Jackson asks company for ‘contingency plan’ to keep buses running if JTRAN workers strike ...Middle East

Jackson officials have asked a private company that runs the city’s publicly funded bus system for a “contingency plan” that could prevent some riders from being stranded if the union representing JTRAN employees goes on strike. 

A mid-June vote to strike by the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1208 surprised first-term Mayor John Horhn and his administration, said Pieter Teeuwissen, the city’s chief administrative officer. Although the strike has been authorized, union members have not announced when it will begin. Since the vote, city officials have been talking with MV Transportation, the Texas-based company that won JTRAN’s contract in 2024. 

“Once MV advises of its contingency plan, the city will consider that information and take appropriate action, if any,” Teeuwissen told Mississippi Today.  

The vote to strike by JTRAN workers puts Horhn’s administration in an unusual position in Mississippi, where elected officials rarely go toe-to-toe with unions because state law prohibits public employees from striking. 

But Horhn, the son of a union leader, would not be the first Jackson mayor to face striking bus workers: When the union went on strike in 2024, his predecessor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, initially did not let MV Transportation use replacement drivers, according to company officials. 

The strike breakers sat in hotels. After two weeks, the city decided to let MV Transportation use its contingent drivers for “life-sustaining trips,” such as dialysis appointments, said Leland Peterson, a senior vice president. 

“The strike ended the next day,” he said. 

Christine Welch, the city’s deputy director of transportation, did not respond immediately to Mississippi Today’s questions this week about the city permitting MV Transportation to use replacement drivers during the 2024 strike.

JTRAN represents a lifeline for low-income and disabled Jacksonians who use the bus to get to work, medical appointments or the grocery store. Though JTRAN is a publicly funded service, its unionized employees work for MV Transportation, which calls itself the largest privately-owned transportation company in America. 

The two sides have been negotiating a collective bargaining agreement out of public view since a previous version expired in December. The union has been seeking competitive pay raises, while MV Transportation has proposed a number of changes to JTRAN, including new safety policies and the ability to hire drivers without commercial licenses to operate smaller vehicles for on-demand “microtransit” services.

But in late May, tensions came to a head after the union learned that Horhn’s administration was presenting the city council with a plan drafted by MV Transportation that would trim 20% of JTRAN’s roughly $9 million budget.

The cost-cutting proposal would eliminate two fixed routes, cease Saturday service and shorten the work day by two hours. It would also use the city’s existing fleet of paratransit vehicles to expand the microtransit services, raising concerns among a vocal contingent of disabled riders who rely on JTRAN.

Gary Coles, MV Transportation’s chief customer success officer, called the proposal a win for all involved because it would lead to savings in the existing contract the company would use to pay JTRAN workers more.

“We felt it was a path to being able to help the city with their budget issues that they were having right now,” he said. 

The union didn’t see it that way. 

After Charles Tornes, the union president, emailed every city council member on May 29 to voice concerns that the plan undermined their negotiations, Teeuwissen pulled a contract amendment cpntaining the proposal from the council’s agenda on June 2 and referred it to a committee. 

“Anything that has to do with JTRAN deserves a full vetting and while we certainly are concerned about cost, we also have to be concerned about those we do serve with JTRAN,” Teeuwissen told the council. 

Still, Teeuwissen, who has been leading a charge to tighten the city’s budget amid a sizable deficit, warned council members that JTRAN wouldn’t make it through the current fiscal year without additional money.

The shortfall is in part due to the unexpectedly high cost of gas this year, Teeuwissen said, as JTRAN buses get four miles to the gallon. 

“Buses are expensive,” he said.

Out of a $330 million budget, the city pays roughly $9 million for its contract with MV Transportation. The company’s proposed overhaul would cut about $1.8 million from that, Coles said. 

“We stop losing money, which we’ve been losing basically since we got there,” he told Mississippi Today. 

After the union announced its intent to strike, Coles said he spoke to Angela Brown, director of Jackson’s Planning and Development Department, and she asked him how the company could keep the buses running. 

“If, in fact, a strike does happen we are hopeful that we are able to bring services to bear to at least provide services to those essential services like medical care,” Coles said. 

The majority of JTRAN’s funding comes from the city of Jackson, with fares generating just $378,000 in revenue in 2024, according to data that JTRAN reported to the federal government. Most riders pay $1.50, while paratransit riders pay $2. In 1990, it cost the city $3 million to operate JTRAN, with fares – which were just 60 cents – bringing in $600,000, according to archival news reports.

It is common for fares to make up a small portion of a transit system’s operating revenues, according to Jacob Wasserman, a researcher at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. 

“It is a social service anywhere except the densest parts of New York and San Francisco,” he said. “Until we build our cities a certain way, that’s going to be its main purpose.”

JTRAN has received federal funding in the past, but it didn’t support operating expenses, according to federal reports. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded the system more than $13 million to upgrade its buses. 

That same year, Lumumba announced changes to JTRAN, including hundreds of new signs and 12 redesigned bus routes. 

“We now look like any city in the United States of America,” Welch, the deputy director of transportation, said at a March 2024 event unveiling the changes. 

But when it comes to ridership, JTRAN lags behind bus systems in peer cities. American Community Survey data shows that in Jackson, fewer people use the bus as their primary means of transportation to work than in Montgomery, Alabama, or Little Rock, Arkansas. 

“In other words, JTRAN’s return on investment in transit is well below that of similar transit agencies,” according to a 2022 transit study undertaken by the Lumumba administration. 

City data shows JTRAN gives tens of thousands of rides a month, though the exact number of people served is unknown. When asked for the number of people who ride the bus, a city spokesperson told Mississippi Today to submit a public records request. 

Jacksonians who do ride the bus really need the service, according to riders interviewed by Mississippi Today. 

Zachary Austin, a 57-year-old employee at the Grocery Depot in Westland Plaza, takes the bus to work every day and has done so on-and-off for the past 16 years. 

“That’s my only transportation,” he said during an interview at downtown’s Union Station. 

A few years ago, Austin said he had a car but a drunk driver totaled it. During the 2024 bus strike, he said he found ways to get to work, but he heard that others who couldn’t lost their jobs.

Ward 5 Council Member Vernon Hartley said he is hoping the company will keep the buses running if the union goes on strike. 

“I don’t get the calls from the folks asking about union busting,” he said. “I get the calls from the folks saying they’re going to miss their dialysis appointment or they can’t get to the grocery store.”

Tornes, the union president, said he’s heard from Ward 3 Council Member Kenneth Stokes and Ward 7 Council Member Kevin Parkinson but has yet to speak with Horhn or Teeuwissen about the potential strike. 

“We’ve been chartered for a long time and to ignore that this is a unionized property is beyond me,” he said. 

During last year’s campaign, Horhn won endorsements from the Communication Workers of America and its affiliate, the Mississippi Alliance of State Employees. He was also endorsed by the city’s firefighter union. 

Horhn’s father, Charlie Horhn, was a union organizer and leader in Jackson and served as the president of the Mississippi AFL-CIO.

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