ATLANTA – While 800,000 federal employees are not reporting to work during the government shutdown, thousands of TSA employees are expected to come to work without pay. They’re the first line of defense on the ground and in the air at our nation’s airports, but T [...]
General Committee of Adjustment GO 851 General Chairperson John D. Whitaker III reports that Assistant General Chairperson Ben Davis has resigned his position. While he remains an active CSXT employee, Davis will continue to serve the SMART Transportation Division general com [...]
The U.S. Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) has announced that during the lapse in federal funding for certain government operations which began Oct. 1, ongoing benefit payments will continue and all RRB offices are expected to remain open. RRB field offices, operating with redu [...]
OLYMPIA, Wash. – It’s every train conductor’s worst nightmare. On a sunny morning in July last year, a Tacoma Rail train hauling 10 rail cars filled with cargo bound for the Mottman Industrial Park approached the tunnel in downtown Olympia at Cherry Street and Sev [...]
SMART General President Joseph Nigro has issued the following statement on the Oct. 1 shutdown of the federal government: “It has become frustrating to see that the U.S. House of Representatives has become so dysfunctional that it can no longer do its job and pass legis [...]
John Previsich has been elevated to the position of president of the Transportation Division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers following the retirement of Mike Futhey. Previsich becomes the second president of the SMART Tran [...]
By Mike Futhey, SMART Transportation Division President – After a rewarding career of working a combination of 42 years on the railroad and as a union representative, my wife, April, and I look forward to a productive post retirement in Memphis, Tenn. The career journey beg [...]
More than 30 people were injured Sept. 30 morning after two trains running on the Chicago Transit Authority’s Blue Line tracks collided, CTA officials confirmed. The accident happened just before 8 a.m. at Harlem Avenue and Interstate 290 in Forest Park, a northwest suburb th [...]
Beginning Oct. 1, 2013, the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) will reduce railroad unemployment and sickness insurance benefits by 7.2 percent due to federal budget cuts first implemented in March 2013. The original reduction had been 9.2 percent since March. The adjusted [...]
WASHINGTON – Spurred by a deadly train crash in Los Angeles, Congress in 2008 passed with great fanfare legislation requiring the nation’s railroads to install a sophisticated collision-avoidance system by the end of 2015. Five years later, an industry move to extend th [...]
