RTD workers will vote Sunday on the transit agency’s “last, best and final” contract offer, which RTD officials call the “largest wage rate increase” in its 30-year history.
Local 1001 of the Amalgamated Transit Union represents about 1,700 Regional Transportation District employees, including bus drivers, light-rail operators and mechanics. The union’s leadership recommends that workers reject the pact. Union members also will be voting to authorize a strike, if they turn down RTD’s offer. The union would have to give strike notice to RTD at least 72 hours before a walkout could begin.
RTD officials said their proposed contract would boost the pay of transit drivers to $19.85 an hour at the end of the three-year pact. Mechanics’ pay would top out at $25.20 an hour after three years. Bus drivers’ hourly pay now tops out at $18.05 an hour and top mechanic pay is $23.15 an hour. RTD said it also has offered workers increases in the amount the transit agency pays into the union’s health and welfare fund.
Local 1001 spokesman Dave Minshall said “RTD’s nickel-and-dime offer is an insult to workers who have not had any raise at all for the past three years while RTD managers got huge raises.”
Nonunion RTD employees worked under a salary freeze in 2003 and 2004, but last year, some of the agency’s top managers got raises ranging from 38 percent to 48 percent. Some management raises reached 75 percent and even 90 percent when promotions were factored in.
