Weekly Digest Number 27 - July 2, 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!

Editor's Note: Norfolk Southern's behavior was no doubt unprecedented and reprehensible, but it comes as no surprise to railroad workers. Once widely known as the "Nazi Southern" the railroad has had a reputation for running roughshod over employees, shippers, Amtrak, and trackside communities. Apparently, the Class One carrier believes it can do the same thing with government agencies. Kudos to Chair Homendy for calling out this unacceptable behavior.

NTSB Chair Rips Norfolk Southern’s ‘Unprecedented and Reprehensible’ Response to Derailment Probe

Homendy says NS stonewalled the NTSB, sought to influence its investigation, and even issued a threat in a recent meeting

EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy sharply criticized Norfolk Southern today for the way it responded to the board’s investigation of the Feb. 3, 2023, hazardous materials derailment in East Palestine. NS stonewalled board requests for information, ran its own probe on the side in violation of NTSB rules, and sought to influence the board’s independent investigation, Homendy said at the end of a daylong hearing on the board’s findings and recommendations. “Norfolk Southern’s abuse of the party process was unprecedented and reprehensible,” Homendy said. “Numerous times Norfolk Southern delayed or failed to provide critical investigative information to our team,” Homendy said. “Twice at the request of staff I called Norfolk Southern, stating I would issue subpoenas to get the information if it wasn’t immediately provided to our team.”

Watch the final minutes (starts at 7:49:00) of the all-day hearing held on Tuesday, June 25th, as NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy details the outrageous and despicable behavior engaged ion by Norfolk Southern throughout the course of the investigation.

Editor's Note: Because the recommendations of NTSB are non-binding, it remains to be seen what - if any - action is taken by the various parties including NS, FRA, and others. If implemented, many of these recommendations would go a long way to making the railroad a safer place to work and live alongside of.

NTSB issues 31 new recommendations in wake of East Palestine wreck

Board also concludes Norfolk Southern and its contractors should not have decided to vent and burn tank cars laded with hazardous materials

EAST PALESTINE, Ohio – Norfolk Southern and its contractors should not have decided to vent and burn derailed tank cars carrying vinyl chloride three days after the Feb. 3, 2023, derailment in East Palestine, the National Transportation Safety Board said today (Tuesday, June 25). The five tank cars were among the 38 cars of train 32N that derailed after the catastrophic failure of a wheel bearing on a covered hopper. The bearing was on fire but did not trigger critical alarms at two hot bearing detectors the train passed before reaching East Palestine, where the wayside detector alert sounded just moments before the fiery wreck.

Editor's Note: RWU first launched our Campaign Against Long & Heavy Trains more than a decade ago. Finally, recent events and studies have caught the attention of many, and the call for length/weight limits is building and growing.

Long Trains on the U.S. Rail Network: What’s Really Moving

Union Pacific ran several 20,000-foot trains on the Sunset Route, while BNSF’s longest stretched 16,800 feet on the Southern Transcon, according to an analysis of 10 days of traffic

Freight train length has been a growing topic of discussion, and concerns about the safety risks of running longer trains have captured the attention of policy makers and the public.  A new study on the derailment risks of longer trains has the train world again talking about train lengths.  The study, led by Peter Madsen, a professor at the Marriott School of Business at BYU, found a statistically significant relationship between longer trains and increased derailment risk, with 100-car trains having an 11% increased risk of derailment compared to 50-car trains, and 200-car trains having a 24% increased risk of derailment.  

Editor's Note: Just as their fellow workers did in the U.S. in 2022, members of the running trades (operating crafts) as well as train directors (train dispatchers) in Canada have overwhelmingly participated in a strike ballot and have nearly unanimously called for strike action against both CN and CP, Canada's two big Class One railroads. A national strike may come by mid-July.

