Spring 2024 SMART Members’ Journal is now online

The Spring 2024 SMART Members’ Journal is now online. Featuring messages from SMART International leadership, union and industry news, local union updates, service awards and much more, this edition of the journal puts a particular focus on our union’s recent policy victories — highlighting states, cities and federal government action that have created jobs and protected our members.

“Politics can feel like a chore, but when we work collectively to win pro-union politicians and policies, we materially benefit our jobs, our families and our futures.”

SMART General President Michael Coleman.

The spring issue’s cover story was a long time coming: After years of advocacy, organizing, lobbying and fighting against entities like the Association of American Railroads (AAR), the SMART Transportation Division finally won a federal two-person freight crew regulation. The rule, announced in April during an event at the United States Department of Transportation, is a huge step forward for union jobs and rail safety.

Months earlier, sheet metal workers also achieved a federal regulatory victory when United States Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su announced regulations that will officially implement President Biden’s executive order requiring project labor agreements (PLAs) on federal jobs that cost more than $35 million. SMART members joined Su at an announcement event in Cleveland, celebrating a policy that will create work for union sheet metal workers nationwide.

SM Local 206 and fellow building trades unions worked tirelessly in the electoral arena to accomplish something similar in San Diego — first by repealing the city’s ban on project labor agreements in 2022, and then with the unanimous passage of a citywide PLA in 2024, a titanic political shift that’s helping turn San Diego into a union town.

And the Transportation Division’s tireless pursuit of safety for railroad workers paid off when Norfolk Southern agreed to pilot the Confidential Close Call Reporting System (C3RS), an anonymous safety reporting tool that protects SMART-TD railroaders who share safety concerns with the Federal Railroad Administration.

Those are only a few of the stories told in the Spring Members’ Journal, which also showcases organizing victories in Indiana and Georgia, local union news across North America and information on new funds appointees. View an index of individual articles here, and read the full digital version of the printed journal here.