Rail & Labor News from RWU
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Weekly Digest Number 50 - December 10, 2024 | |
Welcome to the RWU Rail & Labor News! This news bulletin is produced and emailed out each Tuesday morning. We hope you find each week's news and information useful. If so, please share with co-workers, friends, and colleagues. If you like, you can sign them up to get all the news from RWU HERE. Or forward them the link. Got a hot tip? Please forward the article and a link to raillabornews@gmail.com. Note: If you read over this news bulletin each week, you will be sure to never miss the important news of what is going on in the railroad world from a worker's perspective! | |
THIS WEEK'S RAIL AND LABOR NEWS | |
Editor's Note: While so much more needs to be done. it appears that rail unions have increased their new member organizing efforts in recent years, with smaller non-union regional and shortline railroads brought into the fold. Nevertheless, it is an uphill battle to organize these non-union properties when there are a myriad of craft unions in the field who do not usually cooperate with one another. Witness the recent strife between BLET and SMART-TD on this vital question. | |
Progressive Railroading / December 5, 2024
Fifty-one workers at three railroads represented by the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division (BMWED) of the Teamsters Rail Conference have ratified new contracts.Teamsters at the Colorado and Wyoming Railway unanimously voted to ratify a contract securing higher wages and improvements to vacation, bereavement and personal leave, and holidays, according to a Teamsters press release.
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Editor's Note: The last thing that we want is to see the rehabilitation of railroad mainlines delayed or negated. But CSX and NS must understand that they must conform to the state and federal laws when rebuilding these rail routes impacted throughout Appalachia by Hurricane Helene. It is a different world now, more than 100 years after these routes were originally constructed. | |
WJHL News 11 / December 4, 2024
A notice penned by TDEC Division of Water Resources program coordinator Franklin Colyer to CSX leadership on Wednesday addressed the matter of CSX using materials from the riverbed as it attempts to make repairs in the region following the historic flooding. CSX’s work in the area and its use of the river prompted vocal concern by elected officials Unicoi County and whitewater rafting activists, who worried that the river could be significantly damaged or altered by the work.
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Editor's Note: If we believe in the railroad and its inherent efficiencies in moving carloads of freight, then soon there might be a dramatic expansion of loose carload traffic by rail, as traffic is diverted off the highways and out of the skies to the rail. And we will need every single remaining hump yard - active and mothballed - to do the job. It is the height of irresponsibility to the future for the Class Ones to idle these humps, let alone abandon them, pull up the rails and sell of the properties! | |
Trains / December 4, 2024
The number of hump yards operating in North America has dropped precipitously over the decades. Today there are 36 active hump yards operated by the big six Class I Systems and terminal and switching railroads. That’s down from 59 in 2002, 72 in 1993, 122 in 1985, and 152 in 1975. Yet hump yards, which use gravity to classify freight cars, remain enormously important to the carload network. They are the most efficient way to classify high volumes of carload traffic into destination-based blocks and, ultimately, merchandise trains. The typical hump yard classifies between 1,500 and 3,000 cars per day.
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Editor's Note: In general, the working class is interested in better wages, benefits, working conditions, housing, health care, the cost of living, retirement, etc. Yet neither political party generally speaks to - nor delivers - on these vital questions. We have NO party. Perhaps it is time for one. RWU speaks to the desire of many rails for this to become reality in our Resolution from 2020, RWU Resolution on U.S. Elections. | |
Counterpunch / December 6, 2024
In politics denial eventually leads to a harsh reckoning. For the labor movement Trump’s re-election may have finally shattered decades of illusion that unions had in the Democrats, who lost by running a campaign that ignored working class issues.
The realization is sinking in that labor is politically homeless, but what to do about it is less clear. In such moments there are dangers and opportunities; people are looking for leadership in a time of uncertainty and a scramble of political realignment is taking place.
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Editor's Note: Despite a dearth of locomotives and rail cars to get the job done, Amtrak continues to rebound from the pandemic and is poised to handle even tens of millions more passengers if it had the equipment, routes, and frequencies to serve the American people. RWU fully supports Amtrak expansion and development as just one path the rebuild rail employment in the U.S. See the Resolution HERE. | |
Trains / November 25, 2024
The increases weren’t large compared to pre-pandemic 2019, but more Northeast Regional frequencies enabled Amtrak to capture enough travel demand to beat the company’s previous overall record ridership in fiscal 2024. Also, a 24% gain in ticket revenue from long-distance trains compared to 2019, in spite of constricted coach and sleeping car capacity, generated a 6% rise in total revenue. The money generated on trains that travel more than 750 miles (even if passengers aboard might not) is up sharply from 2019. Diminished capacity led to fewer riders on trains like the Texas Eagle, which operated with more sleeping car capacity (it had a transition sleeper) and additional coaches.
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Editor's Note: After weeks of minimal expansion year-over-year, this is bad news. Let's hope it has more to do with the holiday that signaling an end to the recent improvements in 2024. We will know soon. | |
Progressive Railroading / December 5, 2024
U.S. freight railroads hauled 439,362 carloads and intermodal units in the week ending Nov. 30, a 13.8% decrease compared with traffic levels in the same week a year ago, according to Association of American Railroads data. The railroads moved 189,746 carloads, down 19.9%, while intermodal volume totaled 249,616 containers and trailers, down 8.5%. The week included the U.S. Thanksgiving Day holiday.
