This story was updated April 15.
Unionized public transit workers rallied for livable wages in Bend on April 11. Picketing on NE Third Street near the Hawthorne Station, about a dozen workers and supportive residents hoisted signs that read “Support Your Transit Workers!” Passing cars honked in support.
“Transit workers deserve a living wage,” they shouted.
Thomas Tsuneta, the liaison of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757, would soon leave the curbside rally to enter a contract bargaining session with the heads of the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council, which operates Cascade East Transit. Previous sessions have gone into the evening, Tsuneta said.
Later that day, the union signed a tentative agreement with COIC, said Tsuneta on April 15. That agreement increases the starting wage for CDL drivers by 6.49% and 3.5% for all other classifications.
Tsuneta counts additional gains for organizational tenure and vacation pay. The union also brokered a bilingual differential which they had been trying to get in the previous two collective bargaining agreements, he said.
The tentative agreement will be drafted into contract form, given to the union to verify, then submitted to the Local 757 members to vote on, Tsuneta said. If ratified, the agreement will be signed into effect June 1. The union hopes to hold the vote by the end of this month.
“We didn’t feel this was fantastic but a deal that we believe the membership will likely vote for,” Tsuneta said. “With 17% inflation over the last 3 years alone, we’re still way behind the actual increase in the Cost of Living.”
Cascade East Transit’s present job listings list hourly wages of $21.22 for a dispatcher and $24.18 for a full-time CDL bus driver. Both positions are in Redmond. By contrast, a CET listing for a non-Local 757 information technology technician position in Bend offers a monthly salary that ranges from $5,000 to $8,767 (or roughly $28.25 to $52.50 per hour).
“There’s no way the very low cost-of-living increases are keeping up with it at all.” — Thomas Tsuneta
“Making $21 an hour is tough,” Tsuneta said at the April 11 rally. “It’s below what they consider a living wage to be in Bend,” adding that some CET drivers are houseless or experiencing difficulties paying essential bills, such as for water.
CET drivers with CDL-certification have historically earned below-market wages, the union leader said. Bend-La Pine Schools, for example, presently offers bus drivers an hourly starting wage of $25.50, according to the district’s website. CET’s lower pay means drivers receive training, earn their CDL and still can’t afford to make ends meet, Tsuneta added. They take better-paying jobs elsewhere.
A living hourly wage in Bend, earned by two adults with two children, is $32.38, according to the Massachusetts Institute for Technology’s Living Wage Calculator. The estimate features geographically specific costs for food, childcare, health care, housing, transportation and other basic needs, according to the website.
“We’ve lost our economic buying power in the market and ability to pay bills while everything has gone up,” Tsuneta said. “There’s no way the very low cost-of-living increases are keeping up with it at all.”
Going into the April 11 meeting, Local 757 hoped to raise pay by 5% across the spectrum for CET bus drivers, dispatchers, mechanics and other workers. They also advocated for control mechanism to tamp spikes in health insurance premiums, said Jacob Foster, the union’s former liaison and a CET shop steward and dispatcher. In addition, union leaders lobbied for backpay related to the requested 5% increase, which would date back to the union employee wage scale that went into effect July 1, 2024.
Helen Guerrero-Randall, a retired medical librarian at St. Charles Health System, attended the April 11 rally to support the transit drivers for personal reasons.
“I’m a union child,” she said. “My father was a Teamster. He never had to worry about my teeth getting fixed. We had good vacations. I grew up thinking that was the norm, but it’s not anymore.
“Transit workers are essential workers, just like first responders,” Guerrero-Randall said. “They need to feel safe and they need a living wage.”
A CET bus driver rounded the corner past the rally. Grinning, he beeped the horn and pumped a fist at the rally-goers.
CET director Bob Townsend, who spoke to the Source Weekly on Jan. 30, said the agency has struggled to hire drivers despite active recruitment for the past five years, during which CET decreased service during and after COVID-19.
Tsuneta says the driver retention problem boils down to wages that are just too low.
Sam Pappas, a grocery store employee who moved to Bend from Illinois five years ago, caught wind of the April 11 rally through a friend’s group text message that promised “Ocean Rolls and solidarity.”
At the rally, Pappas stood waving a sign near a card table topped with pastries and coffee. “Public transportation is super important in a city that is growing as quickly as Bend,” he said. “I love unions and I love workers who want to come out.”
CET provides a variety of public transportation services in Central Oregon, including fixed bus routes in Bend and between regional cities. Dial-a-Ride buses transport low-income seniors and residents with disabilities in Bend and rural areas. The agency also operates recreational shuttles to Mt. Bachelor Resort, Lava Butte and the Ride the River shuttle which facilitates floating the Deschutes River.
The ATU Local 757, which is based in Portland, represents nearly 20 transit properties and bargaining units throughout Oregon and three in Washington state. The largest transit union in North America, according to the organization, it represents more than 200,000 members in the United States and Canada.
This article appears in Source Weekly April 10, 2025.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Everyone in Bend has lost their buying power. Join the crowd. Until Bend starts sticking it to the tourists instead of people who live here…….this will continue. We need a steep tourism tax. We need to stop using tax dollars to fund Visit Bend. We need our City to stop catering to developers. If people got as excited about all this and how poorly and corrupt our City is run as they do Palestine and Elon Musk……….we’d really get somewhere.