Letters To Congress

On behalf of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD), I urge you to vote for the conference committee report on H.R. 22, the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. We commend Chairman Shuster, Ranking Member DeFazio, Chairman Inhofe and Ranking Member Boxer for finalizing a bipartisan and multi-year surface transportation bill that will create and sustain good middle-class jobs and make urgently needed investments in our transit systems, roads, bridges and passenger rail network.

On behalf of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD), I urge you to vote NO on the Tribal Labor Sovereignty Act (H.R. 511) when it is considered on the House floor. This bill would exempt all tribal-owned and operated commercial enterprises located on Indian lands from coverage of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), and deny critical labor protections to hundreds of thousands of workers, the majority of whom are not Native Americans. In addition to the over 600,000 tribal casino workers, this bill would cover mining operations, power plants, smoke shops, saw mills, construction companies, ski resorts, high-tech firms, hotels, and spas, stripping all workers in these commercial enterprises of their rights and protections under the NLRA.

Dear Representative: As the House continues consideration of H.R. 3763, the Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act (STRRA), the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD) urges you to ensure the bill remains a bipartisan comprise that can continue to move through the House. To achieve this end, we recommend the following votes on amendments: Oppose:  Vote […]

Dear Representative: As the House continues to consider H.R. 3763, the Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act (STRRA), the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD) strongly urges you to oppose Representative Newhouse’s amendment (#120) on port metrics. When the underlying bill was marked up in the Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee, we were supportive of the […]

Dear Representative:

As the House begins to consider H.R. 3763, the Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act (STRRA), the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD) believes it is imperative that the bill remain a bipartisan compromise that focuses on our transportation priorities. The Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) has worked hard and effectively to create a long-term surface transportation authorization that can pass the House of Representatives. TTD supported the underlying T&I bill. We therefore believe it is important that amendments should only seek to improve this bill, and those which upset the careful compromise should be rejected.

Dear Representative: On behalf of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD), I urge you to vote for H.R. 3763, the Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2015 (STRRA). We commend Chairman Shuster, Ranking Member DeFazio, Subcommittee Chair Graves, and Subcommittee Ranking Member Norton for finalizing a long-overdue, bipartisan and multi-year surface transportation bill. While […]

Dear Representative: On behalf of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD), I urge you to oppose the Amash amendment to H.R. 702, the crude oil export bill.  While TTD is not taking a position on the underlying legislation due to a lack of consensus between our affiliated unions, we have long worked with our member […]

On behalf of the undersigned labor, medical professional, and civil rights organizations, we urge the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to reject efforts to allow hair to be used for federal drug tests before the validity and reliability of this testing method can be determined by the Department of Health and Human Services. Specifically, we request that the current hair specimen testing proposals under consideration in Congress, including Section 32611 of the DRIVE Act (H.R. 22) and the Drug Free Commercial Driver Act of 2015 (H.R. 1467/S. 806), not be included in the House surface transportation bill.

Dear Senator: On behalf of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD), I write to express our opposition to S. 1732, the Comprehensive Transportation and Consumer Protection Act of 2015 and urge you to vote against it during markup. This is not a position that we arrive at lightly. For America’s workers, a long-term surface transportation […]

As the Commerce Committee considers marking up the Port Performance Act (S. 1298), I urge you to remove or significantly modify language in the bill (currently Section 4) that would improperly mandate the federal collection of port performance data leading up to and during maritime labor negotiations. This language would misuse statistics to tilt the balance against port workers in collective bargaining disputes and undermine the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) by needlessly politicizing the agency’s data collection process. If this language is not removed or modified, we will strongly oppose the bill and urge Commerce Committee members to vote against it during the markup.