TTD in the news

As Reported by Lillianna Byington for Bloomberg Government

Higher fines, more signs, and a no-fly list could help deter passengers from bringing a rising number of guns to airport security checkpoints, airport executives, police, and lawmakers said.

Such incidents reached record levels over the last year and more needs to be done to stop them, witnesses told a House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing on Tuesday. Transportation Security Administration officers found 5,972 firearms at airport security checkpoints nationwide in 2021, about an 83% spike from the year before.

As Reported by Karl Evers-Hillstrom for The Hill

Labor unions representing airport service agents on Thursday urged the Biden administration to protect their members from abusive and violent travelers.

In a letter to Biden administration officials, the unions said that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s effort to crack down on assaults against flight crews does not extend protections to airport agents working at gate, ticket and reservation areas and other ground-based locations.

The groups said that airport police departments and local law enforcement have not received clear guidance from the federal government on how to respond to attacks on airport workers, allowing passengers to assault their members without recourse in some cases.

As Reported by Jason McDaniel for Bulk Transporter

Members of the House Homeland Security Committee recently introduced bipartisan legislation that would require the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to streamline the application and renewal process for transportation workers who need multiple credentials, and establish a reduced fee structure.

If signed into law, the bill would bring relief for carriers, and the overall supply chain, says Ryan Streblow, president and CEO of National Tank Truck Carriers, which has had a long-standing goal of streamlining the process for securing the Hazardous Materials Endorsement (HME) and Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC).

Other organizations that support the bill include the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO; Teamsters; Washington Trucking Associations; American Short Line & Regional Railroad Association; Association of American Railroads; Border Trade Alliance, and Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.

As Reported by Matthew Jinoo Buck for The American Prospect

Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Department, a labor organization, explains that when the supply chain crisis hit, “the drastic cuts to the rail labor force during PSR have ensured that there is no flexibility in the workforce.” Railroads used to maintain “extra boards,” or backup train crews on call just in case. In recent years, railroads viewed those as costs to be cut, which, Regan says, “backfired when those employees were needed.” Training and certification requirements then prevented employees from being hired back quickly.

As Reported by David Shepardson for Reuters

A U.S. House panel will hold a hearing next week on self-driving vehicles, even as a push in Congress to speed deployment of autonomous vehicles has stalled.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s subcommittee on highways and transit said Thursday it will hold a Feb. 2 hearing titled “The Road Ahead for Automated Vehicles” that will include experts, labor leaders and industry representatives.

In May, Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Department for the AFL-CIO, told U.S. lawmakers at a separate hearing that autonomous vehicles place millions of jobs at risk and self-driving legislation should not apply to commercial trucks.

America’s Work Force Union Podcast.

Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO President Greg Regan joined the America’s Work Force Union Podcast to discuss the U.S. Senate’s recent confirmation of Amit Bose as Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA).

Regan described Bose as a smart choice for the position. The biggest frustration is how long the confirmation took — over a year, he said. Right wing politicians who claim President Biden has not done enough to alleviate supply chain issues should actually blame themselves after failing to confirm this position faster, he added.

As reported by Progressive Railroading

The Transportation Trades Department AFL-CIO (TTD) last week announced the affiliation of three more unions: the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWED), both divisions of the Rail Conference of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades.

As reported by Keith Laing for Bloomberg News

Labor leaders say that lawmakers need to address the impact on safety and the workforce before allowing automated trucks to be widely used.

“We would be naive to think we could stop technological advancement. That’s never been our goal,” said Greg Regan, president of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department. “But we have to make sure it’s implemented in a safe way and we have to make sure that we’re also looking at the economic impact of deployment.”

John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union, said in a statement that Congress will have to grapple with the impact of self-driving technology on commercial drivers.

As reported by Kirstin Downey for Honolulu Civil Beat

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic and as news reports describe the plight of foreign seamen marooned aboard abandoned ships elsewhere in the world, the Jones Act has given Hawaii extra insulation.

Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, said railroads cut 20% of their workforces between 2014 and 2019 and reduced their fleet of locomotives to save money, leaving themselves without adequate capacity or enough workers to convey goods smoothly when business rebounded. Trucking companies replaced union drivers with independent contractors, he said, and many of those workers dropped out when bottlenecks at the ports made their work unprofitable.

As reported by Steven Overly for Politico

Long-term fixes will require major changes to how supply chains are operated and regulated, labor and industry officials say. Now that attention is shifting away from an imminent holiday crisis, they are leaning on Biden to address long-standing issues related to workers’ rights, market competition and insufficient logistics technology.

“We will not have solved this problem when there are no boats sitting idle off the coast of our country and when we’re not overloaded with containers in yards and in warehouses,” said Greg Regan, president of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department. “The problem is only going to be solved if we deal with the structural issues here, and I have faith that this administration is going to do that.”