This is the monthly edition of the Transport Workers Union’s Transportation Technology Newsletter. We aim to inform and educate our members, the labor movement, the public and policymakers about developments in transportation technology – and what the TWU is doing to ensure that new technology doesn’t undermine safety or harm the livelihoods of hard-working blue-collar workers. For suggestions and questions, please email ewytkind@gmail.com or adaugherty@twu.org.

ITEM OF THE MONTH

TESLA HEADACHE FOR FIRST RESPONDERS: First responders in Austin are being told by Tesla they may need to physically push disabled Tesla Cybercabs out of the way if they become obstacles, NBC News and Gizmodo report, because the robotaxis lack steering wheels and pedals. Tesla has self-certified the steering wheel-less and pedal-less Cybercab vehicles without seeing an exemption from federal regulators. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Tesla did not respond to requests for comment from the Verge about their regulatory status.

“While Tesla presses on with paid rides, first responders are left to clean up the literal mess,” TWU International President John Samuelsen said. “The company released a half-baked manual essentially telling police and fire stations to figure it out themselves if a disabled autonomous Tesla is blocking public streets or causing a potential safety issue.”

The company is telling first responders that in some instances the Cybercab “can manually be moved with onboard vehicle controls” but also in certain situations “where there is a minimal risk of fire or high voltage exposure and low voltage power is present, Cybercab can be quickly pushed in order to clear the roadway.” The Cybercab’s curb weight is more than 3,100 pounds. And the company is instructing first responders to push the wheels with their hands to turn the car if needed.

“This is absurd,” TWU International Administrative Vice President Curtis Tate said. “Tesla is asking first responders to do something potentially dangerous with minimal instruction, all while playing fast and loose with federal regulators. Our streets should not be testing grounds for companies that are trying to make money first and thinking about safety second. Federal regulators need to step in before this becomes a bigger problem.”

ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL: Tesla is also facing scrutiny for owners posting videos on social media of them napping while their cars are driving, with Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) writing a letter to NHTSA asking if they are aware of at least 43 videos of individuals asleep in the driving seats of moving Teslas. The lawmaker is asking if NHTSA has evaluated Tesla safeguards when the cabin camera is visibly impaired, obstructed, or drivers use sunglasses or hats to interfere with detection. In 2019, Elon Musk publicly proclaimed that Tesla drivers “will be able to sleep at the wheel by the end of 2020.” Photos and videos of sleeping Tesla drivers continue to pop up on social media.

WHAT ELSE IS COOKING 

YOU CAN’T ARREST A CAR: Popular Science wrote a story echoing a major concern of the TWU as driverless vehicles are deployed on public streets – they do not face the same accountability a human driver does when they make poor decisions. While Waymos are racking up parking tickets across the country, it isn’t clear to most local municipalities how to sanction cars without drivers. “In principle, AVs are licensed drivers and someone owns and operates them,” University of Southern California Gould School of Law professor Gregory Keating told Popular Science. “They should be treated like any other licensed driver. In practice, I don’t know what’s going on.”

While parking tickets are one matter (and a major public nuisance), dangerous moving violations that would result in hefty fines or potential arrests for a human driver are more complicated. Popular Science reports that police in San Bruno, California conducting a DUI operation watched a Waymo make an illegal u-turn in front of them. When they pulled the Waymo over (not necessarily a given because there have been reports of AVs not responding to the flashing lights of emergency vehicles), they did not issue a citation.

“Since there was no human driver, a ticket couldn’t be issued (our citation books don’t have a box for ‘robot’),” a San Bruno Police Department Facebook post explained following the incident. “That’s right… no driver, no hands, no clue.”

“Big Tech is used to operating by a separate set of rules than the rest of us, and moving violations are the latest example,” Tate said. “If I drive my car in a dangerous manner and get pulled over, I could lose my license and even end up in jail. But if an autonomous vehicle does the same thing, there’s zero accountability.”

STORAGE PROBLEM: Mission Local reports that autonomous vehicle companies are on a collision course with San Francisco’s development goals – namely that they’ve bought or leased huge swaths of downtown real estate to store and charge their vehicles while the city has higher land use aspirations for valuable real estate than parking lots. Autonomous vehicle advocates have long discussed how constantly roving AVs would reduce the need for parking, but the vehicles still need to be charged and serviced (by human workers, mind you).

