ATU CT Bargaining Update Sep 24

9/24/2025 ATU Community Transit Negotiations Update

We met at the Everett Labor Temple today with our full bargaining team, in addition to representatives from Customer Information, Sales and Distribution and Service Ambassadors. 

With increases in assaults on our members, including a recent violent assault of our TSO member who was stabbed recently, safety is at the forefront of our minds. As a result, ATU proposed to increase the protection in the contract to ensure that Service Ambassadors will always work in pairs, rather than just “whenever possible”. Today we doubled down on the protections necessary for the safety of our members; we want Service Ambassadors to work in pairs. 

As mentioned above we had representatives from Ride Store (Sales and Distribution) and the Call Center (Customer Information) classifications as expert participants on proposals for their classification. 

Another topic of our proposal covered today was ensuring that CT notify and bargain with ATU regarding any New Technology that could affect the job roles, responsibilities or work of our union members. It is absolutely imperative that we stay ahead of the technology curve, so we are not replaced by autonomous vehicles, or have our biometric data collected by any new audio/video systems, etc.

While contract negotiations are about more than pay increases and other economic items, we have gotten a lot of feedback over CT’s opening proposal of a 2% wage increase. 

Here’s what you need to know about that. The agency will always stay low with a “Protected Position”. A protected position is what an agency would retreat to if negotiations fail and they end up in interest arbitration to settle the contract. It is a jumping off place, a starting point; this is in no way where we would end up. As negotiations proceed, CT will consider our proposal including all of our economic proposals, not just wages. 

This is the update for this week. Next bargaining session we have scheduled will take place on October 1 at Community Transit. We will continue to bargain for everything our members deserve while retaining the strong language and benefits we’ve fought for over the last 50 years.

In Solidarity!