Teamsters Canada Rail Conference members reauthorize strikes against CN, CPKC

Possible work stoppages still on hold pending CIRB decision

LAVAL, Quebec — Members of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference have voted to reauthorize strikes at Canadian Pacific Kansas City and Canadian National, the union announced Saturday, June 29. Overall, 89.5% of union members participated in the vote, with 98.6% voting to reauthorize the strike, the union said. At CN, conductors, engineers, and yard workers voted 98.4% to authorize the strike, with a 90.1% turnout. At CPKC, that same group voted 99.2% in favor of reauthorization, with an 88.6% turnout. CPKC rail traffic controllers, also represented by the TCRC, voted 95.7% to reauthorize the strike, with an 88.5% turnout. The union had previously authorized strikes at both railroads on May 1, but those authorizations are only good for 60 days, and potential May 22 strikes have been placed on hold while the Canada Industrial Relations Board rules on a government request to determine if any shipments must continue in the event of a work stoppage. That ruling is still pending.

Editor's Note: The "budget-cutting" Republicans are at it again. Paul Ryan - former House Speaker - attempted the same hatchet job a decade or so ago. Railroad workers must rise up to defend the Railroad Retirement System that WE pay for! If you are a working or retired railroader, please consider joining the National Association of Retired and Veteran Railroad Employees (NARVRE).

RRB Budget Under House Siege

The Railroad Retirement Board June 27 reported that the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies has allocated $100 million for the agency’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget, a crippling $26 million, 21% decrease from FY2024, and a $2 million decrease from FY2023. RRB’s FY2025 request level was $172.331 million and the President’s budget request was $134.0 million.

“The RRB’s administrative budget is financed by payroll taxes paid by rail employees and rail employers,” the agency said. “Funding is appropriated from the RRB Trust Funds and not from the U.S. Treasury’s general fund. The proposed budget would be catastrophic for the RRB. With several years of reduced or flat budgets, the RRB has struggled to accomplish its mission. The House Appropriation Subcommittee’s proposal would result in drastically reduced staffing and even more spending cuts.” This despite the Subcommittee stating that it was “[p]rioritizing funding for early education, childcare, child welfare, and programs for seniors and the disabled.”

Editor's Note: Generally we put the derailment news each week below in the "Derailment Department." (last week none, this week, four). When a derailment causes injury or death or is otherwise significant, we tend to elevate the news to this section of the weekly Rail & Labor News as well. Our thoughts are with the hospitalized injured crew member.

Crew member injured as CPKC train derails in Iowa

Injured workers airlifted to the hospital

MIDWAY BEACH, Iowa — One crew member was reported airlifted to a hospital with serious injuries after the derailment of a CPKC train Saturday, June 29, near Montpelier, Iowa. The incident occurred about 7 p.m. near Midway Beach in Muscatine County and involved two locomotives and an undetermined number of cars and occurred on a spur track, Chris Jasper, Muscatine County Director of Emergency Management, told WQAD-TV. Images from the scene on the KGAN-TV website show the two locomotives and several railcars on their side on the outside of a cure. The train was reportedly carrying steel; no hazardous materials were involved. CPKC personnel are on site and beginning clean-up; the cause of the derailment is under investigation.

Editor's Note: The Class One carriers have made it clear that they intend to automate - or contract out - the majority of the rail jobs that are left. Between operating trains with one - and then no - crew members, automating track inspections, contracting out shop work, and moving less and less freight carloads, in a decade or so into the future, there may be very little left if the rail carriers have there way. Railroad workers should look into the plan for public ownership of the railroads HERE. Continued Wall Street ownership has nothing to offer us.

Federal court orders FRA to allow BNSF Railway to expand track inspection program

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court has ordered the Federal Railroad Administration to allow BNSF Railway to expand its automated track inspection program while simultaneously reducing the frequency of traditional visual inspections. Railroads are permitted unlimited use of automated track inspection systems that rely on lasers and other technology to find track geometry defects. But without a waiver from the FRA they cannot simultaneously scale back the required frequency of visual inspections of main lines.

