News and Media

Reported by Dan Zukowski for SmartCitiesDive.

As Congress stumbles toward a likely government shutdown at midnight on Oct. 1, state and local officials, including those responsible for law enforcement and transportation, are assessing how a shutdown would affect their operations. Depending on the length of any shutdown and the specific federal personnel and agencies it would affect, some impacts could be minimal but others may have serious consequences.

If Congress does not enact fiscal year 2024 appropriations or a continuing resolution to fund government activities at current levels before the midnight deadline, the federal government activities that depend on annual appropriations will come to a halt once their funding runs out. Only 10 times since 1977 has the federal government lacked legal authority to spend money; it went into shutdown mode nine of those times. The most recent and longest shutdown began Dec. 21, 2018, during the Trump administration and lasted 34 days.

Reported by Irving Mejia-Hilario for the Dallas Morning News.

Over 7,000 union workers in Illinois and Michigan joined other striking auto workers Friday as the United Auto Workers widened its work stoppage to win higher wages and benefits from Detroit’s Big Three automakers.

UAW President Shawn Fain called on workers at a Ford assembly plant in Chicago and a General Motors plant outside Lansing, Mich., to join about 18,000 other strikers across the country.

Reported by Joanna Marsh for Freightwaves.

On the surface, a government shutdown — which can occur if Congress can’t agree on how to handle the appropriations budgets — would have a limited impact on freight rail operations.

Freight railroads will keep running, transporting parts, materials and goods within North America and to and from the coastal ports. Ensuring safe operations will also be paramount, according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR).

September 27, 2023 Dear Representative: On behalf of the Transportation Trades Department (TTD) of the AFL-CIO, and the millions of transportation workers that we represent, we urge you to pass the Senate-proposed bipartisan continuing resolution, H.R. 3935, and avert a government shutdown. As America’s largest transportation labor federation, we implore Congress to prioritize the safety […]

WASHINGTON – Amtrak and partners have been awarded nearly $200 million from the Federal Railroad Administration’s Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) competitive grant program. “The CRISI grants announced today will help launch new and expanded service, advance critical safety and reliability improvements, and provide opportunities for the workforce, marking another big milestone as […]

WASHINGTON — Greg Regan and Shari Semelsberger, President and Secretary-Treasurer of the Transportation Trades Department (TTD) of the AFL-CIO, issued this statement commemorating the first week of the UAW’s historic Stand Up Strike after Ford, GM, and Stellantis failed to offer a fair contract to 150,000 autoworkers: “We stand strong with striking autoworkers and the […]

WASHINGTON—Today, Senators Mike Braun, Jon Tester, Roger Marshall and Pete Ricketts introduced bipartisan legislation to enshrine a continued role for American farmers in the Food for Peace (FFP) program and increase accountability and transparency in FFP program functions. U.S. Representatives Tracey Mann (KS-01), John Garamendi (CA-08), Rick Crawford (AR-01), and Jimmy Panetta (CA-19) introduced the […]

WASHINGTON — Greg Regan and Shari Semelsberger, President and Secretary-Treasurer of the Transportation Trades Department (TTD) of the AFL-CIO, issued this statement in recognition of Rail Safety Week 2023: “As America’s largest transportation labor federation, we are proud to represent the totality of freight rail labor unions and their members. For years, the rail labor […]

WASHINGTON — Greg Regan and Shari Semelsberger, President and Secretary-Treasurer of the Transportation Trades Department (TTD) of the AFL-CIO, issued this statement in support of recent congressional efforts to protect transit workers from assault by passengers:  “We welcome this week’s bipartisan letter, led by Congressman Rob Menendez and cosigned by 114 members of Congress, urging […]

The Coalition on Human Needs and 680 local, state, and national groups delivered a message to Congress Tuesday: do your duty and keep government running.  The groups delivered a letter to every member of the House and Senate urging passage of a clean, bipartisan continuing resolution (CR), including “emergency funding that supports current services and addresses urgent […]