Rail & Labor News from RWU
| | Weekly Digest Number 23 - June 3rd, 2025 | | 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: When 97.5% of a workforce votes to strike, it’s not a bargaining tactic. It’s a warning. VIA Rail workers have drawn a line, and rightly so. Public rail service cannot be run on disrespect and broken promises. Unifor members are standing up not just for themselves, but for the principle that rail jobs should be fair, secure, and worth fighting for. | |
Trains Magazine/ May 27th
VIA Rail Canada workers represented by Canadian union Unifor have authorized a strike that could come as soon as June 22, the union announced Monday, May 26.
Some 97.5% of workers represented by Unifor Council 4000 and Local 100 voted in favor of strike authorization. “This strike vote is not just a number — it’s a direct response to VIA Rail’s refusal to bargain fairly,” Unifor National President Lana Payne said in a press release. “Our members have shown they are united, determined, and ready to take action to protect good jobs and public rail service.”
| | Editor's Note: Years in the making, pent-up demand coupled with a lack of rolling stock has now resulted in sold out trains and high fares on most Amtrak routes. Over the last three decades, Amtrak has been more often than not starved of cash, threatened with extinction, and unable/unwilling to obtain the capital funding necessary to purchase new equipment. Sadly, now that there is huge demand from the travelling public, trains are limited in length/capacity due to a chronic shortage of coaches, sleepers and other passenger equipment. | |
Trains Magazine / May 27th
Sellouts in coach and high prices in sleeping cars, if space is available at all, are the rule rather than exception in a News Wire survey of Amtrak long-distance trains as summer arrives. Travelers will often face limited inventory for the rest of the summer despite marginal increases in equipment deployment.
In a statement, the company says, “Demand going into the 2025 summer travel season is as strong or stronger than last season. While there is always some variance in patterns from year-to-year, Amtrak and our partners expect we will continue to outperform the previous seasons in the major metrics driven by revenue and ridership.”
| | Editor's Note: Pedestrians and motorists are killed in the U.S. by trains far more than anywhere in the world. Tens of thousands of at-grade crossings - many barely protected - are the basis for much of this carnage. And these collisions don't just take the life of the motorist/pedestrian, in some cases the lives of train crew members and passengers as well. Perhaps this effort in Texas can serve as a new model for other states to emulate. | |
Trains Magazine / May 29th
Texas Gov. Greg Abbot has signed into a law a bill creating funding to improve safety at railroad grade crossings, legislation sparked by the death of a Houston high school student late last year.
Senate Bill 1555 passed the house by a 101-16 vote earlier this month, after passing the Senate by a 31-0 vote in March [see “Texas Senate passes …,” Trains News Wire, March 27, 2025]. The final version provides $250 million in grants for cities and counties to replace at-grade crossings with overpasses or underpasses, or to create pedestrian walkways. The local entity must provide 10% matching funding.
The legislation was introduced following the death of 15-year-old Sergio Rodriguez, hit and killed last December by a train on his way to school at Houston’s Milby High School. That led to Union Pacific agreeing to limit train movements past the school during peak arrival and departure times [see “UP will avoid train movements …,” News Wire, Dec. 17, 2024].
| | Editor's Note: Amtrak touts transparency, but public access without public voice is a hollow gesture. Letting people “listen in” while shutting them out of the conversation isn’t meaningful outreach, it’s performance. If Amtrak is serious about accountability, it should start by listening to the riders and workers who keep the system alive. | |
Railway Age / May 27th
Amtrak’s Board of Directors met on May 22.
Amtrak’s willingness to allow members of the public to pre-register and then “listen in” on Zoom is a positive step toward transparency, an attribute that some advocates have claimed for a long time that Amtrak lacks. The railroad’s in-person Board meeting in Seattle last December was also available on line, so Amtrak deserves credit for taking these early steps to augment its outreach and improve transparency. Still, there were no opportunities for anyone who is not a Board member to make a statement or ask a question.
Although Board Chair Anthony Coscia attended the meeting, he did not participate in the part available to the public, except to introduce the first presentation, by Costin Corneanu, Senior VP for Finance.
| | Editor's Note: Railroad Workers United is an affiliate of the Rail Users Network. | |
Railway Age / May 27th
The Rail Users’ Network (RUN) holds on-line conferences in the spring and fall. The most recent took place on May 16 and focused on the current situation regarding rail transit in the United States. The theme of the conference was “Mixed Bag: New Transit Starts and Fiscal Cliff Service Cuts – What to Expect in 2025.”
The bad news was, of course, the fiscal cliff that is exacerbating funding crises for many transit providers, as we have been reporting. The good news is that some providers still expect to open new lines soon that have been planned and built over the years.
RUN is a not-for-profit advocacy organization whose purview includes Amtrak, other passenger-rail carriers in the United States and Canada, and rail transit in both countries.
| | Editor's Note: RWU is an affiliate member organization of the Rail Passengers Association. Some of the members and activists from RPA speak here in favor of passenger rail expansion. | |
Solutionary Rail / May 23rd
To celebrate the long awaited release of Reconnect America's Episode 3. Amtrak's genesis and the ongoing struggle to reclaim the public purpose of passenger rail, Solutionary Rail used our monthly Hive Call with folks around the country as an opportunity to have a discussion with three of the nationally recognized passenger rail champions we featured in the episode:
- John Robert Smith, Chair of Transportation for America and former Amtrak Board Chair.
