Rail & Labor News from RWU
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Weekly Digest Number 33 - August 15th, 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: The East Palestine travesty was six months ago and below are several articles about aspects of the crash and a letter from Rep. Sherrod Brown asking Biden to declared an emergency order to get the surrounding community made as whole as possible. How many orders of magnitude more will NS spend on this than they saved by letting most of their hot box detector technicians go? Just one example of the PSR chickens coming home to roost. | |
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It’s been six months since a Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb 3, leading to chemical fires and an explosion. On Thursday, more than a hundred people attended a symposium hosted by the Cancer Free Economy Network and other groups to find out where things currently stand in the community.
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Editor's Note: If potential liability was actually incorporated in to railcar design, all wheel bearings would be monitored in real time. In the meantime dispatchers can defer to crews' on-the-scene knowledge, and sense of self-preservation over expedience. | |
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A minor coal train derailment in Virginia in early July prompted Norfolk Southern to rethink the way it responds to problems with overheating bearings, but it’s not clear why the railroad didn’t make similar changes months earlier after an overheating bearing caused the fiery Ohio derailment that prompted nationwide concerns about rail safety.
The National Transportation Safety Board said the Atlanta-based railroad changed its rules a day after the July 6 derailment to take a much more cautious approach when a hot bearing is found. After the derailment, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union was critical of Norfolk Southern’s response because dispatchers told the crew to move the train 13 miles to a siding down the track even after the crew confirmed a bearing on one of the railcars was overheating, and that’s when it derailed.
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Editor's Note: The economics of oil tank cars are tough. Replacing the roughly twenty thousand remaining DOT 111s with new tank cars at $120k each would be something like $2.5 Billion, an investment that's looking increasingly cloudy as we transition from petroleum. That said, we can't let safety suffer as the profit finally goes out of oil. | |
Matthew Cunningham & Julia Rock
The company that manufactured the toxic chemicals that were released and incinerated in the wake of the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment this winter gave $2 million to the primary Senate GOP super PAC as bipartisan rail safety legislation stalled in Congress.
The manufacturer, Occidental Petroleum, has been lobbying on rail and tank car safety, and its lobbying group, the American Chemistry Council — which also donated $250,000 to the main House GOP super PAC — had pushed for changes weakening the bill in committee.
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Editor's Note: NJT passenger rail engineers are among the lowest paid in the nation and work in one of the most expensive places to live. Management needs to do the math... what's the true cost of canceling trains? With passenger rail growing around the country NJT needs to be at least competitive to make sure it has the workforce to drive its trains. | |
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AUGUST 7, 2023 BLET
Five hundred locomotive engineers employed by NJ Transit (NJT) will begin receiving ballots in the mail this week from their national union seeking authorization to call a strike at the nation’s third-largest commuter railroad.
NJT has been insisting that engineers adhere to “pattern bargaining” with other NJT work groups. The union maintains that NJT should have wages closer to engineers’ wages at other commuter railroads. With the exception of one other transit agency, NJT’s engineers are the lowest paid engineers working in commuter service in the nation.
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Editor's Note: Invariably, when workers go on strike, there is a sense of euphoria among the workforce. Strikes are not just about wages and benefits, they are about re-claiming human dignity, self-worth and a sense of control over one's life. The workplace can often be a dictatorship. A strike reminds us that we are more than cogs in a wheel, but free human beings! | |
In These Times Aug 4, 2023
In the public imagination, strikes are often considered to be fights where workers demand better pay or more generous benefits. These are common reasons for strikes, and indeed higher wages and residual payments are among the central demands in the current Hollywood walkout. But strikes are also one of unions’ most powerful weapons for fighting back against business owners and corporate managers who claim the right to run workplaces like private dictatorships.
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Joanna Marsh Wednesday, August 09, 2023
Improving communication and training as well as fostering trust between the company and its workers are some of the areas where Norfolk Southern could do better, according to a Wednesday report from the Federal Railroad Administration assessing the eastern U.S. Class I railroad’s safety culture.