“AV storage is an annoyance at best and actively harmful to our cities at worst,” Samuelsen said. “Robotaxis meant to ferry the rich around are no substitute for human-operated mass transit systems, and the curb space and parking required in dense cities like San Francisco and New York significantly roll back the so-called benefits of AVs that Big Tech bros like to evangelize.”

AIRPORT RIDES IN VEGAS: Driverless vehicle operator Zoox, an Amazon company, is launching its first airport transportation service to and from the Las Vegas strip in September deploying four-passenger driverless robotaxis.

This new service is the result of federal transportation officials granting Zoox an exemption from safety requirements so it can use vehicles without a steering wheel, pedals or safety features like windshield defrosting. According to Zoox, it plans to expand robotaxi service to 10 additional markets including Houston, where TWU members work in the transit system.

“What could possibly go wrong when federal safety officials grant premature exemptions from our safety rules so that Amazon can cash in on its big bet on autonomous vehicles?” Samuelsen said. “A lot can go wrong: robotaxis have driven into crime scenes and flood zones and been caught speeding by school buses. We should not unleash them on Las Vegas roads and naively believe nothing will go wrong.”

Thanks to generous authority granted to Zoox, Waymo, Tesla, and Uber by the Nevada Transportation Authority, existing permits could result in up to 8,000 robotaxis traversing the county in the next year.

AIR TAXIS IN TEXAS: The expansion of air taxi services is accelerating as two well-financed industry leaders, Joby and Archer, take aim at Texas markets. The two companies, benefiting from major airline and manufacturer investments, are deploying their version of electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVOTL).

Joby has started Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)-approved demonstration flights this month in Dallas-Fort Worth while Archer advances test flights into new markets and plans for an air taxi charging network in North Texas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. Archer is also growing its market reach through the acquisition of three units from Boeing, a major investor in the eVOTL sector.

Editor note: A study from Hunter College referenced in last month’s edition was updated by the authors after pressure from Waymo. Read more about the issue in Gothamist. Here is a link to the latest version of the study. 

WHAT WE’RE READING

Minneapolis City Council Considering Driver Requirements in Autonomous Vehicles. CBS News.

Uber and Zipline Delivery Partnership. Yahoo.

Waymo Racked Up 8,300+ SF Parking Tickets and Nearly $1m in Fines. Electrek.

TWU Local 1 Members Ratify Six-Year Contract with Akron Metro, Locking in Big Raises

Agreement is “light years” better than terms proposed by a factfinder and Akron Metro management, union officials say.

Sept. 25, 2026

Transport Workers Union Local 1 members today ratified a six-year contract with Akron Metro that includes a 21% compounded wage increase over the life of the agreement, substantial retroactive pay, and a signing bonus. The agreement comes nearly three months after workers authorized leadership to call a strike. A Bus Operator making $66,500 today will make $80,200 by the end of the contract in May 2030.

Local 1 represents 310 Bus Operators, Vehicle Service Workers, and Clerical Workers at Akron Metro. Running retroactively from June 2024 to May 2030, the contract includes:

• $8,300 in retroactive pay per member, on average, not including overtime.
• A $2,000 Signing Bonus
• A $2,000 Annual Attendance Bonus, up from $1,000
• Annual raises of 3%, 3%, 3.5%, 3.5%, 3%, and 3%

The contract is substantially better than the three-year proposal that was drafted by a fact-finder/arbitrator and approved by the Akron Metro Board in June. That proposal included two years without a raise, one 4% increase, a $3,500 signing bonus – but no retroactive pay.

“We fought back and drove the economic value of the contract much higher than the bosses ever thought possible,” TWU International President John Samuelsen said. “We put together a strategic campaign with Local 1 leadership, executed the plan, and secured a contract that gives workers the respect and economic advancement they deserve.”

“This is a major victory for the hard-working men and women who provide vital bus service to Akron and the surrounding communities,” TWU International Administrative Vice President Curtis Tate said. “The terms of this contract are light years better than what the fact finder recommended and what Akron Metro was looking to impose, including two years without raises. We rejected that 100% and stood our ground.”

“I’m proud of my members,” TWU Local 1 President Wayne Cole said. “They leafleted riders, held rallies, spoke out at Metro Board meetings – and were ready to strike. Once management realized workers were organized and ready to take strike action, they buckled.”

