TTD in the news

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.”

As reported by Eugene Mulero for Transport Topics

Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Department at AFL-CIO, reminded senators of the role of labor: “The pursuit of a more efficient supply chain cannot be an excuse to eliminate or deconstruct critical regulatory safeguards, such as fatigue protections, or to water down carefully crafted training and qualification requirements.”

As Reported by Marybeth Luczak for Railway Age

Shuler is the first woman to lead the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations), a federation of 56 unions and 12.5 million members. She served previously as the Secretary-Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer, which she took on in 2009, at the same time Trumka became President.

The Executive Council also elected United Steelworkers (USW) International Vice President Fred Redmond to succeed Shuler as Secretary-Treasurer; he is the first African American to hold AFL-CIO’s No. 2 spot. Tefere Gebre will continue as Executive Vice President.

Greg Regan, President, and Shari Semelsberger, Secretary-Treasurer, of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD), issued this statement on the new officer elections:

“On behalf of millions of frontline transportation workers and the unions that represent them, we congratulate Liz Shuler and Fred Redmond on their unanimous election as president and secretary-treasurer, respectively, of the AFL-CIO.

As Reported by Alexander Bolton for The Hill The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO and a group of other prominent business groups on Thursday endorsed a $1.2 trillion, eight-year bipartisan infrastructure framework endorsed by President Biden and a group of Senate moderates. The joint endorsement by business and labor groups that are often opponents […]