Rail & Labor News from RWU
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Weekly Digest Number 44 - October 31, 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: NS is in hot pursuit of the Cincinnati Southern. As the old cartoon said, "What Others Want, Why Not Keep?" The election is a week from today and anything could happen, with Cincinnati's voters being quickly educated on the possible boondoggle. | |
Sharon Coolidge / October 27th
Norfolk Southern Corp. has spent more than $4.2 million so far trying to convince Cincinnati voters to sell it Cincinnati's city-owned railroad − believed to be the most any group or candidate has ever spent on a city election. Norfolk Southern Corp. is the only donor. The pro-Issue 22 campaign spent almost $3.9 million on television commercials. The most aired commercial so far featured [Mayor] Pureval, who has touted the deal since it was first announced last November.
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Progressive Railroading
Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division-IBT (BMWED) members who work on the Delaware & Hudson Railway Co. (D&H) recently ratified a new collective bargaining agreement that provides annual wage increases through 2024 and is retroactive to 2022. The agreement also includes early $1,000 bonuses, no reductions to health and welfare benefits or changes to cost sharing, and an additional paid day off per year. The D&H is part of Canadian Pacific Kansas City.
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Editor's Note: If the UP's stated goal, "...to keep trains moving" is true, they would reduce train length and tonnage, properly maintain and inspect equipment, hire and retain plenty of train crews to do the job, and invest in expanded infrastructure. They are doing the opposite. | |
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Alicia Barrera / October 25
A spokesperson for Union Pacific confirmed their train blocked the crossing on the 2900 block of Tinsley Lane Tuesday morning. “… a Union Pacific train was blocking a crossing in Fort Worth, Texas, due to train congestion from another railroad on the route it was traveling. We continuously work to minimize blocked crossings caused by stopped trains. Our goal is to keep trains moving, and we are working to move rail shipments more efficiently,” the spokesperson said.
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Editor's Note: After more than 15 years of stonewalling by "host" railroad CSX, there are signs of hope that passenger rail may finally be restored to the Gulf Coast. Yet even now, the expectation is not for another 4 years. | |
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Progressive Railroading
Louisiana Gov. Bel Edwards, state Department of Transportation and Development and Amtrak officials yesterday signed a service development agreement calling for the return of intercity passenger-rail service between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Signed at the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal, the agreement is viewed as a breakthrough for a project that dates to 2008, when the idea was introduced through a concept study, state officials said in a press release. According to the agreement, passenger service could start as early as 2027.
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Editor's Note: Like other industries, the rail industry sees a potential boondoggle in AI applications they hope will replace thousands of workers. The rail craft unions would be wise to unite as one to be better able to defend what employment is left in the industry. | |
Progressive Railroading
Norfolk Southern Railway today announced it’s deploying machine-vision technology at train-inspection portals to improve rail safety across its 22-state network. The AI transmits the information to the NS Network Operations Center where the data is reviewed by subject-matter experts to identify and address issues. Critical defects found are flagged for immediate handling.
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Editor's Note: Will NS and other Class Ones change their behavior due to the economic losses being experiences due to the East Palestine disaster? The jury remains out, but for what it is worth, you hear a lot less hyperbole about the wonder of Precision Scheduled Railroading these days. | |
Editor's Note: NTSB's recommendations often fall on deaf ears, as the rail industry usually fails to adopt voluntarily the agency's suggestions, and federal legislators and agencies are hesitant to promulgate rules. | |
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The National Transportation Safety Board is calling for new rules regarding crew members riding shoving moves through grade crossings as a result of a fatal October 2021 accident in Houston, Texas. The board has recommended that crew members be prohibited from riding such moves through crossings equipped only with warning lights or passive warning devices, such as crossbucks, unless ground protection is provided.
