MBTA Commuter Rail Workers and Keolis Reach Agreement on Contract; MBTA Extends Keolis Contract
The Plymouth County Observer, No. 137
(BOSTON) — MBTA commuter railway workers represented by the Transport Workers Union Local 2054 reached agreement on a new contract last month with Keolis, the French multinational transportation corporation which runs the MBTA’s commuter rail lines, winning a 23% increase in wages, a $2,000 signing bonus, and, critically, paid sick time.
“It was an incredible campaign that resulted in a historic contract,” TWU Local 2054 President Ed Flaherty said. “This contract will have a ripple effect across the industry.”
“This is really a David and Goliath victory,” said TWU International President John Samuelsen. “This corporation is huge. It has operations and holdings around the world. When they refused to bargain in good faith, we launched a strategic campaign against them, relentlessly pummeling them with a wide array of tactics. We fought back and we prevailed.”1
Jake O’Neill, Manager of Media Relations and Public Affairs for Keolis, said: “Keolis is pleased to have reached a mutually beneficial deal with TWU. As we have been saying for months, negotiations with all of our unions have been, and continue to be, productive. Building upon the success of our negotiations with TWU, and based in mutual respect, Keolis looks forward to continued progress at the collective bargaining table with the remainder of our union partners.”2
(The view from the Kingston Line: The Jones River, the Jones River Landing, and, at right, Route 3. Credit — Ben Cronin.)
Coach Cleaners received a significant wage increase under the new contract, according to TWU. “Their star[t]ing pay rate immediately moves from $19.65 an hour to approximately $32 an hour — and will increase by 66% over the life of the 5-year contract,” according to a press release from the union. In addition, the new contract will eliminate “the long-standing, five-year progression to reach the top Cleaners’ rate will be now scrapped,” the union said.
Significantly, the new contract is retroactive to July of 2023. It contains annual raises of 5%, 4%, 4.5%, 4.5%, and 5%, and the workers will receive wages retroactively, with an average of $3,000 for Cleaners and $7,500 for Car Inspectors.3
Mr. Flaherty, the President of TWU Local 2054, also noted to The Plymouth County Observer that the contract was approved by an overwhelming margin: over 98% of the members who voted did so to approve the new contract, with 75% of the union members voting on the contract.
As I reported in April, Keolis is a French transit company, which describes itself on its website as “a global leader in the shared mobility market and a committed partner to public transport authorities around the world.” It was awarded the contract for running the MBTA’s commuter rail system in 2014. According to its website, the company has approximately 68,100 employees across 13 countries, and in 2020 had revenues of 7 billion euros (approximately $7.98 billion in US dollars at 2020 exchange rates). Keolis runs 29 tram networks, 5 regional rail networks with over 2,500 kilometers of track, 40,000 rental bicycles in France, and more than 450 kilometers of metro track.4
The Keolis Group is a holding company consisting of Groupe Keolis S.A.S. “and all the companies in the Keolis, Keomotion and EFFIA branches.” Groupe Keolis S.A.S. “is a simplified joint stock company. Its management is entrusted to an Executive Board, composed of a single member, Marie-Ange Debon.”5
Ms. Debon took the helm at Keolis in August, 2020. She is a 1989 graduate of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA), an elite institution of higher learning in France that educates the country’s future government and business leaders, and roughly equivalent to Cambridge and Oxford in the United Kingdom, and the Ivy League in the United States.6
According to Keolis’s website, 70% of the company’s shares are held by the Societe Nationale de Chemins de fer Francais (SNCF), the French national railway company; the remaining 30% are held by Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec (CDPQ), a Canadian institutional investor with approximately $434 billion Canadian dollars in assets, and offices located across nine countries.7
According to the Transportation Workers Union of America, SNCF had approximately $45.5 billion in revenue in 2023 — about the same as Coca-Cola.8
The union used a number of tactics in its campaign for a new contract, according to its press release, “includ[ing] sending a barrage of digital messages to Massachusetts State Legislature members revealing how the carpetbagging company grossly underpaid workers here – and then sent profits back to France to subsidize transit operations over there. TWU also lobbied elected officials in the State House, leafletted commuter railroad riders, and flooded Keolis’ Paris headquarters with negative digital ads. The ads berated executives for Keolis’ miserable treatment of U.S. workers. Local 2054 also took a strike authorization vote,” the union stated.