Editor's Note: Great to see this moving forward ... but the endless delays and cost overruns portend what might be the fate of such projects elsewhere in the future as well. It would be much quicker and cheaper to utilize the existing rail infrastructure we have already, double track and electrify it, and make make it "higher speed" conventional rail.

“A Huge Milestone” for California High Speed Rail

Full route from Los Angeles to San Francisco has environmental clearance

Three key developments emerged from the California High Speed Rail Authority‘s extended board meeting this week. First, the California HSR Authority’s board of directors green lighted the environmental impact statement for the Palmdale to Burbank segment. The approval means all environmental documents for the 463-mile SF to LA line are now cleared. (The EIS for a short segment that extends south from LA to Anaheim will likely be approved next year.) The Authority’s CEO, Brian Kelly, called this “a huge milestone."

Editor's Note: While great to see the feds investing in vital transportation infrastructure, the scales are still overwhelmingly tipped in favor of highways. We need a massive infusion of investment in local, regional, and national light and heavy rail infrastructure to make up for decades where such investments hardly existed.

First Look: Rail-Related RAISE Grantees for FY24

The RAISE program “supports a diverse slate of communities with projects of local and regional significance,” according to USDOT. “Funding is split equally between urban and rural areas, and a large percentage of grants support regions defined as historically disadvantaged or areas of persistent poverty. The eligibility requirements of RAISE allow project sponsors, including state and local governments, counties, Tribal governments, transit agencies, and port authorities, to pursue multi-modal and multi-jurisdictional projects that are more difficult to fund through other grant programs.” This year’s allocations include $1.8 billion for 148 nationwide projects (scroll down to download the complete list). The Department said it received nearly $13 billion in requests for the $1.8 billion in funding available.

Editor's Note: The absurd practice of forever destroying hump yards is the height of short-term focused irresponsibility on the part of the Class One railroads. Because the rail industry today is moving 24% less freight than in 2006, one could argue - everything else being equal - that we might need fewer hump yards. But our hope and expectation is that one day the rails will make a huge comeback, and freight carloads will return from the highways. Without these yards, how is all of the freight going to be classified? The irresponsibility of PSR has no bounds.

Bulldoze the Humps?

It may be Precision Scheduled Railroading heresy to say this, but a similar, no-going-back element of PSR has me perplexed. Perhaps I am misinformed or just unable to see wisdom that others readily grasp, but I also know from consulting with others that I am not alone in my concern. Has “burn the ships” now morphed into “bulldoze the humps” in 21st century railroading? When your vessels are all burnt to the waterline or your humps are now as level as classification tracks, there’s not much chance of going “back.”

Editor's Note: It is in the interest of every motorist, every taxpayer, and certainly every railroad workers to opposes these behemoths from invading the nation's highways.

Write to Congress: NO BIGGER TRUCKS in Appropriations Bill

This coming Thursday, June 27, the House Appropriations Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) Subcommittee will be meeting to markup its transportation funding bill. On Wednesday, July 10^th, the full committee will be meeting to markup the bill. As we saw in the FY’24 THUD appropriations, some mega-corporate shippers will work to insert truck size and weight increases, hoping that nobody will notice amongst the thousands of line items in the bill. There’s a reason for this – bigger trucks are unpopular across the country because most people understand the bigger trucks mean even more unsafe roads.

Editor's Note: The fight at NJT has been a long one and might just finally come to a head next month when the union is free to strike. Let's hope their right to "self-help" is not obstructed by businessmen and their politicians.

NJ Transit, BLET Enter ‘Cooling-Off Period’

The National Mediation Board (NMB) has confirmed “that, pursuant to the Railway Labor Act, New Jersey Transit Rail Operations (NJ Transit) and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) were released by the NMB from statutory mediation on June 24, 2024, and a 30-day cooling-off period begins on June 25, 2024.”

