Contract talks are scheduled to resume next week between leaders of Capital Area Transit System employees union and the bus system’s administration.
Negotiations over a new union contract broke down early last month, when union leaders reportedly walked out of a meeting with CATS CEO Bob Mirabito, whom they accused of intimidation tactics. In the weeks since, CATS board chair Donna Collins-Lewis says she has met several times with Mirabito and has been trying to find ways to repair frayed relations between the agency’s top brass and its rank and file.
To that end, Collins-Lewis has asked Mirabito to bring in a conflict resolution expert to meet with all the system’s employees in hopes of easing ongoing tension.
“We need to do some conflict resolution to quell that sense of us versus them, the administration versus the operators,” says Collins-Lewis, who also serves on the Metro Council. “Bob works for CATS. The operators work for CATS. They all work for the same agency … and we’ve got to get it together.”
A particularly contentious CATS board meeting in June, at which several operators addressed the board with complaints and concerns, prompted Collins-Lewis to come up with the idea of bringing in a conflict resolution expert, she says. No one has yet been retained to provide the services and no timeline for any meetings among CATS employees has been scheduled.
In a statement, Mirabito says he is “looking forward to working with both the board and all employees to continue the forward progress of the agency.”
Read a profile of Mirabito in the new issue of Business Report.
—Stephanie Riegel
