3 Charlottesville Area Transit (CAT) and the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU)

The City of Charlottesville founded CAT in 1975 to create a safe and practical service to transport people around the area and had close ties to UVA at its inception. A contemporary newspaper article included comments from the director of UVA’s University Transit System (UTS) advising the City to “conceive of a bus ‘service’ instead of a bus system,” envisioning public transit that “would have utility for the immobile and poor, as well as middle and upper income individuals.”

Due to the partial overturn of Virginia’s ban on collective bargaining in 2021, the City of Charlottesville’s employees have been able to organize as a group and achieve better payment, safety, and livelihoods. After Charlottesville City Council approved a collective bargaining ordinance in 2022 to allow public-sector collective bargaining, employees of the Charlottesville Area Transit (CAT) voted to affiliate with the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), which counts over 200,000 members in the United States and Canada. Today, CAT employees organized with ATU are working to revitalize the original mission of Charlottesville Area Transit: a public service that works for all.

As we were curating this exhibition, ATU was in the process of collectively bargaining a contract with the City—the first such contract in 75 years. Under the ratified contract, CAT wages will soon exceed UTS wages, likely pushing UVA to raise pay or risk losing drivers.

ATU sign [include both sides, as well as reference to sanitation strike]

How does your pay compare

Timetables

Clothes

Bus lines

Agreement and photo