Local 1’s previous contract with Akron Metro expired June 1, 2024, and workers received their last raise was June 1, 2023. The new contract includes increases to workers’ health insurance premiums, but they are dwarfed by the significant wage and bonus gains, and they remain flat for the duration of the agreement.

Local 171 President Delisa Brown meets with a Motorcoach Operator during voting for Local 171’s newest contract. 

Transport Workers Union Local 171, representing Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority workers, won significant raises and better benefits in a newly ratified four-year contract. TWU Local 171 members, including Motorcoach Operators, Mechanics, Customer Service Agents and more, will receive a 14.5% pay increase over the life of the contract, along with a $3,500 signing bonus.  

“Local 171 fought hard against attempts from management to erode longstanding benefits while winning significant pay increases in their latest contract,” TWU International Administrative Vice President Curtis Tate said. “We are happy to have ratified a new deal that will improve the lives of our members and their families.”  

TWU members in Ann Arbor, working for TheRide, were working without a contract since April. Management attempted to roll back existing family leave policies and increase the amount members are currently paying for their healthcare. Local 171 beat back both proposals, keeping in place current leave policies and healthcare for current workers.  

Longtime Local 171 President Delisa Brown received local news coverage for her fight against management attempts to decrease paid leave.  

“This contract is a big win for our families,” Brown said. “Management wanted to remove the family and medical leave language completely along with maternity leave language and replace it with parental leave. This would cover a mother after the baby was born but she would not have the protected maternity leave before giving birth to her child. I’m proud we were able to negotiate an agreement that benefits families while giving everyone a major pay boost.”  

Local 171 represents about 250 workers in Ann Arbor, who overwhelmingly voted in favor of the contract earlier this month. In addition to the pay increases, the deal includes a $500 per quarter perfect attendance bonus with an additional $500 for a year of perfect attendance, an increase in dental and orthodontic coverage, and time off benefits that are in excess of Michigan’s Earned Sick Time Act.  

“By the end of the contract, a senior Motorcoach Operator who currently tops out at $33 per hour will make over $38 per hour,” Brown said. “That is a gamechanger for our membership and I’m proud of the work that everyone at our local put in to get these negotiations over the line.”  

This is the monthly edition of the Transport Workers Union’s Transportation Technology Newsletter. We aim to inform and educate our members, the labor movement, the public and policymakers about developments in transportation technology – and what the TWU is doing to ensure that new technology doesn’t undermine safety or harm the livelihoods of hard-working blue-collar workers. For suggestions and questions, please email ewytkind@gmail.com or adaugherty@twu.org.

ITEM OF THE MONTH

CHANGING TUNE: San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who came into office as a Big Tech booster, recently backed a bill in Congress (also backed by the TWU) that would establish national safety standards for autonomous vehicles. Politico reports that Lurie backed the legislation after a spate of Waymo incidents in San Francisco, notably July 4th traffic jams caused by AVs and malfunctions caused by power outages. He also backed additional state legislation on AVs earlier this summer.

The bill, authored by Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-Calif.) would require the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to establish minimum safety standards and protocols for how operators work with local first responders. It would also require AV companies to provide standardized emergency response protocols and create a 24-hour hotline for public safety officials to communicate with AV companies when their vehicles cause incidents. And it would direct NHTSA to establish a pathway for public officials to issue notices that would digitally fence off certain areas for AVs during emergencies.

“For years, San Francisco has been a testing ground for autonomous vehicles – and the traveling public along with elected officials don’t like what they see,” said TWU Administrative Vice President Curtis Tate. “TWU members who help move San Francisco are dealing with AVs on the job every day, and in some cases being blocked or hindered by vehicles without a human on board. Companies like Waymo have used up their goodwill and politicians who once cheered them on are now trying to rein them in.”

NO ONE TO SAVE YOU: The San Francisco Chronicle reported on a harrowing incident in May where two criminals worked in tandem to attack a Waymo vehicle with a passenger inside. Sherman Watson was riding in a Waymo in the early morning hours of May 9 when a man in a hooded sweatshirt grabbed the front bumper of his Waymo, causing it to stop. Then a second assailant approached and the two began smashing the front windshield and windows. Waymo’s remote assistant called the police, but Watson said Waymo’s support team had no idea when law enforcement would arrive and declined to move the car potentially out of harm’s way, saying it was “obstructed.”

