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Rail Workers Push To Strike – Here’s Why They’re Angry

July 20, 2022 Eli M. Rosenberg, NBC News. , , ,
Freight train workers are fed up. One conductor said he nearly missed his wife’s funeral because he couldn’t get time off. An engineer said he was put on a disciplinary path after having to stay home to fix a broken water heater. Other freight train workers blamed the industry’s on-call, 24/7 scheduling requirements for health problems and divorces — a lifestyle they said had turned one of the best-paying blue-collar jobs in the country into one marred by misery and neglect. After years of cutbacks and service tumult, the country’s freight rail workers are pushing to strike, which could further clog supply chain networks and amp up political heat on a White House already under the microscope for economic woes. The Biden administration said Friday it will appoint a three-person commission to stave off what would be the first strike by freight rail workers in 30 years.

London Tram Drivers In Croydon Strike Against Real Terms Pay Cut

June 29, 2022 Thomas Scripps, WSWS. , , ,
Members of the Aslef union, the 150 workers rejected a 3 percent pay offer from operator First Group and voted almost unanimously to strike, on a turnout of 86 percent. With inflation at 11.7 percent RPI, the company’s offer amounts to a deep pay cut. Services were severely disrupted, affecting the Wimbledon tennis tournament, with no trams running between Croydon and Beckenham Junction, Elmers End or New Addington, and only at 20-minute intervals between Croydon and Wimbledon. A second round of strikes is planned for July 13-14. First Group has a contract to run the service on behalf of Transport for London until 2030. It receives a fixed fee from TfL, pegged to November’s RPI—7.1 percent in 2021. The company has a market capitalization of over £1 billion and is listed on the FTSE 250.

The Truth About The Rail Strikes

June 23, 2022 Curtis Daly, The Canary. , , ,
There’s lot of nonsense flying around in the establishment media about the rail strikes. Curtis Daily explains why the strikes and unions are an essential line of defence against the destructive capitalist system the press and politicians are fighting to uphold.

Southwest Airlines Pilots Rally: ‘Our Passengers And Pilots Deserve Better’

June 22, 2022 Kyle Arnold, Dallas News. , , , ,
More than 1,300 Southwest Airlines pilots protested the carrier at Dallas Love Field on Tuesday amid tense contract negotiations, holding signs that read “Our passengers and pilots deserve better” and “Southwest’s operation: From first to worst.” The union representing 8,300 pilots at Dallas-based Southwest Airlines said the company’s antiquated and inefficient scheduling practices are making life hard on aviators and creating more delays and cancellations. There were enough Southwest pilots to make a line of sign-holders in front of the entire terminal, with another group inside near ticketing, one on the road leading into the airport and another along Mockingbird Lane outside the airport. “Our point is that you have enough pilots today to operate the airline,” said Southwest Airlines Pilots Association president Casey Murray.

Tens Of Thousands Demand Action At Rally On Eve Of UK Rail Strikes

June 20, 2022 Robert Stevens, WSWS. , , , ,
The protest held on the eve of ahead of this week’s national rail strikes by 50,000 rail workers on June 21, 23 and 25. Seeking to maintain control of an emerging strike wave, the union bureaucracy pulled out all the stops. Even so, while the demo was somewhat larger than the annual TUC protests in recent years, it was much smaller than that held in 2011 of around 200,000, called after the Conservative government came to power and first launched a savage austerity offensive. Organized amid a powerful sentiment among workers for taking on the Johnson government and the employers, the turnout testifies to the decline in the authority of the trade unions after decades of betrayals—that a necessary turn to more militant rhetoric cannot conceal.

Trucker Strike Disrupts Key Industries, Threatens Automaking

June 13, 2022 Shin Jin-Ho, Korea JoongAng Daily. , , ,
Hyundai Motor is struggling to move finished cars so it can make more cars, while more than half of the country's ready-mix concrete factories have suspended operations due to a halt in the shipment of cement. Unionized truck drivers have been on a strike since Tuesday demanding higher wages and an extension of support measures, which expire at the end of this year. They blocked gates at distribution centers and refused to transport cargo. Cargo Truckers Solidarity, a union, is leading of strike, and more than 7,000 people are participating, according to local media reports. About one-third of all unionized truckers have joined in, though the number varied by the day. The truck drivers and the government have been negotiating all weekend but have so far failed reach a compromise.

BNSF Railway Families Protest Inhumane Policies

May 15, 2022 More Perfect Union. , , ,
BNSF Railway workers have been stripped of almost all time-off, including weekends, under an extreme new attendance policy. They’ve been working for 3 years with no contract and no raises. A federal judge barred workers from striking, so their families have been picketing on their behalf. We talked to the railroad workers’ family members who travelled to Omaha, Nebraska, to protest BNSF’s owner Berkshire Hathaway. Below is a full transcript of our video. Kelly Pettus: They haven’t had a raise in 3 years and they just implemented an inhumane attendance policy without a contract and that’s why we’re standing here, because they’re profiting in the billions and we can’t get a contract.

A Life In Transit: ‘What You Can Get Is Set By How Far You Are Prepared To Go’

May 1, 2022 Tim Schermerhorn, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Track workers and train operators could stop work over safety. Making the community aware of risks to hospitals and schools built important support—but we won because we had learned the work rules and organized transit workers to implement them. When something hits the tripping device on the undercarriage, it stops the train. The operator has to walk around the entire train, plus a reasonable length behind, to see what stopped it. Sometimes the operator would call the supervisor to investigate before proceeding; that was one way of stopping work over safety. Because of actions like this, management had to replace the walkways in the tunnels, which were made of old wood that would rot. Now they are all fiberglass and yellow. Exact work-to-rule is the basis of a slowdown. Sometimes it was as effective as a strike.

