Reported by People’s World.
Corporate greed by the railroad lobby sidetracked an important rail safety bill in the last Congress that would have forced all freight railroads to put safety and people over profits, rail union leaders say. So now they and three lawmakers are trying again, hoping for a helper in the vice presidential chair.
But whether J.D. Vance, then an Ohio Republican senator and a co-sponsor of the safety bill that died, will really help is an open question. He’s part of the Republican Trump administration that is hell-bent on smashing federal rules and turning business free—free to prey on the rest of us.
For the nation’s six big Class I freight railroads, that means leaving them free to keep cutting costs by cutting people, via so-called Precision Scheduled Railroading, cutting corners on inspections, pressuring workers to cover up safety problems and shoveling cash in dividends, stock and pay–$146 billion total in the last decade–to their Wall Street capitalist backers.
The object of the lawmakers and the eight rail union leaders: To resurrect that rail safety legislation and either get it through Congress as two stand-alone laws or wrapped into a giant federal transportation programs reauthorization bill. The two measures were introduced on February 4.
“What’s happening in the railroad industry is not OK,” said Smart-TD’s Jared Cassidy. The workers “still face challenges, headwinds, obstacles and problems” in making sure trains run safely, added Cassidy, the union’s alternate legislative director.
“You have a railroad lobby that does everything possible to prevent safety costs. They’re focused on profit, not on men and women” who work on the railroads—or live near them.
“If you eliminate the precursors to the accidents” by forcing the railroads to put safety before shareholders “you eliminate the accidents,” explains Mike Baldwin, president of the Railroad Signalmen, one of several rail union leaders at the February 3 zoom press conference.
Titus and Cassidy joined AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department President Greg Regan, who organized the session, along with co-sponsoring Reps. Emilia Sykes, D-Ohio, and Chris Deluzio, D-Pa. Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, sent a short video.
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