“That’s when I was like, ‘I’m gonna die,’” Watson told the Chronicle. He also called 911 and pleaded with the Waymo intercom voice. The police showed up 10 minutes later, after the assailants left minutes earlier.

“The lack of a human operator is a major safety issue,” said TWU International President John Samuelsen. “The Waymo passenger in San Francisco was a sitting duck, and no amount of ‘tech support’ is going to help someone escape a dangerous situation where they are locked inside a car that will not move.”

Incredibly, Watson, despite suffering cuts during the attack from shattered glass, wasn’t identified as the victim. The police report identified the Waymo vehicle as the victim and Watson as merely a witness to the crime. Watson has also, without success, tried to get video of the incident from Waymo turned over.

ISSUES ON THE EAST COAST: A new study from Hunter College says that robotaxis in New York City would result in more serious crashes than professional for-hire drivers and cause more congestion. The study argues that Waymo’s safety claims of being safer than the “average human driver” aren’t a good comparison because the for-hire drivers who stand to lose out when Waymos exist en masse are 14 times safer than the average human driver in NYC.

“There’s a mantra going around that autonomous vehicles are more than 90% safer than human driven cars. This report delves into the data and makes it clear: There is no solid evidence as of yet to make such a claim compared to the for-hire vehicles already serving this city,” said Sam Schwartz, founder of the Sam Schwartz Transportation Research Program. “We find that NYC taxi and Uber/Lyft drivers may in fact be safer per mile.”

And the study notes that while robotaxis in California spend the majority of their time on the road pulled over and parked while waiting for rides, such behavior in NYC would lead to more traffic and Waymos circling city stress endlessly (think of it as a much worse version of the Waymos in Atlanta that were using a suburban cul-de-sac as their idling area).

ACCESSIBLE? NO: NOTUS and WAMU report that disability advocates in Washington, DC are unhappy with Waymo’s lack of commitment to accessibility. During a hearing earlier this summer regarding potential AV deployment in Washington, DC Waymo said it cannot deploy vehicles that can accommodate wheelchairs.

“The autonomous vehicle industry, the operators…have used us as a talking point,” said CT Tyson, government affairs liaison for the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund. “They have not wanted to make a true, fully accessible vehicle.” Tyson noted that promises from private companies to provide accessible transportation have largely gone unfilled unless the government requires it.

“Big Tech companies have used riders with mobility limitations as a talking point, but just like with safety it is merely lip service,” Tate said. “These companies want to maximize profits by replacing rideshare drivers, yet they come nowhere close to the essential role of Bus Operators and Paratransit Drivers for riders with wheelchairs.”

WHAT ELSE IS COOKING 

AUTONOMOUS TRUCKING LAWSUIT: The California Teamsters are suing several state agencies, including the Department of Motor Vehicles, arguing that Gov. Gavin Newsom improperly rolled out regulations that pave the way for self-driving large trucks on state roads. In April, state regulators adopted new rules for autonomous trucks that would eventually allow vehicles weighing 10,001 pounds or more to operate on public roads.

“The DMV irresponsibly, carelessly, and unlawfully kept the public in the dark about the true economic and human costs of the amended Autonomous Vehicle regulations,” said Julie Gutman Dickinson, an attorney with labor law firm Bush Gottlieb representing the Teamsters, in a statement. “The only way to protect the public’s right to properly scrutinize regulations that will transform transportation in California is for the Court to order the DMV to immediately rescind the illegally enacted regulations.”

TESLA ROBOTAXIS COME TO FLORIDA: As Tesla faces a federal probe into a tragic incident where a 76-year-old woman was killed in her home by a Tesla Model 3 apparently using the automated driving feature, the company nonetheless is expanding robotaxi service – this time into Florida cities including Miami where TWU members work at Miami-Dade Transit.

The expansion in Florida follows the launch of robotaxi service in Texas and California, in the wake of wildly optimistic predictions of expansion by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. “I think we’ll probably have autonomous ride hailing in probably half the population of the U.S. by the end of [2025],” Musk boasted, after previously declaring that Tesla would “have over a million robotaxis on the road” that same year. There are about 50 Tesla robotaxis on US roads although that number is expected to rise as service expands.

Despite significant scrutiny of its now scrapped “Autopilot” feature in favor of a subscription program, set at $99 a month, Tesla will charge for access to its so-called “full self-driving” (FSD) technology. Musk tweeted early last year: “I should also mention that the $99/month for supervised FSD will rise as FSD’s capabilities improve. The massive value jump is when you can be on your phone or sleeping for the entire ride (unsupervised FSD).”

