News and Media

Reported by Trains.

The House of Representatives will vote today (Wednesday, Nov. 30) on legislation to impose a settlement in the labor dispute between railroads and unions, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday.

The House will also consider a separate motion to add seven paid sick days to the tentative agreement reached in September between the two sides, a move decried by the Association of American Railroads and welcomed by unions.

The House votes will set in motion a process that could end the possibility of a national rail strike well ahead of the Dec. 9 deadline.

America’s Workforce Radio with Rick Smith.

TTD President Greg Regan joins America’s Work Force Radio to discuss the recently unveiled 2023 legislative agenda, ratified at TTD’s semi-annual executive board meeting alongside 37 union affiliates.

Reported by Nick Mordowanec for Newsweek.

President Joe Biden’s call for congressional intervention to avoid an economically debilitating railroad strike is being met with blowback from unions and politicians.

“This is a legacy defining moment for Joe Biden,” the Railroad Workers United (RWU), which represents union members across North America, tweeted on Tuesday. “He is going down as one of the biggest disappointments in labor history.”

WASHINGTON – Greg Regan and Shari Semelsberger, president and secretary-treasurer of the Transportation Trades Department (TTD) of the AFL-CIO, today issued this statement regarding scheduled congressional votes to resolve the national rail labor contract: “For more than three years, America’s rail unions bargained in good faith with freight railroads to improve hellish working conditions that […]

Reported by Michael D. Shear and Emily Cochrane for The New York Times. Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress vowed on Tuesday to pass legislation averting a nationwide rail strike, saying they agreed with President Biden that a work stoppage during the holidays next month would disrupt shipping and deal a devastating blow to the […]

Reported by James Politi and Taylor Nicole Rogers for the Financial Times.

Joe Biden has often portrayed himself as the most pro-union president in American history, with his sympathy for blue-collar workers dating back to his childhood in the Pennsylvania rustbelt.

But faced with a potential strike of railroad unions that could have a crippling effect on US supply chains and the economy heading into the holiday season, Biden is now pleading for Congress to step in and force thousands of workers to stay on the job, risking a rift with some of his closest political allies.

AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department President Greg Regan joined the America’s Work Force Union Podcast and discussed how policies have exacerbated a worker shortage in the railroad industry. 

Most of the issues faced by the railroad industry stem from a 30 percent cut in the workforce, Regan said. These companies have enacted draconian attendance policies that discourage people from becoming employees, he explained. Furthermore, many new employees drop out during training because of attendance requirements and quality of life issues, he added.

Regan then discussed the likelihood of a nationwide railroad strike and what Congress could do to avoid it.

Reported in the Labor Tribune.

With holiday shopping fully underway, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union wants shoppers to be kind to often-stressed retail workers.

In a series of tweets posted on the union website, but meant for the general public, the union explains that the problems customers will encounter between now and the end of the year are not the fault of the stores’ workers, either union or non-union.

Instead, RWDSU tweeted, they’re due to a combination of supply bottlenecks and bosses’ decisions to stick with just-in-time ordering rather than lay in merchandise in advance.

Reported by Justin Franz for the Montana Free Press.

A sense of deja vu is overtaking the U.S. railroad industry this week as labor leaders and major railroad representatives try to figure out how to avoid a strike that could bring freight and passenger trains to a halt in the middle of the busy holiday shipping season.

It’s a scenario eerily similar to one that played out just over two months ago, when White House officials helped broker an eleventh-hour deal to avoid a national strike back in September. But that deal was only temporary while it awaited ratification votes by workers represented by 12 different labor unions.

Reported by Mark Gruenberg for People’s World.

The “anti-PRO Act.” Slow-walking union recognition elections. No card check. Comp time instead of overtime. Convoluted requirements bosses can impose on workers seeking paid family and medical leave. And partisan investigations, especially of Biden-named NLRB members Gwynne Wilcox and David Prouty, coming out of our ears.

Welcome to the forecast, leaked from the self-proclaimed leading “union avoidance” law firm, a.k.a. union-buster, Littler Mendelson, plus other sources, of what the House Republican-run Education and Labor—whoops, Education and the Workforce—Committee will try to impose on workers and their allies in the upcoming 118th Congress.