Brother Miguel “Mike” Gaitan, 64, an active SMART Transportation Division member out of Local 1241 (Richmond, Calif.), passed away Friday, December 11, 2020, from COVID-19. An engineer with BNSF, he joined our union in February 1995. “Fellow employees state [...]
Brother Paul M. Payne of Mount Vernon, Ohio, a member of Local 1397 in Columbus, and a father to five children, lost his life in an accident the morning of Nov. 22 at the CSX yard in Fostoria, Ohio. Brother Payne, a conductor for eight years, was at work setting out a cut of [...]
David Eldon Hiatt, a retired general chairperson of GO 377 (Canadian National/Grand Trunk Western), passed away November 11, 2020. He was 73 years old. “I looked up to Brother Hiatt, he was what I strived to be like once I became a union officer,” said current GO [...]
Our union is in mourning after losing Jose “Joe” Alfaro, a member of SMART Transportation Division for more than 15 years, to the COVID-19 pandemic on Nov. 13. He was 58 years old. Brother Alfaro was a member of Local 18 in El Paso, Texas, and worked as a trainman/brakeman fo [...]
Edward J. Carney, 87, of Ft. Wadsworth, Staten Island, N.Y., died suddenly Saturday, Nov. 7. Carney began his railroading career on the Staten Island Railroad, a subsidiary of the B&O Railroad, in June 1955. Over the course of his 40 years of railroad employment, he worke [...]
Our union is in mourning after losing two of its active members this week: one in a work-related fatality and one in a traffic accident. Ryan Sandy, 37, a member of Local 662 (Richmond, Va.) and a former local chairperson of LCA-201C, was killed in an on-the-job accident at 2 [...]
Gary F. Babiarz, a member of SMART Transportation Division for more than 45 years and retired general chairperson of GCA-449 (Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad, passed away Sept. 23, 2020, at age 66. Brother Babiarz joined the union in January 1974 and was a GC from 2015 to 2019. [...]
The union has received notification in recent weeks of the deaths of three former vice presidents of the United Transportation Union. Five-term UTU Vice President Peter Patsouras passed away on Thursday, Sept. 10. He was 76 years old. Joining the union in August 1965, he was [...]
G. Thomas DuBose, who served one term as president of the SMART Transportation Division’s immediate predecessor union, passed away on Aug. 20, 2020, after a short illness. DuBose, United Transportation Union (UTU) president from 1991 to 1995, had experienced health complicati [...]
General Chairperson John Ellis (Los Angeles County MTA) reports that Brother Wilfredo Corsino, a member out of Local 1607 (Los Angeles, Calif.), passed away on June 11 from COVID-19 complications. Brother Corsino was 65 years old. “Brother Corsino has been a part of our [...]