News and Media

Reported by Joe Davidson for the Washington Post.

Many things, including air travel, slowed significantly during the pandemic — but not irresponsible travelers taking guns to airports.

In 2021, the Transportation Security Administration caught 5,972 firearms at airport checkpoints, the most ever. That’s an increase of more than one-third over the 4,432 guns found in 2019, the next highest year and just before the coronavirus ravaged the world. The number of firearms found has soared by more than six times since 2008.

Reported by David Dayen for The American Prospect.

Last month, the Warren Buffett–owned BNSF Railway drew attention after a federal judge effectively blocked 17,000 engineers, conductors, and yardmasters from striking. Under the federal Railway Labor Act, workers in key transportation sectors like freight railroads cannot strike over so-called “minor” issues, under the theory that it would cause too much damage to the economy.

The ruling led to an outcry about blocking the right to strike and forcing workers back to their jobs. But less attention was paid to the “minor” issue: a new BNSF attendance policy that employee unions claim penalizes their members for taking time off work, will lead to many having to leave their jobs, and will increase the risk of serious accidents on the freight rail system.

Reported by Michael Sainato for the Guardian.

Workers are under intense strain amid grueling schedules, union contract negotiations and an arcane attendance policy system

American railroad workers are criticizing a new restrictive attendance policy at one of the largest railroad freight networks in the US, as they experience grueling schedules and labor cuts in the midst of new union contract negotiations, which have hit an impasse, prompting federal mediation.

The Guardian spoke with several railroad trainmen and engineers who requested to remain anonymous as they are prohibited by their employer from speaking to the media.

WASHINGTON – Today, 20 labor organizations representing transit drivers and other transportation workers urged Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Administrator Nuria Fernandez to immediately implement the safety provisions in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) to protect transit workers from assault. Four months after the passage of the BIL, the FTA has […]

Reported by Teaganne Finn for NBC News.

The main federal transportation safety agency still has not enforced provisions in President Joe Biden’s infrastructure law that would protect workers as assaults on transit continue to trend up, a group of transit unions said Wednesday.

“Our members include bus and rail transit operators, station agents, car cleaners, mechanics, and other frontline workers, all of whom are at risk of assault and worse each day they arrive at work,” the labor unions said in a letter to the Federal Transit Administration, or FTA, part of the Transportation Department.

The co-signers include the Amalgamated Transit Union, which is the country’s largest transit union, the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department and the Transport Workers Union.

Reported by Josh Funk for AP News.

The unions that represent roughly half of BNSF’s workers continue to fight against the railroad’s new attendance rules that they say penalizes them for missing work for any reason even though a judge has barred them from striking.

The unions launched a petition drive this week and renewed their call for a federal investigation of the rules that took effect last month, but they still haven’t decided whether to appeal the judge’s order or pursue arbitration to resolve their concerns. They say the rules pressure the 17,000 employees they represent to come to work when they are sick or fatigued and put them on call 24-7.

WASHINGTON – Greg Regan and Shari Semelsberger, President and Secretary-Treasurer of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD), issued this statement in response to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s announcement of funding for the revised Low or No Emission Grant Program and the Grants for Buses and Bus Facilities Competitive Program: “We applaud the Department of […]

WASHINGTON – Greg Regan and Shari Semelsberger, President and Secretary-Treasurer of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD), issued this statement in response to President Biden’s first State of the Union (SOTU) address to the nation: “From the passage of the American Rescue Plan to the biggest investment in infrastructure in our nation’s history, the first year of the […]

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A coalition of labor unions representing tens of thousands of airport passenger service agents, flight attendants, and other airline employees today urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to pursue federal criminal penalties against individuals who assault or interfere with passenger service agents. The coalition – which includes the Communications Workers of America (CWA), […]

As reported by Madeleine Ngo for the New York Times

A coalition of labor unions representing tens of thousands of airline industry workers urged the Justice Department to step up its prosecutions of unruly passengers on Thursday.

In a letter to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, the group asked the department to pursue and prioritize prosecutions of people who assault passenger service agents, many of whom have been attacked at airport gates, ticket and reservation areas and other airport locations during the pandemic.

The request comes at a turbulent time for the airline industry, which began to see a spike early last year in violent and disruptive passengers who have refused to follow Covid protocols and attempted to interfere with flight crew.