Rail & Labor News from RWU
| |
Weekly Digest Number 17 - April 23, 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: Usually we run our non-rail labor news at the bottom but this story is seismic for much more than the auto industry. Industries around the world are finding out where the bottom is in how miserly they can be with their workers (and customers) and unions are there to lead the fight for equitable, humane approaches to work. The Mercedes vote happens in May and we'll be watching. Congratulations UAW! | |
Luke Ramseth / April 19th
The United Auto Workers achieved a historic organizing victory Friday night at a Volkswagen AG plant in Tennessee plant as workers voted overwhelmingly to join the union following a three-day election. The vote count was 2,628-985, according to unofficial results released by the automaker, the union and a National Labor Relations Board tally posted on X. “People in high places told us good things can’t happen here in Chattanooga," Kelcey Smith, a paint department worker, said in the union release. "They told us this isn’t the time to stand up, this isn’t the place. But we did stand up and we won. This is the time; this is the place. Southern workers are ready to stand up and win a better life.”
| |
Editor's Note: The actions suggested by this report do nothing to change the conditions that lead to this brother's death. | |
|
The Fatality Analysis of Maintenance-of-Way Employees and Signalment issued an alert after a maintenance-of-way manager was fatally injured in Arkansas. On April 12th a Union Pacific track worker was killed after being struck by machinery. A Fatality Analysis of Maintenance-of-Way Employees and Signalment (FAMES) issued a news alert. The alert says at around 6:33 p.m. (CDT), a “maintenance-of-way manager was struck and fatally injured by a roadway maintenance machine in McNeil, AR.” The work group had been using an excavator and were replacing a culvert. The maintenance-of-way manager was between the excavator bucket and the track on the machine.
| |
Editor's Note: Amtrak was not construed to be profit making and in a practical, equitable society it would not be expected to. When the freeway system (which doesn't directly serve those who don't drive) makes a profit, then come after Amtrak. | |
@xaxnar / April 17
President Joe Biden has made it a priority to improve and expand the National Rail Passenger Corporation, better known as Amtrak. What is a problem for many people is that Amtrak does not show a profit, except for particular routes. There are repeated calls to privatize it, cut back services, or otherwise try to make the books balance. Jim Matthews, President and CEO of the Rail Passengers Association has chapter and verse on why those demands are not supported by history, by legislative action, or judicial decree.
|
|
Editor's Note: This is a New Yorker article with a sad update on East Palestine. | |
|
More than a year after a train derailment and chemical fire in Ohio that made international news, residents contend with lingering sickness, uncertainty, and, for some, a desire to just move on. On February 3, 2023...Norfolk Southern and the government decided to puncture holes in some of the cars containing vinyl chloride, a cancer-causing substance used to make plastic pipes. They drained more than a hundred thousand gallons of the toxin into ditches, then set the mass on fire. This “vent and burn” was needed to prevent an explosion, they said. A huge black cloud shot up and lingered, blocking the sun. Two days after that, the village lifted the evacuation order and invited residents to return.
| |
Editor's Note: So-called "Commuter Rail" needs more than ever to morph into "Regional Rail" with service outside traditional rush hours to serve a post-covid world. | |
Sean Jeans-Gail / April 19
The heads of five commuter rail agencies provided a briefing to Members of the U.S. House this week on the state of the commuter rail industry in the post-Covid landscape. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials heard from the heads of the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, RTD-Denver, the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority (Tri-Rail), New Jersey Transit (on behalf of the Northeast Corridor Commission), and Southern California’s Metrolink. Mike Noland, President of the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District (which operates the South Shore Line), also appeared in his role as the Chair of the Commuter Rail Coalition. He warned of the challenge U.S. commuter railroads have faced securing excess commercial liability insurance up to the federal liability cap, which currently is set at $325 million.
| |
Editor's Note: Considering Brightline is basically a real-estate play (they own properties containing and adjacent to their stations), big ridership is icing on the revenue cake for them. | |
The Next Miami / March 21
Brightline told investors yesterday that it is dealing with a shortage of capacity on some of its trains. “Demand for our service currently exceeds supply on certain routes, with approximately one out of every three trains at or near capacity and approximately 50% of trains with 80%+ load factors in the month of February,” a note to investors said. To meet demand, Brightline has ordered additional new passenger cars which are scheduled for delivery this summer.
| |
Editor's Note: Hydrogen is an expensive diversion from much more efficient electrification. Canada's carbon tax has forced its Class Ones to champion hydrogen in lieu of a quick path to electrification. The video below explains hydrogen embrittlement, just one big problem with using it as a motive fuel. At least one Class One locomotive chief has written off hydrogen as not dense enough to be a transport fuel. | |
|
CSX today debuted its first hydrogen fuel-cell locomotive, which was converted from a conventional four-axle unit using a kit supplied by Canadian Pacific Kansas City. The locomotive, GP38H2 No. 2100, was built at CSX’s Huntington Locomotive Shop in West Virginia, which is handling hydrogen fuel cell conversions under a partnership with CPKC. “The successful debut of our first hydrogen-powered locomotive stands as a testament to the exceptional skill and dedication of our employees at the CSX Huntington locomotive shop,” CEO Joe Hinrichs said in a statement. “CSX’s commitment to sustainability in our operations is exemplified by the outstanding efforts of these employees, who, through their craftsmanship, are helping advance our collaboration with CPKC. We are proud to work with CPKC to scale this hydrogen technology and help pave the way for meaningful sustainable solutions for the future.” Below is a video explaining hydrogen embrittlement.
