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The National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday it is opening a “special investigation” into Norfolk Southern’s safety culture, pointing to five serious incidents involving the railroad — including last month’s derailment and chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio.

“The continued safe operations of Norfolk Southern is vital to the United States,” the board said in a statement. “The NTSB is concerned that several organizational factors may be involved in the accidents, including safety culture.”

WASHINGTON  — Greg Regan and Shari Semelsberger, President and Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department (TTD), released this statement about today in response to new regulatory and congressional efforts to reform rail safety: “Rail unions and workers have been sounding the alarm about safety concerns in the freight rail industry for years. “We welcome […]

All seven Class I railroads have signed on to a voluntary program established by the Federal Railroad Administration that enables workers to anonymously share situations in which there might be operational hazards.

Federal officials had renewed their calls for the Class I railroads to take part in the close call reporting system (C3RS) following the Feb. 3 derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, Ohio. The Transportation Trade Department of the AFL-CIO had also pressed federal officials to urge the Class I railroads to participate in the program.

WASHINGTON  — Greg Regan and Shari Semelsberger, President and Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department (TTD), issued this statement after the Association of American Railroads (AAR) announced that the seven major U.S. freight railroads will join the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA)’s Confidential Close Call Reporting System: “We welcome today’s announcement that the seven major […]

Railroad workers have been sounding the alarm for years over railway safety concerns, and a string of recent train derailments have brought these issues into the spotlight.

Greg Regan, the president of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department, said he has raised safety concerns in front of Congress multiple times in the past, saying it’s not that train accidents are up in the last few months, but they’ve been up over the last 10 years.

WASHINGTON — Today, transportation labor and industry groups urged Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh to adopt a federal framework to manage the broad impacts of new technologies on the transportation workforce. The letter from the Transportation Trades Department (TTD) of the AFL-CIO and ITS America states: “With such rapid technological change […]

WASHINGTON  — Greg Regan and Shari Semelsberger, President and Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department (TTD), issued this statement after the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) issued a safety advisory related to the maintenance and use of hot bearing wayside detectors: “We welcome recent rail safety actions from the Federal Railroad Administration, including the safety […]

WASHINGTON  — Greg Regan and Shari Semelsberger, President and Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department (TTD), issued this statement after the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released a preliminary report on the East Palestine derailment: “Rail unions and their workers are dedicated to ensuring that when railroads adopt technologies, such as wayside defect detectors, […]

LAS VEGAS  — Brightline West, America’s first true high-speed rail system connecting Las Vegas and Southern California, today,  announced a landmark agreement, establishing a commitment with several craft rail unions for the use of highly skilled union labor in critical jobs required to operate and maintain this historic project. The memorandum of understanding (MOU) with […]

Reported by Timothy Noah for The New Republic.

On February 3, a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed near East Palestine, Ohio, a small town (pop. 4,800) situated on the Pennsylvania border 20 miles south of Youngstown. The derailment spewed vinyl chloride and other toxic chemicals into the air, killing fish in nearby streams and prompting an evacuation. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, warned that anyone who lingered in the immediate area would face “grave danger of death.” Five days later, DeWine said it was safe to return home, but local residents continued to report headaches and nausea.

If all this sounds reminiscent of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel White Noise and Noah Baumbach’s 2022 film adaptation of same, just imagine how it felt to Ben Ratner, an East Palestine resident who, along with various family members, worked as an extra on the movie when Baumbach was shooting nearby. “The first half … is all almost exactly what’s going on here,” Ratner told CNN.