Rail & Labor News from RWU
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Weekly Digest Number 32 - August 8th, 2023 | |
Welcome to the RWU Rail & Labor News! This news bulletin is produced and emailed out each Tuesday morning. We hope you find each week's news and information useful. If so, please share with co-workers, friends, and colleagues. If you like, you can sign them up to get all the news from RWU HERE. Or forward them the link. Note: If you read over this news bulletin each week, you will be sure to never miss the important news of what is going on in the railroad world from a worker's perspective!
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Editor's Note: Railroad car inspectors used to have time to properly inspect trains. One of many hallmarks of PSR was to reduce those inspection times which directly creates situation like East Palestine. From RWU's vantage its pretty damn obvious who and what ca\used the derailment. | |
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Podcast with Jason Cox, Brotherhood of Railway Carmen
The Norfolk Southern train derailment and "controlled release" of toxic vinyl chloride in East Palestine, Ohio, was an avoidable catastrophe. Long before the train cars crashed on Feb. 3 and residents' lives were turned completely upside down, railroad workers had been warning anyone who would listen that the relentless cost-cutting and profit-maximizing practices implemented on the freight rail system by greedy rail executives and their Wall Street shareholders would endanger workers and the public, and they were right.
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Editor's Note: Contracting out of union railroad jobs has been a scourge for years. Cynical for BNSF to deliberately downsize its maintenance workforce and then cry the blues that they have to contract out these jobs. | |
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BMWED Website Published: Aug 1 2023 1:09PM
The BMWED has sued BNSF Railway in federal court to combat the carrier’s bad faith in dealing with the Union by its depletion of its Maintenance of Way workforce and its blatant disregard of contractual obligations intended to protect our members and their work.
Since 2016, BNSF employees in the Maintenance of Way craft have decreased by 18 percent despite obligations within the Railway Labor Act and other negotiated collectively bargaining agreements. In 2016, BNSF employed around 7,122 MOW workers. By 2019, that number dropped to 6,446. Currently, about 5,805 employees remain in the carrier’s MOW department. During the same period, BNSF’s use of contractors to perform maintenance of way work more than doubled.
Over that same period, BNSF’s amount of trackage, bridges and structures requiring maintenance has not materially changed, meaning 82 percent of the 2016 workforce oversees the same infrastructure.
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Editor's Note: It all still comes down to labor "efficiency" in the service of greed... | |
Editor's Note: Why is the state of Colorado subsidizing both UP and Utah's foray into the dirtiest oil possible/? It's hard to believe that a multimillion dollar asset is being leased to a fortune 500 company for peanuts. What is the true cost and value of this tunnel? | |
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[no byline] - Trains July 30, 2023
Colorado opponents of the oil-train traffic expected to be generated by the Uinta Basin Railway may attempt to use Union Pacific’s soon-to-expire lease on the Moffat Tunnel as leverage in their effort to fight the Utah project, the website Colorado Newsline reports.
The 99-year lease UP inherited in its merger with Southern Pacific — under which the railroad pays $12,000 a year for use of the state-owned tunnel — expires on Jan. 6, 2025. Kate McIntire, a regional manager for the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, told Colorado Newsline she has been tasked with “developing our list of concerns, potential opportunities, roles, responsibilities, and ways stakeholders would like to ensure they’re involved in the negotiation.”
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By Nicholas Malfitano Jul 28, 2023
Amtrak believes that the engineer of one of its trains which crashed and derailed in Philadelphia in 2015 and is now suing the transit company, has failed to state indemnification claims upon which relief could be granted.
Bostian has incurred more than $400,000 in defending the criminal action brought against him by the Attorney General of Pennsylvania in Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Bostian. Bostian was found not guilty on all counts, in the criminal matter brought against him by the Attorney General in Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Bostian.”
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Editor's Note: Given the fact that yet another trainee has been killed (see Monday's special bulletin) this is obviously long overdue and it took the lives of two workers to focus attention on safety, however empty this response is. | |
Progressive Railroading Staff
CSX and the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers–Transportation Division (SMART-TD) yesterday announced they've partnered to extend CSX’s conductor training program to five weeks from four to provide new hires with more hands-on experience before they begin on-the-job training (OJT).
The extra week of training at the CSX Training Center in Atlanta will focus on performing tasks in a field setting. This will increase trainees’ exposure to rail-car switching scenarios, radio communication, securement of equipment, brake tests and other fundamentals of the conductor’s role.
CSX developed the extended training program in consultation with SMART-TD, which represents the Class I's train crew employees.
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Editor's Note: Once again it makes sense that the carriers and the unions are in cahoots to fund RRB as it is in all our interests. Every railroad worker needs to get behind RRB. If you are not yet a NARVRE member click HERE to join the National Association of Retired and Veteran Railroad Employees | |
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The Railroad Retirement Board’s (RRB) ability to process retirements and sickness benefits for railroad employees and retirees “living in every state and every congressional district” would be “severely” impacted by the limitation on RRB’s administrative funding included in the fiscal year (FY) 2024 House Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS) appropriations bill, the Association of American Railroads (AAR), American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association (ASLRRA), and Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD) told
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Editor's Note: He looks nice... Vena has already proven himself a Wall Street hack, a big fan of workforce reduction, long and heavy trains, skimping on maintenance and inspection, all hallmarks of PSR. The unions are right to condemn his appointment as CEO at the biggest Class I. | |
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By Bill Stephens | July 31, 2023
Incoming Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena will not get a honeymoon with rail labor when he begins leading the railroad on Aug. 14.