“On a daily basis these technologies are proving they are not ready to operate safely on our roads – we are seeing severe safety incidents such as robotaxis driving onto flooded roads, blocking transit buses, and speeding by school buses,” said TWU International President John Samuelsen. “And now we are going to permit carmakers and technology companies to claim it’s okay for drivers to sleep while they drive using this flawed technology? It’s time for federal regulators to step up and put a stop to this before more people get hurt or die.”

NO WHEEL TO TURN: At a time when Amazon’s Zoox and other robotaxi operators face mounting safety scrutiny as their vehicles go rogue such as failing to detect smoke and driving into a fire scene – Zoox has inexplicably secured federal clearance from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to run robotaxis revenue service without human controls in its vehicles such as a steering wheel. Zoox also serves Las Vegas and San Francisco. Oddly, the same regulator that approved the federal exemption required for Zoox to operate, recently issued a warning to robotaxi companies to fix “a clear pattern of driverless AVs interfering with law enforcement and other first responders.”

“It seems to us that NHTSA should not reward this flawed technology that it has called out as unsafe around emergency response scenes by giving out exemptions from federal safety requirements,” Tate said. “Federal and state regulators are allowing too much dangerous experimentation on our roads.”

WHAT WE’RE READING:

Waymo Eyes Expansion Into Pinellas County. Tampa Bay Times.

NFL Head Coach in Serious Accident Using Tesla Autopilot electrek

TWU International President John Samuelsen wrote the following column in the August edition of Eno Transportation

The Transport Workers Union of America’s 165,000 plus members work across the entire transportation sector. At transit agencies, airlines, railroads, bikeshare systems and elsewhere, TWU members see their jobs change drastically as new technology once again mushrooms across all modes of transportation. This is not a new phenomenon. Every few decades the next wave of innovation shifts how we move, but each successive wave of technology has reinforced the central role humans play to make our transportation systems safe and efficient. 

Tech companies, along with their associated boards, investors, and cheerleaders, have claimed that this latest round of automation is unique. These voices, who often stand to make billions on automated transport, argue that current rules and regulations are unable to account for their new technologies. Instead, they argue for as little regulation as possible, asserting that rules developed decades ago cannot possibly encompass their latest technology. These same advocates will also claim that the consequences of unregulated deployment, job losses and a reduction in safety, are somehow unavoidable and a necessary cost of innovation. We should collectively reject that line of thinking just as we did when these same arguments were made regarding commercial jet engines (first produced in the United States in 1958), autonomous subways (1963), and any number of other “cutting edge” technology from the previous century.  

In reality, the philosophical cornerstones of our transportation oversight regime were designed specifically to address automation and new technology. The most critical safety component of every vehicle is a qualified human to oversee the system and intervene, as necessary, to keep it running without incident. 

A tour through some of the newest transportation innovations emphasizes the core role that qualified humans should be performing at all times. Robotaxis are designed to stop and query a human when the onboard computer doesn’t understand a situation (a circumstance that is happening constantly for these vehicles and that deserves more scrutiny from policymakers). Railroads are using brake inspection portals, equipped with dozens of cameras, to feed data to qualified mechanical inspectors to determine where those humans need to spend their time fixing problems.  In these cases and hundreds of others like them, the presence of a qualified human, or lack thereof, is making the difference between a safe outcome and a reckless one. These examples show policymakers and the traveling public that automation without human input and control across the transportation sector is unworkable and unsafe.  

Eliminating human control of our transportation systems inevitably leads to disaster. In 2018 and 2019, an automated system onboard the new Boeing 737-MAX aircraft (the “maneuvering characteristics augmentation system,” or MCAS) repeatedly overruled commands from its pilots based on false sensor data – data the pilots visually confirmed was wrong. Two plane crashes at Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines led to 346 deaths. Pilots in the U.S. faced identical problems in their automated aircraft systems. However, proper training and federal requirements allowed them to simply turn off the malfunctioning system. In public transit, the National Transportation Safety Board attributed a 2009 crash of Washington, DC’s Red Line train – which killed 9 people and injured 52 others – to an automated system because it didn’t detect another train on the tracks ahead of it and kept the second train moving at full speed. The operator of the Red Line train tried to use the brake to prevent the impending collision caused by the automated system, but the system’s failures prevented the human operator from stopping the train. 

