News and Media

Between Dec. 29 and Jan. 14, Mark Bass, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1410 in Mobile, Ala., watched as COVID-19 cases swept through the maritime workforce, ultimately infecting about 20 percent of it. With workers packed in tight quarters, loading and unloading ships and often interacting with seamen coming in from different countries,…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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,…

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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…

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