Transportation News

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UTU PAC supports all UTU’s lawmaker friends

LaTourette WASHINGTON – While organized labor has more friends in the Democratic Party, and carriers have more friends in the Republican Party, there are many Republicans who are friends of organized labor – and the UTU’s bi-partisan approach to politics recognizes this. One [...]

H&W enrollment return deadline nearing

Nov. 11 is the deadline for returning to Railroad Enrollment Services the annual health and welfare enrollment materials for railroad employees and/or dependents covered under the National Railway Carriers and United Transportation Union (NRC/UTU) Health and Welfare Plan. For [...]

UTU S. Florida Tri-Rail agreement finalized

Previsich Operations center employees of South Florida Tri-Rail, who voted UTU “yes” early in 2011, have their first collective bargaining agreement in place. It provides for a signing bonus; an immediate wage increase, plus additional wage increases in 2012 and 2013; a 40-ho [...]

Alumni Association: The best $9 investment out there

By Carl CochranUTU Alumni Association Coordinator So you’ve invested 40 years of your life working on the railroad or with a bus or transit agency. You paid your dues – figuratively and literally – to your employer and to your union. Maybe you were an officer in your local, o [...]

Safety advisory on autorack cars

A safety advisory on autorack cars has been issued by the Association of American Railroads. Some of these cars have been found to have cut convenience handles, ladder rungs and/or fasteners missing from these devices. Convenience handles are those handles mounted on end door [...]

Federal charges target LIRR disability claims

A former president of a UTU local, a former Railroad Retirement Board employee, two physicians and six workers retired from Long Island Rail Road have been charged by the federal government with criminal fraud involving allegedly false Long Island Rail Road employee occupatio [...]

Wrap up: Major rails’ 3d quarter 2011 profits

BNSF reported a 9 percent improvement in profit for the third quarter 2011 versus the third quarter 2010. The third-quarter operating ratio of 71.7 percent was slightly higher than the 70.8 percent for third-quarter 2010. Operating ratio is a railroad’s operating expenses exp [...]

Fighting the fight for equitable transit funding

By BONNIE MORRAlternate Vice President, Bus Department As some in Congress seek to slash spending on public transit – the only affordable means for millions of Americans going to and from work – ridership is soaring. The American Public Transit Association says more than five [...]

‘We must not let the crazies turn back the clock’

Mike Futhey with Bill Lucy (For more than six decades, Bill Lucy has been a labor-union foot soldier. In 1968, as an officer of AFSCME Local 1733 in Memphis, Tenn., he collaborated with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the sanitation workers’ strike, during which Dr. King wa [...]

Deputy FRA administrator to depart Nov. 1

WASHINGTON – Deputy Federal Railroad Administrator Karen Rae is departing the agency Nov. 3 to rejoin the New York State government as deputy secretary of transportation in the office of New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Rae has been the number two to Administrator Josep [...]