RTD has struck a deal with its union to allow guards who provide security on light-rail trains to also act as fare inspectors.
For the past 10 years, the Regional Transportation District had been constrained by its contract with the transit workers union from letting anyone but union-represented RTD employees do the fare-inspection task.
But a new agreement between RTD and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1001 will allow about 35 uniformed Wackenhut security guards who regularly ride trains and monitor stations to ask passengers for tickets.
“(This) will more than double our fare-enforcement presence overnight,” RTD spokesman Scott Reed said.
In exchange for giving up the fare-inspection work, the union won $1.20-an-hour raises for up to 288 bus and light-rail mechanical and technical positions.
RTD officials have complained about the agency’s inability to hire and retain enough qualified fare inspectors, and mechanics and technicians, so the agreement could help RTD deal with both issues.
“This should dramatically help with the hiring and retention of mechanics and technicians, which has been an ongoing problem,” Reed said of the pay hike.
When RTD opened its new southeast train in November, it approved a doubling of the budget for fare inspectors, to hire up to 20. But RTD apparently had trouble finding qualified people for a job with starting pay of $12.53 an hour, and as of mid-January, it only had six inspectors to check passengers doing 60,000 trips daily on its 35-mile system.
The paltry effort at fare inspection undermined the confidence of some train passengers that everyone was paying for their ride, said RTD Director Bill McMullen, who helped broker the deal to shift the inspection work to Wackenhut guards.
The agreement calls for the six current RTD employees doing fare-inspection to be “grandfathered” under the deal, allowing them to continue the inspection task, Reed said. As they leave through attrition, fare inspection will become exclusively the work of the private guards, he said.
Some Local 1001 members don’t like the agreement because it gives up union-represented inspection jobs, said Holman Carter, the local’s president. But a boost in the mechanics’ wage scale should make it easier for RTD to recruit and retain employees in the those classifications, he added.
Currently the light-rail electro mechanic wage scale starts at $20.45 an hour and tops out at $25.20 an hour, Carter said. The general repair bus mechanic position starts at $17.95 an hour and tops out at $21.90.
With the new agreement, which still needs the approval of RTD’s board of directors, “We get better wages for our mechanics,” McMullen said, “and better enforcement of our fare structure on the trains.”
Staff writer Jeffrey Leib can be reached at 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com.
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