WASHINGTON, DC – Edward Wytkind, president of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD), issued the following statement on the Transportation, Housing, Urban Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2011 by the U.S. House of Representatives:
“A number of amendments proposed for the Transportation and Housing funding bill would cost thousands of Americans their jobs at a time of high unemployment across the nation.
“We need to be doing more – not less – to create and save jobs. Investments in our transportation system have proven to be one of the most effective means of creating and sustaining jobs in this historic recession. Not only do these investments put people to work in good jobs, they also expand the capacity of our transportation system which forms the backbone of our economy.
“Some of today’s amendments would also recklessly gut key safety programs, which represents a bad case of amnesia in the wake of so many recent transportation accidents.
“The amendments offered by Reps. Latham, Kirkpatrick, Peters, and Bachmann are short-sighted and should be rejected. We call on Congress to preserve funding for programs that are critical to job creation and essential to the safety and efficiency of our transportation system.”
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The Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO, represents 32 member unions in the aviation, rail, transit, trucking, highway, longshore, maritime and related industries. For more information, visit www.ttd.org.
