Rail & Labor News from RWU
Weekly Digest Number 24 - June 14th, 2022
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. 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!
(Editor's Note: Despite the difficulties the rail industry has presented all of us with in recent years, this promises to be the biggest and best RWU Convention yet, as we continue to merge our Convention with the Labor Note conference which will host a record four thousand rank & file union activists from every state and every industry and union!)
RWU to Conduct 8th Biennial Convention June 16th & 17th in Chicago, IL
Dozens of railroad workers, retirees, family members and our allies will gather in Chicago - Railroad Capital of the World - on Thursday and Friday of this week, June 16th and 17th. And when our Convention adjourns, many of those in attendance will stay on for the weekend and take part in the largest labor gathering in North America, the Labor Notes conference. While the focus is on education and organizing in hundreds of workshops and presentations, prominent reform-minded union leaders such as Flight Attendant's union President Sarah Nelson and newly elected Teamster's president Sean O'Brien are expected to attend. Chris Smalls, President of the Amazon Labor Union in New York will also be there together with scores of workers from Amazon, John Deere, Starbucks, and other companies where union organizing and fighting back is in full swing!
(Editor's Note: Rails are encouraged to join this live on Tuesday, June 14th.)
U.S. House Sub-Committee to Conduct Hearing June 14th Entitled "Examining Rail Freight Safety"
SUBCOMMITTEE: Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials

DATE: Tuesday, June 14, 2022

TIME: 10:00 AM

LOCATION:2167 Rayburn House Office Building and Virtually
(Editor's Note: Now that the feds have mandated this data be made public, the Class Ones can no longer hide the numbers. And it is not pretty out there ...)
Data Reported to Federal Regulators Reveal Extent of Deterioration in Rail Service

On-time performance of big four U.S. systems tumbles compared to before the pandemic
Overall on-time performance for the big four U.S. Class I railroads has fallen from a pre-pandemic average of 85% to just 67% in the last week of May 2022, as crew shortages continue to plague rail service.
The extent of the service decline was revealed in historic on-time performance data that BNSF Railway, CSX Transportation, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific submitted to the Surface Transportation Board last week.
The board last month mandated increased performance data reporting after shippers aired their complaints during two days of rail service hearings in April [See “Federal regulators order railroads to provide more service data …,” Trains News Wire, May 6, 2022]. The railroads began reporting the more detailed metrics in May, including providing federal regulators with on-time performance figures for the first time.
The STB defines on time as carloads and intermodal trains that arrive at their destinations within 24 hours of the original estimates provided to customers. The railroads’ internal trip-plan compliance figures generally are much tighter than what they are required to report to the board, however.
(Editor's Note: It is truly historic that ALL the rail craft unions are now UNITED in "National Handling" for a master freight contract. RWU has pushed for this day for 14 years, since our founding in 2008. At that time, the rail unions were completed divided and at one another's throats, especially the BLET and the UTU (SMART-TD). Now those two are at the forefront of the unity movement. Rank & file workers must keep up the pressure and not let the officials revert back to their sectarian and parochial past. Solidarity and Unity is the order of the day!!)
United Rail Unions Statement on National Bargaining, June 9, 2022
The united Rail Unions issue the following statement June 9, 2022:
The Rail Unions who are bargaining as part of the Coordinated Bargaining Coalition and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way/SMART Mechanical Coalition concluded their third week of compulsory joint National Mediation Board-mediated negotiations with the National Carriers’ Conference Committee (NCCC) yesterday.
These joint mediated negotiations, under the direction of the NMB Board Members themselves, resulted from the Unions’ request to be released from mediation after more than two years of bargaining with the major U.S. Class I railroads.
The Rail Unions remain united in their effort to negotiate a fair agreement and stand together in rejecting all proposals that the rail carriers have advanced in our mediation sessions. Our members are the backbone of the rail network and they have earned a contract that recognizes their contributions. None of the Carrier proposals to date come close to that; instead the Carriers continue to advance proposals that insult the very employees that made their record profits possible.
Enough is enough, the only pathway to resolving this dispute is for the NMB to put forth a proffer of arbitration to move the dispute to the final steps of the Railway Labor Act.
California Congresswoman Urges STB to Reject CP-KCS Merger
U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., has urged the Surface Transportation Board to reject the proposed Canadian Pacific-Kansas City Southern merger, arguing that the first Class I combination in two decades would stifle competition.
“The proposed merger represents a grave threat to competition in the domestic rail industry, which is already highly consolidated,” Porter wrote in a five-page letter posted on the STB website on Tuesday. “It would likely lead to job losses, harm to other industries reliant on railroads, and more fragility in American supply chain infrastructure.”
Preserving what rail competition remains after decades of consolidation is important to the U.S. economy, Porter wrote. And that’s particularly the case at the Laredo gateway, she says. KCS and Union Pacific interchange with KCS de Mexico at Laredo, the busiest rail border crossing in North America.“Lack of competition has allowed railroads to gut capacity, capture and extort businesses, fire thousands of workers, and threaten the integrity of America’s freight transport network and supply chains – all while extracting monopoly profits,” she wrote.
Workers Protest After Employee Death at Canadian Railcar Plant

