News and Media

Reported by Alexandra Skores for The Dallas Morning News.

Pilots and flight attendant unions are sounding alarms at an attempt in Congress to raise the mandatory retirement age for airline pilots by two years to 67.

The Securing Growth and Robust Leadership in American Aviation Act, which reauthorizes funding for the Federal Aviation Administration and aviation safety and infrastructure programs for the next five years, includes an amendment that would raise the mandatory retirement age for pilots from 65 to 67. House bill 3935 was approved by the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on June 14 after a House subcommittee tacked on the amendment to alter the age commercial airline pilots have to step down.

Reported by Marybeth Luczak for Railway Age.

Removing Surface Transportation Board (STB) Chair Martin J. Oberman or failing to reappoint him “would undermine the significant progress the Board has made during his tenure,” Transportation Trades Department (TTD), AFL-CIO President Greg Regan wrote in a June 13 letter to President Joe Biden, which followed a May 17 request that Biden revoke Oberman’s chairmanship and elevate Robert Primus to the position by RootsAction, The Freedom BLOC and the Revolving Door Project (RDP), which describes itself as an organization that “scrutinizes executive branch appointees to ensure they use their office to serve the broad public interest, rather than to entrench corporate power or seek personal advancement.”

“We view Chairman Oberman’s vote to approve the merger between Canadian Pacific Railway and Kansas City Southern Railway as fundamentally anathema to the Administration’s revival of antitrust enforcement,” RDP reported May 17, when it published the letter to President Biden. “Pro-competition measures have been the backbone of Biden-era economic policy, with revitalized enforcement from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice, National Labor Relations Board, and more. Allowing greater consolidation in the rail industry, which was already highly noncompetitive with only seven significant companies, is a severe blow to the government-wide effort to unrig markets ushered in by President Biden’s Executive order on Competition.

By Ripon Advance News Service.

All cargo aircraft in the United States would be equipped with intrusion-resistant cockpit doors that remain locked while in flight under a bipartisan bill introduced on June 7 by U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA).

The congressman signed on as the lead original cosponsor of the Cargo Flight Deck Security Act, H.R. 3909, alongside bill sponsor U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-IL) to restrict an air carrier from operating certain aircraft in all-cargo air transportation without meeting certain requirements for intrusion resistance, according to the congressional record summary.

Reported by Joanna Marsh for Freightwaves.

Rail labor groups are rallying around Surface Transportation Board Chairman Marty Oberman, saying calls to strip him of his position misdiagnose the root cause of the industry’s woes: operational challenges associated with precision scheduled railroading (PSR).

“We firmly believe that removing Chair Oberman or failing to reappoint him would undermine the significant progress the Board has made during his tenure,” said Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Department (TTD) of the AFL-CIO, in a Tuesday letter to President Joe Biden.

Washington, D.C. – Today, Congressman Mark DeSaulnier (CA-10), along with Congressman Drew Ferguson (R-GA), announced the introduction of bipartisan legislation to ensure fair labor standards are upheld by all airlines operating in the U.S. The Fair and Open Skies Act (H.R. 4021) would increase the United States Department of Transportation’s (DOT) powers to regulate unfair business practices from […]

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Congressmen Rob Menendez (D-NJ-08), Andrew Garbarino (R-NY-02), and John Garamendi (D-CA-08) introduced the Airline Employee Assault Prevention Act. This bipartisan legislation would protect passengers and land-side airline employees such as ticket agents and airport workers by fixing a jurisdictional issue that prevents the FAA from implementing plans that would provide assault protections. “Assault and […]

Rail labor groups are rejecting efforts by CPKC to extend and potentially make permanent a waiver that enables the Class I railroad from its Calgary, Alberta, office to dispatch trains at three locations near the U.S.-Canada border. Labor groups say allowing the waiver to become permanent would set a bad precedent and encourage other Class I railroads to use waivers as a way to evade safety regulations.

“CP’s request for a permanent waiver from these requirements, if granted, would not only degrade rail safety, but set a dangerous precedent that would open Pandora’s box to all sorts of similar requests to sidestep and undermine the regulatory process,” said a submission last week from the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO to Karl Alexy, who serves as associate administrator for rail safety at the Federal Railroad Administration.

CPKC (NYSE: CP) currently has a waiver that enables the railway to not be bound to comply with federal regulations requiring the dispatching of U.S. rail operations to occur on U.S. soil. That regulation was created following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to 14 labor groups that signed the submission to FRA.

Unions hope a $30 million grant to electrify tractors in a Long Beach, California, port terminal’s final push to become the world’s first zero-emissions facility will serve as a bulwark against lost jobs in an era of energy transition and increasing automation.

The money from U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration for Long Beach Container Terminal’s purchase of 60 electric yard tractors that haul shipping containers from stacks to waiting trains comes with strings attached: the new equipment must be operated by humans.

The drivers of those new tractors will labor alongside more than 100 automated vehicles and 70 driverless container-stacking cranes at America’s most automated port terminal, which aims to be emissions free by 2030.

WASHINGTON – Today, aviation leaders warned how the nation’s largest regional air carrier, SkyWest Airlines, is attempting to undermine aviation safety with its petition to the Department of Transportation (DOT) to operate under public charter rules. Air Line Pilots Association, Int’l (ALPA) President Captain Jason Ambrosi and Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) President Sara Nelson […]

Unions for pilots and flight attendants, as well as former Rep. Peter DeFazio, on Tuesday, made an 11th-hour pitch urging DOT to reject a proposal from SkyWest Airlines to operate charter flights under less stringent FAA regulations that would allow their pilots to fly with less than 1,500 hours of training.

Former House Transportation Chair DeFazio, ALPA President Jason Ambrosi, AFA-CWA President Sara Nelson and Transportation Trades Department President Greg Regan all argued that SkyWest’s application to conduct flights under Part 135, which governs charter flights, is an attempt to circumvent safety rules and could potentially cut service to some rural airports.