TTD in the news

Reported by William Padmore for Nebraska Public Media.

Freight rail workers are threatening to strike pending ongoing contract negotiations with the carriers they work for. If a strike does happen, roughly 116,000 workers will bring freight rail in the country to a halt, bringing difficulties to an already suffering supply chain.

Railroads are a critical part of the nation’s supply chain. Every year tons of resources like petroleum, lumber, food, and even packages from Amazon are moved across the country to ports and rail yards.

Reported by Julie Sneider for Progressive Railroading.

As anticipated by many in the rail industry, the Federal Railroad Administration last month announced a proposed rulemaking that would require railroads to use a minimum of two-person train crews for all operations, with only a few exceptions.

If adopted, the new regulation would also establish minimum requirements for the location of crew members on a moving train.

Reported by Todd von Kampen for the North Platte Telegraph.

Bailey Yard workers are more prone to give up on railroading after three years of layoffs followed by COVID-19, a North Platte rail union leader told an AFL-CIO virtual “town hall” last week.

Mike Gage, president of Local 1920 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, spoke second among 15 U.S. members of individual craft unions during Thursday’s hour-long forum related to rail labor negotiations with the nation’s major railroads.

“The shortage of workers has really had an effect on us,” said Gage, a 17-year Union Pacific Railroad veteran at the world’s largest classification yard.

Reported by Mark Gruenberg for People’s World.

As the nation’s railroad worker unions presented their details for a new contract with the freight railroads to a Presidential Emergency Board, rank-and-file workers, upset with no contract since before the coronavirus pandemic, rallied with their leaders in Galesburg, Ill., to demand one. And they picked up wide labor and political support.

“What was inspiring was not just the rail workers there, but the members of other unions who came” in solidarity to the July 30 event, added AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department President Greg Regan, one of a lineup of speakers that day.

Reported by Naomi Craine for the Militant. 

More than 150 railroad workers, family members and their supporters joined in the “Galesburg Rally for Rail Labor” here July 30, one of a series of protests being organized by rail workers across the Midwest as part of their fight to win a new contract. This western Illinois town is a major hub for BNSF Railway, with freight lines spreading out in all directions.

The action brought together track maintenance workers, conductors, engineers and workers from other rail crafts. Eleven different unions are currently in contract negotiations together with the seven national Class 1 freight carriers, which includes BNSF, the second largest in the country. Participants marched around Central Park, a large downtown traffic circle, and listened to speakers.

Reported by Mel Buer for The Real News Network.

Last month, for The Real News, I reported on the egregious working conditions that rail workers on Class I freight railroads are facing, including punitive and inhumane attendance policies, chronic understaffing (after rail companies collectively laid off 30% of their workforce since 2015), stagnant wages, and dire safety threats as trains have gotten longer and heavier while rail carriers have simultaneously sought to reduce crew sizes down to one person. This long-simmering crisis recently came to a head when a coalition of negotiators representing more than 115,000 rail workers were unable to come to an agreement with the rail carriers, who have left workers without a contract for nearly three years. Even the National Mediation Board was unable to broker an agreement, declaring negotiations at an impasse on June 14, which opened the door for the unions to strike or for the carriers to initiate lockouts after a 30-day “cooling off” period—unless, that is, the Biden administration intervened.

Reported by Jeff Schuhrke for Jacobin. 

US labor law is designed to prevent railroad strikes like the kind that shook America in the past. But the constant cuts to staffing levels and erosion of conditions for rail workers could produce a national rail walkoff by September.

After thirty months of stalled contract negotiations amid the pandemic — all while enduring stagnant wages, heavier workloads, unsafe conditions, and draconian attendance policies — 115,000 fed-up US freight railroad workers are mobilizing for a possible national strike.

Reported by Aaron Gordon for Vice.

Freight rail workers are on the verge of striking for better pay and working conditions, a move that would cap years of stalled negotiations. In a recent vote, 99.5 percent of the members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), a union leading a coalition of freight rail workers in negotiations, authorized a strike.

If it was simply a matter of management versus labor, a strike would likely already have started. But rail workers occupy a peculiar area of labor law, one governed by a century-old federal law that gives Congress and the president wide powers to avert strikes, even though this labor remains the most powerful threat workers have to get better wages and working conditions.

Reported by Bill Stephens for Trains.

The Surface Transportation Board would get more teeth under a shipper-friendly bill that would reauthorize the agency that regulates freight railroads.

The Freight Rail Shipping Fair Market Act, introduced Tuesday, would give regulators more authority to deal with service emergencies, require railroads to include service standards in contracts with customers, and give shippers the ability to slap fees on railroads that delay privately owned freight cars.

Reported by Nikos Papatolios for Rail Freight.

Rail operators in the US will be required to maintain two-person crews under a proposed new rule by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to enhance train safety.

The move goes against industry efforts to reduce the manning of locomotives to one person.
The FRA said it would “carefully evaluate” each request for fewer than two crew members, supporting documentation submitted by a railroad, and the input of employees, communities, and the public.