By james art 
After voting last week to support the call of the leaders of the strike, the workers of the Batton Rouge bus system emphasized their threat from a walk to the Board of Commissioners for the Transportation of the capital on Tuesday night if their demands for higher salaries and higher salaries and Improved safety are not met.
The members of the Union called the leadership and stated that the cat management did not meet their requests and did not take recent negotiations for a new treaty with a seriously united transit union local 1546.
“I’ve been here for 10 and a half. The fight is real.” The Union member and the cat operator Falesha Augustus said in tears outside the Tuesday meeting. “I put in a lot of cats. Now all I can do is pray and I hope God fixes it before ATO has to take it on the street.”
Recent negotiations between the Union and the leadership have stopped, said Union President George Decuir, advocating on behalf of the operators, he said they were making $ 4 to $ 5 less an hour than their colleagues in other parishes. After the two sides stopped, things turned to an independent intermediary, although the situation has not improved since then.
“We didn’t get a cat’s response,” he said. “The intermediary also did not say he had received an answer from them.”
“This will be our last resort”
Although the Council of Commissioners has no power to negotiate a contract between the two, its role would be to give up any consent of the parties. Decuir said it was important for the Union to show the board management and cats that the threat of strike should not be taken slightly.
“This will significantly affect the services within the Baton Rouge,” he said. “We don’t want to break our riding. We don’t want to break the city. This will be our last resort.”
CATS members and supporters The Union turn their backs on board members during a meeting before they leave the CATS headquarters on Tuesday, January 28, 2025.
The Union President said the cat management had left the Union “no choice” except to approve a strike; 102 of the 106 members of the local union voted last week to resolve a strike. Decuir said the Union is still hoping for the two parties to find an agreement and avoid interrupting the riders service.
In a statement read during the meeting, President Melissa Dejeneres called CATS employees the “backbone” of the organization and assured them that the board “understood the seriousness of the situation” while noting CATS’s current financial situation.
“In advance, we served 200,000 riders a month. Today, this number has dropped to 120,000 riders a month,” she said. “While we are committed to maintaining our workforce, we must bear in mind the financial restrictions under which we work as a public agency.”
Union members who joined NAACP, AFL-CIO, together Baton Rouge and others, were dressings on their faces inside the board room, which meant “the injury caused by cat management.”
“I don’t have a crystal ball”
After the meeting, Degenez gave a little idea if he thought an agreement would be reached.
“I am one of the nine members on board and I don’t know the answer,” Degeneres said. “I know they work very hard. I hope everyone will work in good faith, but I don’t know. I don’t have a crystal ball.”
Although the onset is a great concern for the President of the board, as this would affect a significant number of residents of Baton Rouge.
“I am concerned that people who need to get to work cannot get involved. The people who have to get to the doctor’s office cannot reach the doctor’s office. These are things I am worried about,” said Degeneres. “I hope the two can get together and come to a contract we can approve.”
Falesha Augustus, a member of CATS Union, deletes a tear while talking about increasing costs of living during an interview after a walk at the cat headquarters on Tuesday, January 28, 2025.
While the board met privately at an executive session, more than five dozen protesters chanted the “Atu” and “We move this city” out and talked to the difficulties that they face as cat employees who believe that management does not understand.
“Every day, we are constantly spitting out, cursed and attacked,” Decuir said.
Ines Bowie, a member of the local ATU Executive Board, cites the lack of a policy prohibiting firearms on CATS buses, something she said operators should handle every day.
“We have no protection except a glass shield,” Bowie said.