Only one of the 10 carload commodity groups that AAR tracks every week posted an increase: Miscellaneous carloads climbed 3.1% to 7,833 carloads. Included in the nine commodity groups that posted decreases were coal, down 23.7% to 52,126 carloads; nonmetallic minerals, down 29.2% to 20,496; and metallic ores and metals, down 26.7% to 15,991.
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Editor's Note: Across the country, these sorts of studies are being undertaken to asses the feasibility of revival of passenger rail service. Hopefully, we stand poised at the edge of a passenger rail renaisance from coast-to-coast. | |
Progressive Railroading / December 3, 2024
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation last week released its final report of its Northern Tier passenger-rail study.
The study examined the benefits, costs and investments necessary to implement passenger-rail service from North Adams to Greenfield and Boston. The document will serve as a valuable planning tool to identify service alternatives that can expand rail access, reduce congestion and connect communities across the state, said Massachusetts Transportation Secretary and CEO Monica Tibbits-Nutt in a press release.
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Editor's Note: The railroad is very rarely a "good neighbor," partly because they do not have to be. Any legislation - state or local - to hold the railroad to account, whether it be blocked crossings, minimal crew staffing, derailment clean-ups or otherwise is generally pre-empted by the courts in the name of the feds prerogative of "regulating interstate commerce." | |
The Exponent / December 6, 2024
Earlier this year in March, 24 train cars ran off the track near a Purdue Technology Center Aerospace off Indiana State Road 26, backing up traffic for hours and scattering corn, grain and debris across the site. Now, almost nine months later, three cars still lie there, abandoned in the grass — to the chagrin of neighbors. "It shouldn't have been this long," said local resident John Darbishire. "It's an eyesore."
He said there hasn't been much traffic other than the initial road closures, but he's heard other neighbors complain about the cars as well.
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NEWS FROM AROUND THE LABOR MOVEMENT | |
Each week, RWU includes a few articles about advances and developments in the larger labor movement that are of interest to railroad workers. Got an artcile to submit for possible inclusion next week? Email it along to raillabornews@gmail.com. Thank you! | |
Editor's Note: Two of the three panelists are RWU members. They make the case for workers and their unions to be active proponents of peace, diverting resources to meeting human needs and not war. | |
Project Censored / November 25, 2024
This week in a special hour interview episode, three guest experts join the Project Censored Radio show to discuss the US supply chain and war: labor educator Gifford Hartman, researcher and CGPU-UAW union member Abdullah Farooq, and 40 year rail and marine transportation veteran Fritz Edler.
Together they outline not only the current actions and efforts of workers to connect the dots between oppression here at home and abroad, but also the silenced and buried history of workplace organizing against war, including direct action and strikes. Our guests also dive into the importance of public ownership of transportation such as rail, the nefarious ways in which automation fuels both the war machine and destitution here in the US, and what a just transition away from war could mean not only for workers here but indeed around the whole world.
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Editor's Note: With the North American rail scene narrowed down now largely to 6 big Class One carriers that span the continent, controlling the vast majority of rail freight shipments in all three countries, it is imperative that rail workers across borders join forces in order to more effectively combat these powerful corporations. Here is a glimpse of what some Auto Workers are doing across borders. | |
Labor Notes / December 2, 2024
Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed in 1993, the economies of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico have become increasingly integrated. Workers in all three countries have suffered as corporations have used trade rules to maximize profits, push down wages and benefits, and manage the flow of people displaced by these rules. Unions in all three countries have faced a basic question: Can they win the battles they face today without joining forces? That question has only become more urgent under the agreement that replaced NAFTA, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA, or T-MEC in Spanish).
In February 2024 the UCLA Labor Center, the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation brought together union and workplace activists from the three countries to talk about labor solidarity in their industries.
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Editor's Note: The word "sabotage" conjures up violence, death and destruction, but in fact workers have in the past - and continue to this day - make use of the concept in peaceful non-violent ways to "get the goods" that might otherwise be obtainable through bargaining or regulation for decades, if ever. Many rail workers reading this article will be able to relate to various acts - individual or collectively - of how they were able to achieve some measure of satisfaction and justice through the use of "sabotage." | |
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In These Times / December 5, 2024
Striking waiters spent a week in January 1913 throwing fistfuls of asafetida in the fancy dining rooms of New York City hotels. The spice, commonly used a pinchful at a time in Indian cuisine to replace entire onions, has a powerfully fetid odor and cleared most dining rooms (save for a few customers, the New-York Tribune joked, who were “suffering from severe colds”). The workers were on strike since New Year’s Eve – their second city-wide walkout in six months – and the playful act of sabotage raised workers’ spirits and became a frequent laugh line at union rallies.
The striking workers were ultimately defeated. Hotel bosses eventually found scabs to replace enough of the seasonal workforce, and the workers’ cause lost much of its middle-class support due to a remark by Industrial Workers of the World organizer Joseph Ettor, sent by the IWW to support the independent unionists, that was interpreted as a mortal threat to diners.
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WEEKLY DERAILMENT DEPARTMENT | |
Each Tuesday in this news bulletin, RWU does our best to present a picture of what has been happening over the course of the previous week in terms of derailments in North America, and investigation determinations of previous accidents. NOTE: This list is by no means comprehensive. Smaller and less consequential mishaps are generally not reported here. If the wreck results in injury or fatality, or is especially damaging/extreme, a full article will appear as a feature in the dozen or so rail articles above. Know of a train wreck? Please feel free to forward a link to raillabornews@gmail.com for possible inclusion next week. Thanks! |
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