Monday fatality is third at National Steel Car factory in 21 months
HAMILTON, Ontario — Workers at a railcar manufacturing plant in Hamilton staged a protest on Thursday, seeking a police investigation after the third workplace death at the factory in 21 months.
The CBC reports members of United Steelworkers Local 8135 led the rally outside the National Steel Car plant in response to Monday’s death of welder Quoc Le, 51, on Monday. They are asking Hamilton police to open a criminal negligence investigation into the deaths, as well as a Ministry of Labour review of company safety procedures.
Police and the government agency are both investigating Le’s death. A police representative told the CBC that no determination has yet been made on possible charges.
Workers told the CBC safety appears to take a back seat to pushing through projects, with one saying the onus for staying safe is on the employees. The CBC said it was unable to reach anyone from National Steel Car for comment on Thursday, and that the company had previously not responded to a request for comment on Le’s death. The plant was shut down Thursday and will remain closed today (Friday, June 10), with National Steel Car saying in a message on its Facebook page that it was closing “out of an abundance of caution” because the protest would “impede the safe entry and exit of our facility.” It had previously cancelled four shifts of work in the wake of Monday’s fatality.
 
(Editor's Note: This article comes from the Labor Network for Sustainability of which RWU is a member organization.)
Unions Making a Green New Deal From Below - Part 2
Somerville, MA is an inner suburb of Boston and the most densely populated city in New England with 81,000 residents. It was long an industrial center inhabited by repeated waves of immigrants, but it has increasingly become a bedroom community for Boston and Cambridge.
Somerville is currently being transformed by the extension of the Boston Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) subway system’s Green Line throughout the city, bringing transit access to 80% of Somerville residents. Over five million square feet of new development is in the works.
Somerville’s long-term mayor supported development but not union labor for either city employees or for construction, much of which, to the dismay of building trades unions, was done non-union. In 2017, Bernie Sanders’ supporters in Our Revolution Somerville won a progressive majority on the board of aldermen (now City Council). Seeing a shift in the political winds, the head of the greater Boston building trades, Brian Doherty, and other union leaders, decided the time was ripe to establish a community-labor coalition to demand a new orientation for development. According to Doherty,
What we’ve experienced in Somerville is income inequality in real time. Developers coming into this city to our back yard, where our friends and families live, exploiting it to make as much money as they can to fill the coffers of rich people. Developers come into our town and say, we need breaks. We need to undermine workers’ rights.

(Editor's Note: Here we go, we can just see it now, UP and the other Class One's pleading "poverty" at the bargaining table, where they simply cannot meet the outrageous demands of those greedy union workers....)
Cost Pressures Prompt Union Pacific to Reduce Financial Outlook
OMAHA, Neb. – Union Pacific has lowered its financial expectations for this year in light of rising fuel prices, inflation, and the impact of its sluggish operations.
It’s now unlikely that UP will reach an operating ratio of around 55% for the year, Chief Financial Officer Jennifer Hamann told an investor conference on Tuesday. UP still expects its operating ratio to improve from last year’s 57.2, however.
UP paid an average of $4 per gallon of diesel fuel in April – a record for the railroad – and fuel costs have only continued to rise since then, Hamann says. Inflation is raising UP’s other costs, as well. And the crew shortages that have bogged down UP’s network have further raised costs.
“These headwinds also pressure our incremental margins, which are now likely to be below our original forecast of mid 60%,” Hamann says.
UP still expects full-year volume growth above the rate of industrial production, Hamann says.
But due to crew shortages and related congestion, UP has been unable to fully meet strong freight demand, says Kenny Rocker, UP’s executive vice president of marketing and sales. The railroad is only handling about 70% of coal shipments that want to move from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming to power plants, for example.
(Editor's Note: Here is what is just one of dozens of reports from news outlets around the country regarding the spike in blocked crossings and the dangers this represents to communities.)
I-Team Questions Railroad Companies About Growing Number of Stalled Trains at Crossings
PELHAM, Ala. (WBMA) — Reports of trains stopped on busy railroad crossings seem to be happening more often. Recent incidents in Bessemer and Pelham have once again brought the issue to the forefront.
ABC3340's I-Team questioned Norfolk Southern Railway Company and CSX Transportation which operate in Alabama. Both cited staffing shortages post pandemic for some of the issues.
But law enforcement and local leaders ask why the mile long trains can't be stopped short of busy crossings where it isn't such a public safety issue and inconvenience to the communities. Reps from the railroads said they apologized and understood the frustration and pledged to work on operational issues once staffing levels were adequate.
(Editor's Note: While railroading has been traditionally a male dominated occupation, women have historically held positions as clerks, operators, dispatchers, and especially during the war years, as shop workers. The operating crafts were hard to crack but by the 1970s, women workers began to make a dent. This inspiring article outlines how women are assuming leadership positions in many trades and many labor organizations. Male workers should welcome this positive development. Hell, maybe the women can do a better job of it. Considering the state of the labor movement, this would most assuredly be the case!)
A Woman's Place is in Her Union!

