WI: Madison, bus drivers close to agreeing on a new contract

Madison and the union representing Metro Transit bus drivers appear close to agreeing on a contract, eight months after the last one expired.

The tentative agreement — released by Teamsters Local 120, which represents Metro Transit bus drivers — includes paid leave for workers assaulted on the job and an annual pay raise on par with other city employees.

It also includes an option for drivers who were physically assaulted to take two days of paid leave for recovery, as well as paid leave for the remaining shift of any employee confirmed to have been the victim of non-physical assaults.

Those provisions come amid a spike this year in bad behavior on buses.

Between Jan. 1 and May 23, there were five cases of bus drivers being physically assaulted, according to data provided by Madison police. By comparison, six were reported, total, between 2023 and 2024.

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So far in 2025, there also have been 45 non-physical assaults, which include interfering with or verbally abusing drivers, since the start of the year — equal to the total number of non-physical assaults in 2024, according to Metro Transit.

“There was a pretty significant spike ... which is pretty abnormal for Madison,” Bryan Mulrooney, chief operating officer of Metro Transit, told the Wisconsin State Journal.

Earlier this year, a Metro bus crashed into a restaurant on the East Side after a woman attacked the driver. The woman was arrested and charged with second-degree reckless endangerment, battery to a public transit officer and disorderly conduct.

Mulrooney said there have been no physical assaults to drivers over the past four months.

Under the new contract, as released by Local 120, drivers would receive the same pay increases as other city employees, including police, firefighters and some non-unionized staff, who received a 3% raise at the start of 2025.

The contract drivers have been working under, which expired on Dec. 31, included 2% salary raises in each of the past two years. Starting bus operators are paid about $52,000, which is roughly $4,000 less than what they would have made in 2019 when adjusted for inflation.

Also included in the tentative agreement, which could last through 2027:

• 30 workdays paid leave for organ donors;
• Mileage reimbursement for personal vehicle use during working hours; and,
• Employer-provided safety shoes and winter clothes.

In February, a large group of Metro bus drivers reported being absent while others refused to work overtime, grinding the public transit system to a near halt, just months after the rollout of the city’s new Bus Rapid Transit system.

Under their current, and the potential new contract, the drivers’ union is not allowed to organize or assist workers that strike or impede work in accordance with Wisconsin state law.

City and Metro officials were not aware of the potential agreement being posted on Local 120’s website on Sept. 3, city spokesperson Dylan Brogan said on a call with the State Journal on Monday.

When asked about the validity of what was included in the union’s draft, Brogan said the city does not comment on pending contract agreements but that the two groups were nearing a deal.

Local 120 could not be reached for comment.

[Editor's note: City officials knew about the potential agreement, but did not know that the union had posted it online. That distinction was left out of an earlier version of this story.]

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