Vena accelerated UP’s shift to a low-cost Precision Scheduled Railroading operating model. During Vena’s tenure, overall employment at UP fell 21%, according to Surface Transportation Board data, including a 43% reduction in the number of shop workers, a 19% drop in maintenance of way employment, and a 14% decline in train and engine crews.
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Editor's Note: It unconscionable that BNSF in less than one year was responsible for two cataclysmic Amtrak train wrecks that killed seven people, injured hundreds, and destroyed upwards of a dozen railcars, already in short supply. In both wrecks, the hazardous conditions that existed were well known, yet no action was taken in advance to avooid these tragedies. | |
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Joanna Marsh Monday, July 31, 2023
“Poor track conditions” of a track owned by BNSF may have contributed to a fatal September 2021 accident involving an Amtrak train derailment in Joplin, Montana, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
But NTSB’s investigation report also points to wider questions on how the freight rail industry should deploy technological tools such as autonomous track monitoring systems and what role visual inspections by a human inspector might play in inspections. The federal agency is recommending that the Class I railroads increase both types of inspections.
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Editor's Note: In this day and age - especially in the wake of the East Palestine hot-box caused disaster - how the same carrier - Norfolk Southern - not four months later could act so carelessly to put another train on the ground defies belief. | |
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The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has released its preliminary report for the investigation of Norfolk Southern’s (NS) July 6, 2023, coal train derailment near Elliston, Va. The agency said future activity will focus on the wheelset and reconditioned bearings of the 71st railcar of the 105-car train; NS’s use of hot bearing detectors (HBD); and NS’s operating rules for defective equipment detectors.
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Editor's Note: While it appears that this contract will be ratified by the membership, there are rumblings of discontent. The one local that voted it down is the largest local party to the UPS contract. And there is a "vote no" movement to reject the tentative agreement. The rank and file will have the last word. Votes counted in a few weeks time. | |
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Mark Solomon Monday, July 31, 2023
By a vote of 161-1, Teamsters local unions representing 340,000 full- and part-time workers at UPS Inc. voted Monday to endorse the tentative five-year agreement reached with the delivery giant on July 25 and recommend its passage by the full membership.
Of the 176 local unions with UPS members, 14 affiliates failed to show up to a meeting in Washington, D.C., to review the tentative agreement, the Teamsters said.
The agreement now moves to the rank-and-file, which will have the chance to vote on ratification from Aug. 3-22.
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Editor's Note: Once the railroad is sold it is gone forever. The citizens of Cincinnati have a crucial resource they should hold on to for generations to come. Selling off a public asset to an irresponsible rail corporation is simply a 'get rich quick' scheme that is a disservice to the citizens of the Queen City. | |
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The people of Cincinnati will face a one-of-a-kind decision this fall when they vote on whether to sell Cincinnati Southern Railway, a 140-year-old asset that, until recently, many city residents didn’t even know was theirs.
Some railroad workers and local activists oppose the sale. Railroad Workers United, an advocacy group made up of members of various railroad unions, has called the $1.6 billion offer “paltry,” and encouraged local voters to oppose the sale in November. The group says freight companies like Norfolk Southern have prioritized their own short-term profits over the long-term health of the railroad system generally — for freight as well as for passengers. It has also called for public ownership of all the railways in the U.S.
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Editor's Note: Railroad workers ae often disolusioned with the direction their union leadership is taking. For those workers who want to change the direction of their union and want to build a more militant, robust and effective organization, don't miss this opportunity to learn how to make change in both your local union and international. | |
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Event Date: August 09, 2023
A rank-and-file reform caucus is a group of members who set out to transform their union—establishing a new vision and organizing to make it real.
With the help of caucuses, new leaders in the Teamsters and the Auto Workers are fighting to reverse years of concessions. The Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators in the Chicago Teachers Union showed us how a union can use its power to fight for a whole city and for the public good.
This workshop will be led by Labor Notes board member Ellen David Friedman. It is free and open to union members at all stages of caucus organizing. If you can't make it this time, don't worry—it will be held again.
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Editor's Note: Most railroads were built 100 or more years ago with massive support structures built with cheap labor when rail was king. Today's decayed rail infrastructure is an orphan of this decimated industry. Sadly these five bridges are the tip of thie iceberg. Maybe some of the $250 billion in railroad stock buybacks could have gone to physical plant rehabilitation. | |
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Jennifer McLawhorn, Managing Editor
After investigations into dilapidated train bridges in Ohio, both of its senators sent letters to Norfolk Southern and CSX. The letters ask both Class 1s for “tailored action plans” with respect to how they intend to address and repair said bridges. Inspections show some of the bridges are over one-hundred years old with consistently-falling debris that is “threatening passing traffic.”
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Editor's Note: RWU member and fired UP locomotive engineer of 17 years speaks out against the industry that fired him. | |
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Max Alvarez interviews Michael Paul Lindsey to discuss the greed and corruption of the rail industry in the US.
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Weekly Derailment Department | | | | |