| |
Editor's Note: If Amtrak achieves the ambitious build-out of its massive growth plans the Class One sabotage of Amtrak schedules will come to a head and have to stop, or be aggressively litigated, line-by-line. | |
Jim Mathews / April 19
Amtrak’s beleaguered Sunset Limited got dramatically better in the first fiscal quarter of 2024 – in fact, the westbound Sunset came within four percentage points of meeting the Federal customer on-time performance standard. Remember, this is the train whose performance was SO bad – on-time as little as 17 percent – that Amtrak’s lawyers decided to haul Sunset host Union Pacific before the Surface Transportation Board in late 2022. It’s the first-ever Section 213 legal action filed by Amtrak since the law and its regulations took effect. The poster-child for late trains.
| |
Editor's Note: It's better to have this traffic than not have it but intermodal - by definition - wastes rail capacity and makes it super easy for shippers to move to 100% truck when rail service becomes unacceptable. We need to preserve the 'carload network' in North America and not put all our eggs in the intermodal basket. | |
Ian Putzger / April 22
After a long trough of sluggish performance, US intermodal traffic is growing, and the market points to larger gains ahead. This month Union Pacific (UP) opened a new route between Chicago and southern California, featuring transits of 4-6 days between its Inland Empire terminal in Fontana and Northlake, targeting intermodal traffic that would otherwise move by truck. The rise in diesel prices is going to make the going tougher yet for truckers, especially the smaller operators.
| |
Editor's Note: Losing market share (against trucking) while foregoing less-profitable business is a bad look, and long-term investors excepting reasonable returns cannot be happy with UP basically being forced to take work. What must it be like to be a salesperson for a Class One? | |
Josh Funk / April 17
Union Pacific dramatically reduced its use of temporary limits on some businesses’ shipments over the past year after its customers complained, but regulators said Wednesday the railroad must go further to be in line with the other major freight railroads that rarely use such embargoes. Even though Union Pacific went from imposing 1,081 embargoes in 2022 to just 181 last year, the Surface Transportation Board said that was still more than all the other major freight railroads combined.
| |
Editor's Note: "... No one in the public suspected there might be health concerns..." Sure they did, but it was the cost of doing business. | |
Matthew Brown & Amy Beth Hanson / April 19
BNSF Railway attorneys told a Montana jury Friday that the railroad should not be held liable for the lung cancer deaths of two former residents of an asbestos-contaminated Montana town, one of the deadliest sites in the federal Superfund pollution program. Attorneys for the company say the corporate predecessors of the railroad, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, didn’t know the vermiculite they hauled over decades from a nearby mine was filled with hazardous microscopic asbestos fibers or that asbestos was dangerous. BNSF attorney Chad Knight said the railroad could only be held liable if it could have foreseen the health hazards of asbestos based on information available decades ago when the alleged exposures happened. “In the 50s, 60s and 70s no one in the public suspected there might be health concerns,” Knight said.
| |
Editor's Note: It's complicated... | |
Progressive Railroading / April 22
Twelve U.S. senators have written to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan urging the agency to fully consider the impact of approving the California Air Resources Board's (CARB) request for a waiver for its In-Use Locomotive Regulation. If implemented, the regulation would prohibit the operation of locomotives in California that are more than 23 years older than their original manufacture date unless they operate in a zero-emissions configuration, a technology not commercially available today, the senators wrote.
| |
Editor's Note: This person is the embodiment of everything craven, unfair, and dangerous about share-holder-centric corporate railroading. Say goodbye to safety, service, AND market share if he comes to power. | |
|
Jamie Boychuk, the activist investor candidate aiming to lead operations at Norfolk Southern, says improvements the railroad has made in recent weeks under new Chief Operating Officer John Orr — like increasing train velocity, reducing dwell, and removing 75 locomotives from active service — are low-hanging fruit that will help reduce the operating ratio by a point or two. “What really needs to be done there, though, is we got to strip this thing down to the studs — and that’s the difference,” Boychuk told investors on a webcast today. “What our plan is, our plan is to really take it down to the studs. It’s got great, great bones and a good foundation as a franchise, as a railroad, but it needs to be redesigned.” Boychuk was a key player in E. Hunter Harrison’s 2017 Precision Scheduled Railroading makeover at CSX and went on to become the railroad’s executive vice president of operations. He was dismissed from the railroad in August under new CEO Joe Hinrichs.
| |
NEWS FROM AROUND THE LABOR MOVEMENT | |
|
In 2014, the United Auto Workers abandoned a publicized push to unionize at Alabama’s Mercedes-Benz plant in Tuscaloosa County. The union did so at the request of the employees. But Thursday the National Labor Relations Board announced voting will take place May 13 and 17 on whether workers at Mercedes-Benz U.S. International will join the United Auto Workers union. Vote totals are expected May 17. For Jeremy Kimbrell, a Mercedes-Benz worker involved in the UAW push, it’s simple. “Everybody knows what a Mercedes is,” he said. “Why should a worker, just because he lives in Alabama, be paid less and be treated worse? That’s old timey thinking.”
| | | | |
