TTD in the news

Reported by Marybeth Luczak for Railway Age. Transportation Trades Department (TTD), AFL-CIO President Greg Regan is urging a bipartisan group of lawmakers to support legislation reauthorizing the Surface Transportation Board (STB). His agenda: to clarify the railroads’ common carrier obligation and to provide “more effective mechanisms” for the STB to enforce it. TTD’s Regan made […]

Reported by Trains.

The leader of a federation of rail and other unions has written a group of U.S. senators asking that Congress give the Surface Transportation Board more power to enforce railroads’ common-carrier obligations as a way to address ongoing service issues.

Tuesday’s letter from Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Division, AFL-CIO — comprised of 37 unions, including some in the rail industry — urged a group of 21 senators to support legislation that would more clearly define the common-carrier obligation, which currently requires “reasonable service” at “reasonable rates.”

Reported by Joanna Marsh for Freightwaves.

The Transportation Trades Department is asking Congressional senators to consider revising the common carrier obligation so its meaning is more clear and enforceable.

The common carrier obligation defines the freight railroads’ role in delivering bulk goods, and the Surface Transportation Board uses it as a basis in rendering decisions.

Reported by Lillianna Byington and Paige Smith for Bloomberg Law.

Lingering concerns from the transportation industry are threatening to derail a bill to expand workplace protections for nursing parents.

Lawmakers have been pushing for years to expand on-the-job pumping protections to more workers, legislation that some say is particularly needed now that formula is scarce and the lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have increased the need to entice parents back into the workforce. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), however, blocked a bill that aimed to do that last week, driven by concerns that its requirements are “overly broad and burdensome” for transportation workplaces.

America’s Workforce Union Podcast.

AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department President Greg Regan joined the America’s Work Force Union Podcast and discussed the impasse reached by major railroads and their unions after a government board ended efforts to mediate a settlement over a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

The railroads involved in the stalled talks include Union Pacific Corp. and BNSF Railway Co. With negotiations at an impasse, President Joe Biden and Congress will likely take action as railroad workers cannot strike, Regan explained. Workers are fed up with oppressive attendance policies, low pay and healthcare concessions, he added.

Reported by Michael Sainato for the Guardian.

Monique Rondon, a bus operator in New York City for 23 years, has been spat on and assaulted several times on the job.

Now transit workers and labor unions across America are sounding the alarm over the trend of violence, assaults, and abuse that workers in the transportation industry in the US have faced throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, a crisis they say will continue to worsen without federal action and implementation of safety protections and rules.

Reported by Joanna Marsh for Freightwaves.

The debate about how to manage visual inspections in the face of advances in safety technology continues. This time it’s railroad carmen defending the importance of visual inspections for brake testing and maintenance.

Union members are responding to Union Pacific’s request to the Federal Railroad Administration to extend a waiver governing UP’s test program for wheel temperature detectors (WTDs).

Reported by Taylor Kuykendall for S & P Global.

The question of a national rail shutdown may be up to Congress this fall, as tensions mount between railways and unions, even as legal remedies fail.

Unions and railroad carriers have been locked in negotiations over wages, benefits and workplace rules since a collective bargaining round kicked off in January 2020. While the railroads indicated a willingness to enter arbitration, the coalition of unions said binding arbitration circumventing a vote by their membership would not be acceptable. The deadline for accepting arbitration passed at 5 p.m. ET on June 16, sending the dispute into the first of three 30-day windows aimed at finding an agreement. At the end of that 90-day stretch, if no agreement is reached between the parties, congressional intervention could be all that prevents a national shutdown.

As reported by the Stand.

After more than two years of fruitless negotiations with the various Class 1 railroads and three weeks of in-person contract talks in Washington, D.C., the National Mediation Board (NMB) on Tuesday declared that a voluntary agreement is not within reach and offered binding arbitration to rail unions.

The unions representing railroad workers — who have gone without a pay raise for three years — will reject the arbitration offer, which under the Railway Labor Act sets the stage for President Biden to appoint a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) to hear the dispute. Ultimately, if that process fails to achieve an agreement and Congress doesn’t intervene, a nationwide railway work stoppage is possible.

Reported by Joanna Marsh for Freightwaves.

A new labor agreement between U.S. freight railroads and the railroad unions may not appear anytime soon, both sides hinted late Tuesday following a federal regulator’s decision to halt mediation efforts.

Freight railroads, including the Class I railroads, and the railroad unions have been embroiled in disagreements over a contract since January 2020, with the National Mediation Board (NMB) stepping in earlier this year to mediate. The NMB is an independent federal agency that mediates labor agreements for the railway and airline industries.