railroad workers

By staff - United Electrical Workers, September 2, 2023

On June 22, after nearly two months of negotiations, the 1,400 members of UE Locals 506 and 618 voted down Wabtec’s last, best and final offer. Following the vote, second-shift workers marched out of the plant and UE members set up picket lines around the massive facility.

It was the second strike since Wabtec took over the facility from General Electric in 2019. Following a nine-day strike in 2019, the UE locals negotiated a first contract with the new company which preserved most of the conditions they had won over nearly eight decades of bargaining with GE. However, they reluctantly agreed to modifications in the grievance procedure and to lower wage rates for new hires, who would progress to the full “legacy” wage rates over ten years.

In their second contract, members sought to address both the inequities of the “progression” for new hires and the lack of accountability caused by Wabtec’s abuse of the grievance process over the past four years. The company simply refused to address issues in the plant, pushing everything to arbitration — a study by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found that grievances per worker had almost doubled since Wabtec took over, and the company was less likely to settle disputes than GE. Members were also keen to make up for their loss of purchasing power as inflation soared in the past two years.

As soon as the UE members walked out, support poured in from the community and around the country. Major unions and labor leaders, including the UAW, Teamsters, and Association of Flight Attendants President Sara Nelson, who spoke to UE’s 2021 convention, tweeted support for the strike. Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union, sent a solidarity photo, and UE locals around the country sent letters of support. Both of Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senators, Bob Casey and John Fetterman, issued statements backing the UE members. Lieutenant Governor Austin Davis visited the picket line in the first week of the strike and sent a letter to Wabtec CEO Rafael Santana, indicating that both he and Governor Josh Shapiro supported the workers’ demands for a fair contract.

By Reid Frazier - Allegheny Front, August 9, 2023

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration is fining Norfolk Southern nearly $50,000 for workplace safety violations during the chemical cleanup at the site of its East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment. As part of a settlement, the company will also have to monitor any medical issues of workers brought in to clear and rebuild the tracks at the site. 

Those workers had previously reported health problems similar to those experienced by nearby residents after the February 3 derailment, which included 11 cars containing hazardous chemicals. 

After a five-month investigation, OSHA cited the company for failing to inform workers about which hazardous chemicals spilled at the site. The agency also found the company didn’t create a decontamination zone at the site, or ensure they wore appropriate chemical-resistant footwear. 

The violations also included allowing an employee without proper respiratory protection to pour cement on potentially contaminated soil, and not developing an emergency response plan that included clear lines of authority, communication and training, and site security.

“This agreement will improve the safety and health controls in place for Norfolk Southern employees who responded and help educate the rail operator’s employees on the lessons learned so they are prepared should another emergency occur,” said OSHA Cleveland area office director Howard Eberts in a statement.

By Sarah Lazare - Workday Magazine, August 8, 2023

July was the hottest month on record, and possibly the hottest in the history of human civilization, and August is bringing more scorching temperatures and supercharged storms. On July 16, the heat index at the Persian Gulf International Airport weather station in Iran climbed to 152 degrees Fahrenheit, a level that tests humanity’s ability to survive. Meanwhile, in vast swaths of the United States, people watched smoke from Canadian wildfires turn their skies noxious hues of orange and gray, only to then be hit with storms and heat waves. The scientific consensus has long held that climate change is human-made and real. But this summer, it seems a threshold has been crossed.

Amid this climate crisis, 1,400 locomotive builders and clerical workers on strike in Erie, Penn. are modeling how unions—and workers walking off the job—can make climate justice demands of an employer. 

Locals 506 and 618 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) have been on strike since late June. One of their demands has already captured nationwide attention for its centrality to building labor’s overall power. They are insisting on the right to strike over non-discipline grievances—things like subcontracting work, or forcing someone to take vacation they don’t want to. Such language, the workers hope, will build more accountability into the grievance process, as well as protect the union’s strongest tool: the strike. Workers are also asking for the guarantee that their employer will not make unilateral changes to their healthcare benefits throughout the duration of the contract, and they are asking for improved pay to keep pace with inflation. Their employer is the Fortune 500 company Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation (or Wabtec), which is valued at some $20 billion and manufactures railway locomotives. The mammoth company acquired GE Transportation for $11.1 billion in 2019.

The union’s demands are also aimed at improving society as a whole. There is another stipulation that workers put forward in the bargaining process: They want the company to help the union win a green overhaul of the rail locomotive industry, with the overall goal of drastically reducing emissions that spew carbon and pollution into the atmosphere.

This is not the first time that a union has pushed for environmental improvements. Unions threw their support behind an Illinois law passed in 2021 aimed at creating clean energy jobs and retraining fossil fuel workers. And the United Auto Workers, under the leadership of reformer Shawn Fain, are calling for the growing electric vehicle industry to provide dignified union jobs. But UE general president Carl Rosen says that the fact that UE is “directly challenging a private-sector major employer on this has made environmental justice groups very excited.”