Today, workers are facing attempts, large and small, to introduce automation in all our sectors. Many of these initiatives have strong support from the frontline workforce who are subject to the same safety threats as the traveling public. But unlike technology such as LiDAR systems designed to prevent collisions that augments and assists human workers, Big Tech boosters are pushing technology designed to eliminate the need for a qualified human worker — and they often argue a “need” for a federal waiver or exemption. That should give us all pause. Autonomous shuttles, aircraft inspections completed by drones without a licensed mechanic’s sign-off, AI-rail car inspections, and other naked attempts to use federal exemptions to decrease labor costs will not increase safety.  These kinds of corporate giveaways have potentially different outcomes for the human workers on the job but they all share the same underlying assumption: that employers can, at their sole discretion, determine the appropriate safety measures for people in and around their vehicles. We all lose when our safety is left solely to a profit-driven entity. 

It is essential that human workers have the ability to oversee, override, and control new technology precisely because safety depends on redundancy. Broadly speaking, our transportation safety systems rest on an agreement between safety regulators, the owners of the infrastructure, and the frontline workers who operate and maintain it. All three have a mandate to run a safe system, but each group has different responsibilities. Eliminating human oversight would destroy the checks and balances inherent to this system and deny regulators the first-hand experience in these systems needed to judge safety proposals. When an aircraft maintenance technician clears a plane to return to service, they know they can lose their livelihood if they behave recklessly. That is a very different sense of responsibility than their employer has towards the same piece of equipment. Our transportation networks become less safe without the oversight of human workers.  

The TWU doesn’t fear technological developments in the transportation sector that could change the day-to-day nature of many of our members’ jobs. Technology that enhances safety, provides additional data, and helps to avoid collisions are welcome developments. But technology is not a substitute for human judgement and control.

Transport Workers Union of America Local 527 held a press conference on Thursday to highlight months of inaction from MV-Transit over a substandard contract proposal.

TWU Local 527 members, including Fixed Route & Paratransit Bus Operators, Rural Bus Operators, Mechanics, Utility Workers, Customer Service Clerks, and Parts Clerks working for MV-Transit at Augusta Transit are prepared to go on strike at any time.

“MV Transit is a behemoth worth billions of dollars trying to argue they can’t afford to raise the pay of a starting Bus Operator from $17 per hour to $21 per hour – that’s absurd,” said TWU International President John Samuelsen. “The TWU is ready to throw the entire weight of the International Union and our 165,000 members behind Local 527 in their ongoing fight with MV Transit.”

TWU Local 527 and MV Transit have engaged in two dozen bargaining sessions since November of 2025 for a contract that expired on January 31, 2026. On July 19, Local 527 members in Augusta rejected management’s proposed contract and voted to authorize a strike. MV Transit was awarded a contract for the operation and maintenance of Augusta’s public transit system beginning in 2026, taking over from the previous operator.

“It is the Union’s position that MV Transit’s proposal does not adequately address some of the issues that plagued Augusta Transit’s system prior to the award of the contract to MV-Transit such as training, employee retention, safety, bathroom breaks, hours, adequate staffing levels, scheduling of paratransit and extra board work, compensation, and morale,” said TWU Local 527 President Benyoel T. Morgan.

Significant issues remain unresolved, including wages, benefits, attendance policies, safety policies, vacation, and staffing concerns.

For wages, TWU Local 527 is seeking a guaranteed 40-hour work week, increased pay for Bus Operators certified as Behind the Wheel Trainers, and a starting pay rate of $21.70 per hour with three percent raises throughout the length of the contract. MV Transit is countering with a paltry 28 cent per hour pay increase from the current $17.48 per hour starting wage. MV Transit has also declined to pay workers when they are not allowed to work during major weather events, like when Hurricane Helene shut down service in 2024. The TWU is asking for up to 40 hours of pay per calendar year to compensate workers who lose their shifts through no fault of their own.

The TWU is also seeking improvements to medical, dental, and vision cost sharing, sick leave, and vacation that have been rejected by management.

“It is long past time for management to step up and seriously bargain with us on a contract that improves the lives of our members while improving transit service in Augusta,” Morgan said. “Our members have felt the pain of being without a contract for months and we are prepared to exercise our right to strike if management isn’t serious about working on a good contract.”