'This Is Our Time’: How Women Are Taking Over the Labor Movement

Over the course of the pandemic, the vast majority of essential workers were women. The vast majority of those who lost their jobs in the pandemic were women. And now the vast majority of those organizing their workplaces are women.

Over the past decade, about 60% of newly organizing workers have been women. Women now are also the faces of some of the largest labor movements in years, including the baristas who have unionized over a dozen Starbucks since late 2021, the bakery workers who recently went on strike for four months to secure their first union contract, the call center workers – mostly women of color – who went on strike in Mississippi, and the 17,000 Etsy sellers who went on strike last month to combat transaction fee increases. 
All of those movements, most of them happening in companies and even industries for the first time, are ending a disparity that has long existed between men and women in union organization. In 2021, the gender gap in union representation reached its narrowest point since the data started being tracked in the early 1980s by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. About 10.6% of men are members of a union, compared to 9.9% of women; in 1983, the first year data was available, it was 24.7% of men and 14.6% of women. BLS does not collect data on nonbinary people.
For women, unions can be a pathway to equal pay. Studies have found that unionization tends to benefit women more than men, eliminating factors that fuel pay disparity such as secrecy around salaries and societal barriers that discourage women from negotiating pay and benefits.

(Editor's Note: A national rail strike appears imminent. The success or failure will have ramifications on this side of the Atlantic.)
Storm Clouds Gather Over UK Rail Strike 
While talks continue between the UK government and the RMT, there has been little indication that either side is ready to back down. The prospect of what would be an effective national rail strike for the first time in the privatisation era, has polarised opinion on both sides of the argument. What is not in doubt is that if action does go ahead it will cause widespread disruption to the rail network and the wider UK economy.
On 24 May, railway workers voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike action across Network Rail and the passenger train operating companies. The ballot, with a turnout of 71 per cent, returned 89 per cent in favour of strike action. Although the ballot was confined to members working with English-based passenger train operating companies, members working with Network Rail were balloted across Great Britain. Since the Network Rail staff have responsibility for infrastructure and safety duties – including signalling – any strike could potentially bring the whole system to a halt.
Although grabbing the headlines, the RMT are not alone. Other disputes are available. The union ASLEF, which represents train drivers, has been on bad terms with ScotRail for a protracted period, and the switch to public ownership has done little to warm up that relationship.

(Editor's Note: This fight is reminiscent of the one with Norfolk Southern a generation ago, when that carrier expected ALL employees aboard locomotives to poop in a bag, never bothering to explain how females were supposed to pee in the bag. We won that fight by a class action suit of women, and the victory went to them and to ALL railroad workers. These are the disgraceful conditions that rail corporations subject us to. Corporate exploiters have no shame.)
French Rail Company Mocks Female Freight Drivers’ Need for Access to Toilets
In France, SNCF (French National State-owned Rail Company) is offering its railway workers driving freight trains washable period briefs to compensate for their difficult access to sanitary facilities. Of course, the idea comes under the guise of a solution. In reality, it is a push for productivity because period briefs can be kept for several hours, meaning workers will no longer “waste” time going to the toilet.
This idea has caused outrage amongst SNCF rail workers, their union CGT, and the ETF. The measure is a far cry from the Women in Rail Agreement signed by Social Partners in the rail sector (CER and ETF) back in November, which is binding, aims to attract more women to the rail sector, and improve their working conditions. Of course, access to decent sanitary facilities is a massive part of improving working conditions and is stipulated in the Agreement. SNCF must implement the Agreement as part of CER (Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies), the organisation representing rail employers.
In the Women in Rail Agreement, the preamble that signing parties commit to specifies:
“Improvements of working places from the female perspective, like providing sufficient and appropriate sanitary facilities for stationary and mobile personnel or health&safety conditions at the workplace as well as a better work-life-balance help to retain women within the sector. This is also true when ensuring equal pay, e.g. through the development of gender-neutral classification systems”.
U.S. Rail Volumes Fell 2.8% in Week 22
U.S. freight-rail volume dipped 2.8% to 475,513 carloads and intermodal units in the week ending June 4 compared with volume in the same week in 2021, according to Association of American Railroads data.
Railroads logged 225,274 carloads, down 1%, and 250,239 containers and trailers, down 4.4%.
Four of the 10 carload commodity groups that AAR tracks weekly posted increases. They included grain, up 2,515 carloads to 23,867; motor vehicles and parts, up 1,385 carloads to 12,518; and nonmetallic minerals, up 562 carloads to 29,778.
Commodity groups that posted decreases included metallic ores and metals, down 3,222 carloads to 20,192; miscellaneous carloads, down 1,468 carloads to 8,037; and farm products excluding grain and food, down 887 carloads to 14,510.
Meanwhile, Canadian railroads logged 75,646 carloads for the week, down 3.5%, and 67,573 intermodal units, down 9.2%. Mexican railroads posted 19,012 carloads for the week, up 2.8%, and 14,005 intermodal units, up 1.2%.