FRA’s report comes on the heels of an unrelated announcement Wednesday from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration describing a settlement among OSHA, NS and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way – Employes Division (BMWED) over alleged safety violations that occurred at the site where an NS train derailed on Feb. 3 in East Palestine, Ohio.
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Editor's Note: These polls are never a surprise, when Americans are asked about it they say they like the option of trains. So why don't we ask them, "if you like trains and you could have taken a train, why did you drive instead?" The answer might be that there is only one train a day (or even just 3 times a week!), that the arrival/departure times are inconvenient, or that the schedule is slower than it was 75 years ago, or that the train was sold out due to the lack of equipment. | |
Progressive Railroading
Amtrak published survey findings this week that demonstrate strong support from American voters for continued passenger-rail investments, including infrastructure renewal and service expansion.
Among the survey highlights:
- 92% of respondents said it’s important for the United States to invest in passenger rail safety and service improvements;
- 86% believe in the importance of a strong American passenger-rail system
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Editor's Note: This report is fantastic for several reason, not the least of which is its quality and completeness. We respectfully disagree on the strategy of privatization but they do call for 'Open Access' which we see as a half measure at best. Electrification is a shared interest as the only realistic path to zero emissions while creating lots of union jobs on both sides of the wire. Rail workers will be especially intested in Pages 32-33. | |
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August 7th 2023
Effective rail transportation is essential to avert the worst effects of human-caused climate change. Increasing the mode share of passenger and freight transportation to rail will result in many environmental, economic and social benefits. Rail transportation is inherently much more energy efficient than road transport, especially for freight. Shifting to rail not only has environmental benefits but economic ones as well
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NEWS FROM AROUND THE LABOR MOVEMENT | |
Editor's Note: Starting with this week's Rail & Labor News from RWU, we will dedicate a section of this e-newsletter to general labor news. There is a lot going on in the labor movement that rail workers are a part of right now, and we plan to highlight some of those happenings each week. | |
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August 7, 2023 Alex N. Press JACOBIN
This week, the UAW presented proposals to automakers in contract negotiations covering some 150,000 workers. Autoworkers want big raises, an end to tiers, and the right to strike over plant closures — and conditions appear favorable for them to win.
In years past, the negotiations between the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the Big Three auto manufacturers — Ford, General Motors (GM), and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) — began with the union’s president shaking hands with the auto executives across the bargaining table. Not so this year.
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Editor's Note: Hearing starts at about 16:00... While RWU's friends Solutionary Rail were cited for their creative approaches to electrification, the AAR's Jeffries trotted out the usual mischaracterizations and outright lies about electrification. | |
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July 26, 2023 02:30 PM Dirksen Senate Office Building
Panelists included Ivette Torres, Community Research Lead, People's Collective for Environmental Justice; Carl Rosen, General President, United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America; and Ian Jefferies, President & CEO’ American Association of Railroads
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Editor's Note: The airlines have taken part in this "close call reporting" for years with positive results. It's time for the rail industry to stop stonewalling. | |
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By Mark Walker Aug. 11, 2023
In the wake of the East Palestine derailment, U.S. Class I railroads pledged to join the Federal Railroad Administration’s Confidential Close Call Reporting System, which allows employees to report near accidents and other safety violations. But ... five months later, the railroads have not yet done so and are seeking changes in the system, including the ability to discipline employees in some cases.
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Editor's Note: What if the bonuses paid to Class I board members were based on rail's market share instead of short term profit? We would certainly have a very different rail system, one that just might run on time, provide good customer service, and have a robust workforce with a high morale. | |
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Trains Magazine August 10, 2023
Weekly U.S. rail traffic remained at similar levels to those established in recent weeks, with volume for the week ending Aug. 5 down 3.2% from the same week in 2022.
It was the sixth time in the last seven weeks that the weekly figure has shown a decline of between 2.4 and 3.2% compared to the corresponding week a year earlier.
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Weekly Derailment Department | | | | |
