.

Since then, it’s been slow moving across the state.

“It’s relatively new. And I think it’s a learning process,” Hodges said.

CAT is not the only ones engaging in collective bargaining, so are workers in Charlottesville City Schools. They say, it’s a group effort.

“Collective bargaining for both the bus drivers, the teachers, our support workers, people like that firefighters, any worker would make Charlottesville a more hospitable place to live and to work,” Charlottesville Education Association President Shannon Gillikin said.

For CAT and the city, the race is on now to have an agreement passed by the time the city manager presents the budget for the new fiscal year on March 5th.

But right now, there are no more negotiation sessions scheduled.

“Hopefully, one side or the other will decide to make some movement on a particular issue,” Hodges said. “Negotiations typically involve trade offs.”

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