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 Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to implement long-overdue requirements that would strengthen workplace safety for public transit employees.
“As the nation’s leading transportation labor federation, we have spent years advocating for public transportation workers alongside our affiliated unions who represent them, including AFSCME, ATU, SMART-TD, TCU, TWU, and others. Workers simply want to do their jobs with the peace of mind knowing they won’t be harmed by their passengers.
“In 2015, we won a major legislative victory with the passage of the FAST Act transportation law. Unfortunately, the Trump Administration erroneously claimed that acting on the transit worker safety requirements in the law would be ‘redundant’, despite opposition from labor and Congress. While we welcome the Biden Administration’s efforts to move forward with more recent safety legislation, it is imperative that we use every tool at our disposal to tackle this epidemic of violence against workers.
“We stand by Congressman Menendez and the cosigners of this letter, and we trust that this administration will right this wrong.”
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