- Meredith Richards, National Chair for the Rail Passengers Association.
- Tom White, Co-founder of Climate Rail Alliance and veteran rail planner and author with nearly 60 years in the industry.
| | Editor's Note: It is not clear what happended here. But it appears a s another example where management simply has failed to manage. | |
NBC Boston / May 29th
Five current and former MBTA employees were arrested Thursday for allegedly lying about conducting Red Line track inspections last year, federal prosecutors said.
Surveillance video shows four former track inspectors doing other things, like working on private vehicles or sitting idly while they said in records that they were inspecting track, the U.S. Attorney's Office for Massachusetts said in a news release Thursday. Their supervisor at the Cabot Yard inspection facility allegedly not only knew they weren't on the job, prosecutors said he had them work on his vehicle, too.
| | Editor's Note: Illinois is putting real money into real planning, and that’s no small thing in a country where rail often gets lip service and little else. A fully state-funded feasibility study is a smart move toward building a Midwestern network that connects people, not just profits. Let’s hope this is more than a report that gathers dust. | |
High Speed Rail Alliance / May 28th
The Illinois High Speed Rail Commission is on track to publish an initial feasibility report for Governor JB Pritzker and the General Assembly in early 2026. The report will outline potential route options, governance structures, and benefits.
This is the first high-speed rail feasibility study in the Midwest. It can be a major step in creating a network of great, electrified trains that reconnect the region’s major cities.
The state is funding 100% of the study, which is being conducted to align with Step 2 of the Federal Corridor ID process—though it is not part of the program.
| | Editor's Note: The rail industry will never give up its quest for single person operation of trains. And Railroad Workers United - founded on the premise that every train MUST have at least a certified engineer and a certified conductor - will never give up the fight to keep two crew vmembers aboard every train. | |
BLET / May 29th
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) solicited public feedback on possible federal safety regulations that could be repealed or modified to achieve “meaningful burden reduction while continuing to meet statutory obligations and ensure the safety of the U.S. transportation system.”
Unsurprisingly, Class I railroads through the Association of American Railroads (AAR) jumped at the chance to put their profit-hungry agenda ahead of the safety of its workers and the general public by advocating to remove 80 time-tested safety rules from the books.
At the top of their list is a request to repeal the Federal Railroad Administration’s two-person crew rule. The AAR believes that it is less costly to operate trains with only one person. However, doing so disregards the proven safety advantages of two-person train crews and the additional benefits that allow for faster response times during derailments or other incidents.
| | Editor's Note: So many social and political problems can be solved by railroad development and expansion. This webinar will explore some of them. Register and learn just how railroads are the solution for the future! | |
High Speed Rail Alliance
Speaker: Gareth Dennis, engineer and author of How the Railways Will Fix the Future
Engineer and writer Gareth Dennis will join us from the UK to discuss his new book How the Railways Will Fix the Future. In it, he looks at the history of railways (including the role they have played in extraction and exploitation) but focuses on their power to tackle issues facing us today and to shape a better future. Topics for discussion include lessons to learn from global railway operations on what works best long-term, and what this might mean in the United States.
| | 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: Once again, the President's illegal actions against federal employees and their unions is blocked by a federal judge. But we cannot rely on court challengers, but rather federal workers - together with railroad workers and others - must take action in defense of our jobs and livelihoods. | |
AFGE / May 27th
In a major victory for federal workers and the American people they serve, a judge last week granted a preliminary injunction ruling that President Trump cannot implement mass layoffs of federal workers without the approval of Congress which created these agencies.
“Presidents may set policy priorities for the executive branch, and agency heads may implement them. This much is undisputed,” said Judge Susan Illston for the Northern District of California in her May 22 decision. “But Congress creates federal agencies, funds them, and gives them duties that—by statute—they must carry out. Agencies may not conduct large-scale reorganizations and reductions in force in blatant disregard of Congress’s mandates, and a President may not initiate large-scale executive branch reorganization without partnering with Congress.”
| | Editor's Note: As the global temps continue to rise, extreme heat in the workplace will become more and more an issue for more and more workers, inclding railroad workers. | | |
Truck driving used to be a solid middle-class job. Not anymore. Driverless trucks just hit the highway in Texas. It’s displacing truck drivers. And truckers warn, “your job could be next.”
More Perfect Union’s mission is to build power for working people. Here’s what that means:
We report on the real struggles and challenges of the working class from a working-class perspective, and we attempt to connect those problems to potential solutions. We report on the abuses and wrongdoing of corporate power, and we seek to hold accountable the ultra-rich who have too much power over America’s political and economic systems.
| | Editor's Note: Working people have been sibject to the farce known as "private health insurance" which has robbed us blind at every turn, including at the bargaining table. | |
Action Network
RSVP now to join our special webinar on Wednesday, June 18th at 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern, focused on mobilizing union workers in the fight to #ReclaimMedicare from corporate greed. We're honored to be joined by:
- Senator Elizabeth Warren
- Representative Pramila Jayapal
- Sara Nelson, International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA
- Dr. Belinda McIntosh, Physicians for a National Health Program
We will focus on why it is important for the Labor Movement to protect Medicare from privatization by insurance corporations, and include what unions and workers can do to fight back. While the webinar is centered on the devastating impacts Medicare Advantage has on union workers and retirees, all are invited to attend!
| | 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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