Since implementing its “Hi-Viz” attendance policy on Feb. 1, BNSF has been monitoring progress and making adjustments, some of which will take effect June 1, according to the Class I railroad. Unions so far are unimpressed.
Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” They also are very different from the labor union brothers and sisters they employ.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and the SMART Transportation Division reported March 23 that they will “proceed as expeditiously as possible to arbitration” over BNSF’s Hi-Viz worker availability policy that took effect Feb. 1.
Railroad stakeholders on March 8 shared their views on the Surface Transportation Board’s (STB) role in regulating the freight railroad industry as well as its reauthorization during a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials. Testifying were representatives from the American Chemistry Council, Amtrak, Association of American Railroads, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, National Industrial Transportation League, and Private Railcar Food and Beverage Association.
WATCHING WASHINGTON, RAILWAY AGE MARCH 2022 ISSUE: “The farmer and the cowman should be friends,” wrote Rodgers and Hammerstein for the 1943 musical, Oklahoma! In 1967, Aretha Franklin recorded R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Five gets you 10 that neither friendship nor respect exist at the bargaining table where rail management and labor have been negotiating contract amendments since January 2020.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and the Transportation Division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers (SMART-TD) have filed motions for preliminary injunctions to halt BNSF’s and Metra’s vaccine mandates.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and the Transportation Division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers (SMART-TD) have filed suit against Amtrak over implementation of its COVID-19 vaccine policy.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and the SMART Transportation Division (SMART–TD) have each filed Motions for Preliminary Injunctions against Norfolk Southern in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, “to stop the railroad from forcing locomotive engineers to work as conductors, and for disciplining those who don’t.”
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has released a preliminary report on its investigation into the Sept. 25 derailment of Amtrak’s Empire Builder train 7/27 near Joplin, Mont.
Call it the Twilight Zone of reality when three rail labor unions embrace the convictions of extreme-right public figures Tucker Carlson (Fox News), Republican Governors Greg Abbott (Texas) and Ron DeSantis (Florida), and Republican Senators Ted Cruz (Texas) and Rand Paul (Kentucky) and oppose vaccine mandates intended to protect society against the deadly COVID-19 virus and its Delta variant.
