Loudoun Transit Workers End Strike

BY RENSS GREENE rgreene@loudounnow.com

Striking Loudoun Transit employees returned to work March 20 despite not yet winning all the concessions they have pushed for from county transit contractor Keolis North America.

Amalgamated Transit Union Director of Joint Industry Councils & Collective Bargaining John Lyons announced the decision in a March 17 letter. He wrote members of

ATU Local 689 offer unconditionally to return to work, but that the decision does not mean they are accepting a contract offer.

Loudoun Transit employees had been on strike since January, as the union has battled with Keolis the contractor’s decision to cut back employee benefits, and to continue paying local bus drivers less than commuter bus drivers. That was a disparity that existed under the previously separate local and commuter bus contracts, which were combined into one five-year, $101 million contract which Keolis won.

ATU spokesman Matt Girardi said the end of the strike does not mean the union has given up.

“Thankfully, we were able to get Keolis to a place where they offered major concessions on their economics, to the point where we wanted our members, frankly, to reap the benefits of what they fought so hard for,” he said. “They’ve been out there for over two months now in the bitterest cold of winter, and we wanted to make sure that they were able to enjoy some of what they were able to get.”

Because Keolis has declared an impasse in negotiations, he said, under labor law the workers may get some of the benefits Keolis included in their final offer despite not yet signing a collective bargaining agreement with the company.

“We are going to continue to try to bargain. We have said before and I will say again that we do not believe that we are at an impasse,” he said. “We believe that there is still room for us to bargain, and we look forward to Keolis coming back to the table and dealing with us as we have been dealing with them: in good faith, even through all the frustration.”

Union members have said Keolis refused to negotiate. Girardi said throughout the strike, the union only had one in-person, face-to-face negotiation with Keolis representatives.

And he pointed to a recent agreement with the Teamsters union in Prince William County, which had also gone on strike against Keolis. There, transit agency OmniRide also provide local and commuter buses.

“In their contract it says—that the Teamsters decided to vote on—it is one scale for all drivers, all CDL drivers. So if Keolis is willing to do that there, again, I’m confused about why they would break industry standard and segregate CDL drivers into different categories over here,”

Girardi said.

Union members had also pushed county supervisors to support their strike by leveraging the fines laid out in Keolis’s contract for failing to provide service. County Chair Phyllis J. Randall (D-At Large) said that was the one area where she pushed back against the union. She said Keolis already is not being paid for scheduled bus trips that don’t run.

“My bigger concern and my bigger issue was, if we fined Keolis and it stood up in court … after 90 days, Keolis could have just severed the contract altogether, and at that point, now we’re back to the beginning,” she said. She said that would mean issuing a new request for proposals, hiring a new contractor, and holding a new union election.

“It would take us probably 18 months to get back to this place,” she said.

With the strike ending, Loudoun commuter buses, which have been parked because of reduced staffing, will likely get back on the road.

“It’s been a tough, tough time to watch, and I have so much respect for our ATU workers, who were always willing to be at the table and keep talking,” Randall said. “But they’ve also made a calculation that they need to take care of their workers, so they’re going back, hoping that showing this good faith effort to Keolis will bring Keolis back to the table.” n

Tax rate climbs

continued from page 4 judges, an executive assistant for the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office, a voter services manager for the Office of Elections, and a commercial real estate appraiser for the Commissioner of the Revenue.

On their last day of budget talks, supervisors added positions to support the county’s Unmet Housing Needs Strategic Plan, glass recycling, the environmental work plan, the General Services department, a new Equity and Inclusion Specialist, and human resources and training in the Building and Development department.

Each half-penny of the tax rate is estimated to be worth roughly $6.5 million to county revenues, based on trends and forecasts of real estate values in the county for 2023. The new tax rate also means almost $125.9 million growth in local tax revenues overall from the current fiscal year.

County supervisors, accustomed to booming tax revenues, this year faced a tighter budget amid uncertainty in important revenue streams. On top of ongoing concern about a possible recession this year, new state law dictating a different formula for assessing data center values and shortcomings in the Dominion Energy grid have created uncertainty around tax revenues from the data center industry, which last year generated enough tax revenue to fund the entire county operating budget. County staff members and supervisors had already begun plans to hedge the county budget against over-reliance on revenues from data centers, seeking to avoid a shock to county finances caused by changes in a single business sector.

While it’s still uncertain what impact the General Assembly and Dominion will have on local revenues, county staff ’s practice is to estimate revenues conservatively—state law also requires the county to have a balanced budget.

There are also new expenses in the budget, such as rapidly rising costs due to inflation. And for the first time, a half-penny of real estate tax revenues is set aside for the county’s housing trust fund.

Although Loudoun County government’s fiscal year 2024 runs a half-year ahead of the calendar year, beginning July 1, 2023, tax years align with the calendar year; county supervisors are setting a budget for fiscal year 2024, funded by tax rates they set for calendar year 2023. n

$205,000 is the income needed to afford the median home price of $641,000 in Loudoun.

Housing affordability is typically thought of as a low-income household concern, but that’s no longer true.

Workforce Housing is not an issue about charity, it’s about the future economic prosperity of Loudoun.

Let’s shape Loudoun’s future.

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