Winning Against The Odds: The 32BJ SEIU Organizing Model

April 26, 2022 Rob Hill and Stuart Eimer, New Labor Forum. , , ,
Over twenty-five years have passed since the AFL-CIO New Voice movement urged unions to dedicate 20-30 percent of their budgets to organizing. Despite recent high-profile victories by the Writers Guild in digital media, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in home health care and at Starbucks, and the Transit Workers at JetBlue, most unions have not heeded the call to organize, and the labor movement has continued to shrink.[1] Facing this decline, unions have turned much of their attention to labor law reform, hoping to address notable weaknesses in U.S. labor law that impede organizing success.[2] Winning the Protect the Right to Organize (PRO) Act would be a game changer in this regard but the PRO Act will not pass without organized pressure and militancy from non-union workers demanding unions.

Report: Massive Increase In Green Jobs From Climate-Friendly Travel

April 8, 2022 Stephanie Loveless, Stay Grounded. , , , , ,
In their new report titled, “The right track for Green Jobs” Possible, Autonomy UK and Safe Landing present scenarios for showing that cuts to aviation can more than compensate for job losses to the aviation sector. No more excuses, green jobs are possible especially when people are willing to fly less. While we at Stay Grounded and those in our network have proposed numerous strategies for reducing climate impacts from aviation, we also realize the need to emphasize a just transition towards a grounded future that helps counter some of the negative impacts of reduced flying. The Covid-19 pandemic has given many of us a taste of what a reduced ability to travel, and especially to fly, for leisure and to visit loved ones feels like.

Rail Unions Are Bargaining Over A Good Job Made Miserable

February 3, 2022 Joe Demanuelle-Hall, Labor Notes. , , ,
Contract negotiations covering 115,000 rail workers in the U.S. are expected to heat up in 2022. Workers are seething over the impact of extreme cost-cutting measures. Rail unions are escalating through the slow steps of negotiations under the Railway Labor Act—toward a resolution, a strike, or a lockout. Rail remains one of the most heavily unionized industries in the country, and rail workers maintain the arteries of the economic system. In 2018, U.S. railroads moved 1.73 trillion ton-miles of freight, while trucks moved 2.03 trillion. (One ton-mile is one ton of freight moved one mile.) A slim majority of rail freight consists of bulk commodities, ranging from grain to mined ores to automobiles; slightly less is made up of consumer goods.

Flight Attendant Union Criticizes CDC For Decision

December 31, 2021 Sharon Zhang, Truthout. , , , ,
Flight Attendant union president and labor leader Sara Nelson is criticizing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for changing its guidance on quarantining for COVID-19 after business leaders asked the agency to cut its recommendations by half, potentially at the cost of public health. Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA International, accused the CDC in a statement of making its decision to benefit businesses that may be experiencing staffing issues, rather than stemming the spread of the virus. “We said we wanted to hear from medical professionals on the best guidance for quarantine, not from corporate America advocating for a shortened period due to staffing shortages,” Nelson said.

#NoTrucksToColorado

December 24, 2021 Luigi Morris, Left Voice. , , ,
Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos is a Cuban truck driver who was sentenced for 110 years in prison because of a vehicle accident on the I-70 in Denver in 2019. The brakes of the semi-truck failed and he crashed into traffic, causing a 28-car pile up, killing four people, and injuring several others. The accident occurred because the company Aguilar-Mederos worked for at the time did not properly maintain their equipment and permitted a driver to use a truck with faulty brakes.  “I ask God too many times why them and not me? Why did I survive that accident?” Aguilera-Mederos said to the court. “I am not a murderer. I am not a killer. When I look at my charges, we are talking about a murderer, which is not me.

Why America’s ‘Shipping Crisis’ Will Not End

December 23, 2021 Ryan Johnson, Medium. , , ,
I have a simple question for every ‘expert’ who thinks they understand the root causes of the shipping crisis: Why is there only one crane for every 50–100 trucks at every port in America? No ‘expert’ will answer this question. I’m a Class A truck driver with experience in nearly every aspect of freight. My experience in the trucking industry of 20 years tells me that nothing is going to change in the shipping industry. Let’s start with understanding some things about ports. Outside of dedicated port trucking companies, most trucking companies won’t touch shipping containers. There is a reason for that. Think of going to the port as going to WalMart on Black Friday, but imagine only ONE cashier for thousands of customers.

How NYC Taxi Drivers Took On Predatory Lenders And Won

November 18, 2021 Rebekah Entralgo, Counter Punch. , , , ,
On November 3, New York City reached an agreement with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA), the union fighting to relieve drivers of thousands of dollars in debt they owe for medallions, the physical permits to operate taxis. According to the NYTWA, the average debt owed on medallions by taxi drivers is $600,000. “Today marks a new dawn, a new beginning for a workforce that has struggled through so much crisis and loss,” said Bhairavi Desai, Executive Director of NYTWA, in a statement. “Today, we can say owner-drivers have won real debt relief and can begin to get their lives back. Drivers will no longer be at risk of losing their homes, and no longer be held captive to debt beyond their lifetime.”
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