Category: Leadership Messages
Spending your dues money wisely
By Kim ThompsonUTU General Secretary & Treasurer Nobody spends someone else’s dollars as carefully as we spend our own. The UTU International leadership is especially sensitive to the fact that members entrust us with their own hard-earned dollars, and every member rightf [...]- Tags convention fund, DIPP, dues, General Fund, GS&T, Kim Thompson, strike fund, UTUIA
Easing the pain of furloughs
By UTU Assistant President Arty Martin As a union, we can’t make the economy better, but we always attempt to make life better for our members caught up in the downturn. Many younger members, having left non-railroad employment to take railroad jobs, have now found themselves [...]We must make rail safety act work
By International President Mike Futhey Compromise is the art of successful negotiations. But when one party goes to the negotiating table unwilling to compromise, the results can be unpleasant for both, and produce a result that might not be the best choice. Such was the case [...]Predictable crew schedules not radical
By UTU International President Mike Futhey For more years than I care to count, we having been telling the carriers that if we couldn’t come up with a mutually acceptable solution at the bargaining table to the problem of availability policies and train-crew fatigue that we w [...]- Tags fatigue, Futhey, safety, safety law, schedules
Examining our options
By UTU International President Mike Futhey While railroads oppose our efforts to obtain for new hires equal pay for equal training, responsibility and accountability, they are spending tens of millions of dollars to defend their pricing power that pads their bottom lines. Wit [...]Who owns the railroads
By Assistant President Arty Martin andGS&T Kim Thompson Among the most difficult challenges facing us in 2009 arrives in November, when we exchange Railway Labor Act Section 6 notices with the carriers — the list of each side’s demands for the next collective [...]Futhey administration: Year 1 report
Almost a year has passed since Mike Futhey, Arty Martin and Kim Thompson took office. They ran on a platform of specific promises, including full disclosure. Following are Futhey administration promises and results, so far: Promise #1: Restructure the International by reducin [...]Moving forward with President-elect Obama
By International President Mike Futhey Barack Obama is the first presidential candidate to promise in writing that he stands behind the objectives of the United Transportation Union. We look forward to working closely with President Obama. He is a leader who has put the well- [...]Obama: The choice for working families
By International President Mike Futhey Remember back in grade school, when we were given a page with four pictures on it — a dog, a cat, a horse and an apple — and told to identify which one of the four didn’t belong? Imagine, instead, a page with these four pictu [...]- Tags anti-union, families first, Futhey, John McCain, McCain, Mike Owens, Obama, pro-labor