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Editor's Note: Organizing continues apace by East Palestine residents and advocates to tell the behind-the-scenes story of the train wreck and disaster last winter. RWU encourages all rail workers to tune in to the screening of this documentary. | |
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Join us for a free virtual screening of the short, eye-opening new documentary film, Small Town Explosion: What Really Happened in East Palestine? followed by a Zoom Q&A with the filmmaker, Maya Lily, Beyond Plastics’ Appalachia Director, Jess Conard, and Hilary Flint of East Palestine Unity Council.
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Editor's Note: Good to see UP finally have its wings clipped over this long-standing bone of contention. Canadian, U.S., and Mexican rail workers must come together to more effectively combat the Class One rail carriers, who know and respect no national boundaries. RWU urges unions from all three nations to engage in concerted action to better defend the rail workers of all three nations. | |
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Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen News
The BLET’s National Legislative Office in Washington, D.C., scored a regulatory win for BLET members this week by blocking Union Pacific’s attempt to move trains across the border into the U.S. at Laredo, Texas without stopping under certain conditions. “All trains crossing the international bridge at Laredo and destined for UP’s Port Laredo Yard must be operated from the bridge to that Yard by a properly qualified and certified UP locomotive engineer and conductor.”
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Editor's Note: This is why the trucking industry would be happy to give some market share back to the rails. Meanwhile the Class Ones continue to force shippers with shipments only marginally profitable to the RR to use trucks for some or all of their moves. A huge strength of rail is its capacity vs. trucking... that gets wasted with intermodal, which can put four trucks on the road instead of one railcar on the tracks. | |
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LIZ CAREY / OCTOBER 26, 2023
A new report from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) said traffic congestion on U.S. highways added $94.6 billion in costs to the trucking industry in 2021. The Cost of Congestion study said the costs to the trucking industry was the highest level it has ever recorded. Congestion caused the trucking industry to waste more than 6.7 billion gallons of diesel fuel in 2021, resulting in $22.3 billion in additional fuel costs.
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Editor's Note: The power of just threatening a strike can get the goods, as freight railroaders learned last Fall and UPS Teamsters understood this past summer. Let's see what SEPTA does with its BLET engineers who have also threatened strike action in the coming weeks. | |
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Philadelphia Inquirer by Thomas Fitzgerald
...On Friday the two sides reached a tentative agreement on a new one-year contract, during the fifth day of intensive negotiations at a Center City hotel. TWU members would get across-the-board raises and a signing bonus. The deal also includes changes in work rules and SEPTA committed to training existing union mechanics to repair new electric buses instead of subcontracting that work, the sources said.
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NEWS FROM AROUND THE LABOR MOVEMENT | |
Editor's Note: Auto workers might just reassume their historic leadership role in the US labor movement with this historic strike and contract wins at the Big Three. Rail workers should take note of the fact that the new leadership leading this "stand up strike" swept into office first by amending their union's bylaws to allow for direct election of top officers, then running a full slate on a militant platform, winning these elections, then following through with a creative and unified strike. We can do this too! | |
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Phoebe Wall Howard, Eric D. Lawrence, Jamie L. LaReau DETROIT FREE PRESS / October 25
"The Stand Up Strike is working," Fain said on the video posted on the site formerly known as Twitter. By closing down additional plants at Stellantis and GM this week, “Ford knew what was coming for them Wednesday, if we didn’t get a deal. That was checkmate.” UAW President Shawn Fain and UAW Vice President Chuck Browning, who led negotiations with Ford, posted a 10-minute video on X at 8:27 p.m. to make the news official.
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Editor's Note: Hopefully, the gains that union workers are winning continues to inspire workers across all industries, resulting in a great new wave of organizing non-union outfits - such as railroad contractors - ushering in a labor movement like we saw in the 1930s. | |
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October 24 Steven Greenhouse THE GUARDIAN
Call it the Great Reset. Across the US, labor unions are winning surprisingly large contract settlements as workers have reset their expectations to demand considerably more than they did just a few years ago, and that has in turn pressured many corporations to reset – and increase – the pay packages they are giving in union contracts.
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Weekly Derailment Department | | | | |
