Rail & Labor News from RWU
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Weekly Digest Number 36 - September 5th, 2023 | |
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!
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Editor's Note: Apparently there have been a number of accidents like this one in Italy in recent years, as maintenance work has been increasingly contracted out. Those killed and injured in last week's catastrophe were all contract workers. The fight against contracting out is one of major importance on both sides of the Atlantic. | |
Author: Esther Geerts
A tragedy occurred in the night of 30 August, when five railway maintenance workers died after being hit by an empty passing train in Brandizzo, along the Turin-Milan railway line in Italy. The victims worked for external contractor company Sigifer, says Italian railway manager RFI.
Several Italian trade unions have proclaimed a strike for tomorrow, September 1st, following the accident which led to the death of the five railway workers. The employees of RFI in charge of the management and execution of infrastructure maintenance go on strike for the last four hours of the daily service on 1st September and the night shift between 31st August and 1st September.
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Joanna Marsh Wednesday, August 30, 2023
The National Transportation Safety Board will be focusing its investigation of an Aug. 6 fatality at a CSX rail yard in Cumberland, Maryland, on the railroad’s employee training regime, as well as the industry’s procedures for identifying areas where the clearance between rail equipment might be limited.
NTSB noted that following the incident, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) issued a safety bulletin on Aug. 16 urging railroads to review employee training programs that address riding equipment in close-clearance situations
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Editor's Note: Is this just another example of NS underinvesting in the machinery that makes a railroad run? Computers have issues which is why companies have contingency plans that don't take 12 hours to kick in. Also - imagine if the railroads got their wish of full automation? How much longer would it take to bring the system back safely without experienced humans? | |
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FreightWaves Staff Tuesday, August 29, 2023
Norfolk Southern says its systems are back online after an outage impacted the railroad’s operations on Monday. Service was restored around 7 p.m. Monday, according to a statement from the company, but the impacts could be felt for at least a couple of weeks.
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Editor's Note: There are plenty of examples of decaying legacy rail infrastructure 'inherited' by the Class Is. There may well be a role for public capital in rehabbing these artifacts from a different era (in terms of both engineering and rail's market share) but the railroads need to be transparent about structural deficiencies, and expect to pay a fair share. | |
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Binghamton railroad bridges in bad shape
Don Morgan Published: August 30, 2023
Binghamton Mayor Jared M. Kraham on Wednesday August 30, 2023, released a City-funded report on the condition of railroad bridges located in various sections of the city.
"This detailed and damning report confirms what residents have lived with for years. Railroad companies, in particular Norfolk Southern, have failed to properly maintain bridges they own in Binghamton, leading to significant structural and safety concerns. These bridges are unsightly, crumbling and potentially dangerous. This report puts railroad companies on notice for the deplorable condition of their infrastructure."
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Editor's Note: At $5 million for a pedestrian overpass and maybe $20 million for car and truck overpass we could spend a lot of money on grade separation (and we should) but we absolutely need a prohibition on mega-length trains. Also - blocked crossings go in the category of things a publicly owned railroad would be much less likely to do. | |
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by Topher Sanders Aug. 25, 5 a.m. EDT
The railroad company has delivered on early, short-term fixes for the trains blocking kids from getting to school, but some officials are skeptical it will follow through on bigger, permanent changes. Blocked crossings, an age-old problem perpetuated by all rail companies, have gotten more attention in recent years as communities complain about trains getting longer and blocking more crossings for increasing periods of time.
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Progressive Railroading
The 1,400 members of United Electrical Workers (UE) Locals 506 and 618 yesterday ratified a new collective bargaining agreement with Wabtec Corp., bringing an end to the 10-week strike at Wabtec’s Erie, Pennsylvania, plant that began June 22.
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Editor's Note: Unless and until the rail industry improves its safety record, and the transport of LNG by rail is made safer, the product simply has no business being transported by rail. See the RWU Statement to the PHMSA from 2019. | |
Editor's Note: This is not good news at all, but not unexpected. For much of this year intermodal has been in the toilet. Now carloads might be following them. This trend of declining freight movement has been at work for nearly a generation. The industry moved 21% less freight in 2022 than in 2006. Based upon the numbers, that figure may reach 25% less at the end of this year. Private rail industry is failing us. Time for public ownership! | |
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Progressive Railroading
U.S. freight railroads hauled 472,525 carloads and intermodal units in the week ending Aug. 26, a 5.9% decrease compared with the same week in 2022, according to Association of American Railroads data.
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Editor's Note: It may not be such a bad thing to not be building new diesel locomotives that get amortized over decades. And we need the capacity of facilities like Wabtec's Erie plant and its United Electrical workforce to convert the thousands of existing diesels we need for a zero carbon fleet. That said - a healthy industry would be adding locomotive capacity to handle growth and increased market share. | |
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By Chris Guss | August 29, 2023
It’s been three years since the railroad industry has had a new-build six-axle freight locomotive order for a Class I railroad. Precision Scheduled Railroading, a glut of stored locomotives, and the desire to rebuild instead of build, has kept railroads on the sidelines in terms of new power. Second-hand purchasing of locomotives for extra power and/or use as future rebuild candidates is expected to continue while Class I railroads attempt to avoid the cost and complexity of new Tier 4 road locomotives, if possible.
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Editor's Note: The TSB points to a known fix that uses locomotives built in communications capability to alert crews to fire in another locomotive deep in a train, and it's probably a lot cheaper than bringing back cabooses. Also - working and omnipresent hot box detectors are crucial with longer trains and under-maintained rolling stock. | |
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Progressive Railroading
After investigating a 2021 freight-train locomotive fire, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) last week announced railroads must do more to monitor freight-rail locomotives for common types of fires.
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NEWS FROM AROUND THE LABOR MOVEMENT | |
Editor's Note: As more and more workers - especially younger ones - are feeling their oats and deciding that the only way to improve their individual lives is to organize collectively for the common good and fight back, they are turning to union struggles and strikes to achieve their ends. At the rate we are going, it is conceivable that these struggle could coalesce - as they have done in the past - and result in generalized strikes of millions of workers nationwide. | |
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August 31, 2023 Joe Maniscalco
The catalyst for a naturally-occurring general strike may continue to be elusive despite the ongoing struggle facing working people throughout the country. But that can change as workers across all sectors continue to suffer.
The next great general strike to captivate the United States will not be organized — it’ll be organic. And it could be the most transformative general strike this country has ever seen.
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August 28, 2023 / Luis Feliz Leon
Five hundred Auto Workers (UAW) from Local 862 held rallies in Louisville, Kentucky, August 24 and 25, part of a wave of practice pickets and rallies around the country.
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Weekly Derailment Department | | | | |