The cooling-off period maintains the “status quo”: The union doesn’t strike and the railroad doesn’t lock out employees. NMB on June 24 reported that “[a]bsent agreements or the establishment of a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB), the parties could exercise ‘self-help’ as of 12:01 a.m. EDT, July 25, 2024.” According to the Board, self-help means the union “is free to strike or engage in other activity, and the carrier is free to impose its last best offer or temporarily cease operations or engage in other self-help activity, unless a PEB is created.”

Editor's Note: While we agree that certain corridors lend themselves to high speed rail and deserve rail workers' support, it is important to remember that we have the largest conventional rail network in the world that is largely underutilized, single track and offers a much quicker, cheaper option to re-establish the once great comprehensive network of much needed conventional passenger trains on already existing right-of-ways.

VIDEO: Inside America’s First High Speed Rail

Construction just began for the first high-speed rail line, which will connect LA and Las Vegas and reach 200mph. And it’s being built by 11,000 union workers. This is a taste of what you can expect when high-speed rail comes to the United States, soon.

NEWS FROM AROUND THE LABOR MOVEMENT

Editor's Note: As we learn more and more about the shipwreck, it appears that the same factors that lead to the train wreck at East Palestine, Ohio a year earlier - lack of maintenance and inspection, lack of oversight and regulation, shoddy equipment - are all behind what went wrong leading up to the catastrophic collision of the container ship with the Baltimore bridge.

Baltimore Longshoreman on the Key Bridge Collapse: “It’s not surprising that this ship lost power.”

Veteran longshoreman John Blom on the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge and the slow recovery ahead for port workers.

Nearly two months have passed since the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, and the city is still reeling from the disaster. The bridge collapse immediately rendered the Port of Baltimore inoperable, threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs, and billions in wages, business revenue, and state taxes. While channels into the port have begun to open back up slowly, workers on the waterfront have been deeply affected, and the road to recovery will be long. As questions linger about the root causes of the Key Bridge collapse and what sort of future Baltimore can salvage for itself, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez and Marc Steiner, host of The Marc Steiner Show, team up to speak with John Blom, a veteran longshoreman who worked in the Port of Baltimore for over 30 years, to get a workers’ history of the port and its meaning to the city it nurtured.

Editor's Note: It took an independent rank & file movement to build this warehouse union. Now it is affiliating with the Teamsters. It remains to be seen what the advantages and disadvantages this will bring to this important fledgling effort.

Amazon Workers Affiliate With the Teamsters, Next up Electing Top Officers

Amazon Labor Union members voted June 17 to affiliate with the Teamsters.

Workers cast 878 ballots at JFK8 Amazon fulfillment center on Staten Island, N.Y. The tally broke down to 829 votes in favor of the affiliation and 14 against it; 10 ballots were spoiled. Total turnout was 11 percent out of 8,000 workers. However, workers estimate the workforce has dipped to between 5,000 and 6,000 workers during the off-peak season. “On behalf of the Amazon Labor Union, I’m proud of our members choosing a path to victory. We're now stronger than ever before," said ALU President Chris Smalls in a statement.

Editor's Note: Our friends at Truckers Movement for Justice are fighting for basic truck drivers' rights and dignity. They are there for us railroad workers; we need to be there for them! Check out this innovative action.

US, Mexican truckers unite to protest low wages, poor working conditions

Convoy of oilfield truckers plan to travel through West Texas Monday to highlight grievances

A cross-border trucker-led convoy will be rolling through parts of West Texas on Monday to spotlight everything from violence against drivers, low wages to poor working conditions in both Mexico and the U.S., organizers said. The convoy — a joint action between the U.S.-based Truckers Movement for Justice (TMJ) and the Mexico-based United Mexican Carriers (TAMEXUN) and the Binational Carriers Union (STB) — will consist of about 75 truckers from both sides of the border on a 150-mile trek from Odessa, Texas, through Kermit and Monahans, Texas. “TMJ, STB and TAMEXUN are fighting for the rights of the drivers to organize and to negotiate collectively with trucking companies,” Billy Randel, founder of TMJ, told FreightWaves in an interview. 

WEEKLY DERAILMENT DEPARTMENT