BATON ROUGE- The Capital Area Transit System's bus operators are on track to receive pay raises next year as part of a newly negotiated agreement between CATS and its employees' union.
    
Trainees will earn $14 an hour when they are starting out, and their salaries will increase to $15 an hour once they finish training. Pay scales will start at $15 an hour and increase to $19 an hour during the duration of nine years of employment.
    
In the past, the pay scale began at $13.25 an hour and would rise to $17.75 an hour over the course of 20 years.
    
CATS CEO Bob Mirabito said the pay increases should not inflate the agency's payroll costs by more than 5 percent over the next two years.