JTRAN employees will return to work Monday under a new tentative agreement with MV Transportation, putting an end to the monthlong strike between the two parties.
Employees will see their pay immediately increase by about 5%. Starting pay will rise from $17.18 to $18.04 and senior pay from $23 to $24.15. Workers will receive an additional 3% increase over the next two years.
The proposal was ratified Thursday by a 29–9 vote and addresses the union’s demands for better pay and benefits.
“We’re just glad that it’s over,” Local 1208 president Charles Tornes Jr. said. “It’s hot out there in Jackson, Mississippi, weather.”
The final agreement is set to be voted on next week.
The new agreement also addresses union concerns with MV Transportation’s previous proposal to the city. The plan sought to cut two bus routes, eliminate Saturday service and allow MV to hire drivers without commercial licenses for microtransit services, a ride-hailing system.
JTRAN routes 70 and 20 — which provide service to the Ellis and Woodrow Wilson neighborhoods — will continue in addition to Saturday service. MV is limited to hiring five drivers without a commercial license but the limit rises to seven if JTRAN falls beneath 40 active workers.
Additional provisions add Martin Luther King Jr. Day to the holiday calendar and creates an accident review board within the company. The board will include one representative from the Amalgamated Transit Union and MV Transportation.
With the new agreement comes compromises for both parties. The union did not gain lunch breaks. Provisions for workplace incidents will remain the same — meaning employees will go unpaid if placed on administrative leave.
Tornes said some of the issues not agreed upon are a work in progress.
In statement late Friday, the company asserted that it “delivered exceptional operational performance, ensuring 100% service fulfillment for scheduled paratransit passengers and restoring all 12 regular fixed routes to full operation early in the work stoppage.”
Though publicly funded, JTRAN employees have worked for private Texas-based company MV Transportation since 2024 under a $9-million contract with the city. The contract is set to expire Dec. 31, 2027.
Tornes told Misissippi Today that he doesn’t see a path forward with MV and predicts that another company will take over once bids reopen.
“Companies come and go. But at the end of the day, we’ve been chartered since 1939 at JTRAN ATU. We’re gonna be there”
The two parties had been negotiating a new agreement since December after their previous contract expired. Tensions boiled over in late May after union members learned that Mayor Horn’s administration was planning to present MV’s proposal to the City Council — something members previously said would undermine their negotiations.
JTRAN employees would vote to strike two weeks later.
The company’s contingency plan, which was sought by the city, saw outside workers flown into Jackson in order to continue bus services.
In a paratransit meeting on July 15, MV senior vice president Leland Paterson said 11 of 12 fixed routes were on the road and that they were 50% on time the first day workers went on strike.
This is not the first time a strike has happened under the city’s contract with MV Transportation. JTRAN workers previously went on strike in September 2024 — halting all bus services in the city for 14 days. The strike ended after seven mediated sessions.
UPDATE, Aug. 24, 2026: This story adds a statement from MV Transportation.