By Clyde Anderson, et. al. - Sierra Club, August 7, 2023

(Statement from Railroad Workers United): This report is fantastic for several reason, not the least of which is its quality and completeness. We respectfully disagree on the strategy of privatization but they do call for 'Open Access' which we see as a half measure at best. Electrification is a shared interest as the only realistic path to zero emissions while creating lots of union jobs on both sides of the wire. Rail workers will be especially intested in Pages 32-33.

(From the Summary): Effective rail transportation is essential to avert the worst effects of human-caused climate change. Increasing rail and transit, and moving away from our current heavy emphasis on road and air travel, will bring many environmental, economic, and social benefits.

Rail transportation is inherently much more energy efficient than road transport, especially for freight. Reducing one of the basic factors of production – transportation – reduces the costs of virtually every sector of the economy, thereby increasing sustainability. Electrifying railroad operations will further increase these benefits. Therefore, improving passenger and freight rail transportation needs to be a national priority for the US. The purpose of this statement is to inform the public about how rail is a sustainable transportation solution and to provide a guide to action to improve the nation’s railroads.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Union Jake and Adam Keller with Michael Paul Lindsey and Max Alvarez - Valley Labor Report, July 20, 2023

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, June 30, 2023

In what may be the first strike in US history to demand green jobs, 1400 striking members of UE Locals 506 and 618 who build locomotives for Wabtec in Erie, PA are demanding that their employers start producing green locomotives. Their proposals grow out of UE’s “Green Locomotive Project,” which aims to “build the worker and community power necessary to compel the railroads to upgrade their locomotive stock and adopt green technology, and to ensure that new technologies lead to jobs at existing union factories.” A recent report from the University of Massachusetts Amherst finds that building such locomotives would create between 2,600 and 4,300 jobs in the Lawrence Park plant, as well as three to five thousand additional jobs in Erie County.

For more on the strike: Wabtec Workers Walk Out for Grievance Strikes and Green Locomotives | Labor Notes

For background on the Green Locomotive Project: The Filthy Emissions of Railroad Locomotives—and the Rail Unions Sounding the Alarm | The American Prospect

To contribute to the strike solidarity fund: https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/support-ue-members-striking-for-green-jobs

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, June 30, 2023

1400 workers in Erie, PA have been out on strike since June, demanding that their employer, Wabtec, start producing green locomotives. In a statement of solidarity, the Labor Network for Sustainability said:

The unions were denied their basic rights to strike over grievances, and most importantly, over the company’s refusal to move forward with worker-supported, environmentally necessary green locomotive production.

 This strike may well represent the first instance ever of unionized workers striking to force their employers to make products to protect the climate. That’s historic. 

 The Labor Network for Sustainability supports the United Electrical Workers in their fight to manufacture more sustainable transportation. Their decision to strike represents their decision to prolong life on our planet by making lower emission locomotives to carry freight across this great country. Their decision also upholds the livelihood of many communities that these railroads run through that face negative effects from the current engines.

 The railroad industry is still behind with making the necessary steps in maximizing their efficiency with their right-of-way, including: electrifying the last-mile of their urban rail yards, sharing their tracks with electrified inter and intracity transit, and upgrading their locomotives to non-pollutant green locomotives, ones touted by the UE workers in Erie.

By Alex Press - Jacobin, June 24, 2023

On the evening of June 22, members of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) crowded into Iroquois High School to vote on whether they would accept what their boss was offering them. They are employed by Wabtec (an abbreviation of Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation), at a four-million-square-foot locomotive manufacturing plant in Lawrence Park, on the east side of Erie, Pennsylvania.

Lawrence Park was built by General Electric (GE), which ran the plant for more than a century before the company spun off its $4-billion-a-year transportation arm in 2019, transferring ownership to Wabtec. The area still feels like a company town: the roughly four thousand residents are tied to the plant in countless ways, and UE signs dot Lawrence Park’s Main Street, affixed to telephone poles and stuck in front lawns.

At Iroquois High, the members of UE Local 506 and Local 618 (the latter consists of the plant’s clerical employees whose jobs have not been eliminated by automation, now numbering in the single digits) were voting on Wabtec’s last, best, and final offer for a new four-year contract. They struck for nine days to win that first contract in 2019, defeating some of Wabtec’s most egregious proposals but giving up certain provisions they had enjoyed under GE, some of which they hoped to win back during the current negotiations. The company’s 1,400 workers have now been without a contract since June 10, when that first contract expired.

Months of bargaining failed to produce a tentative agreement, and the company’s actions only increased the workers’ frustration. Hours before the contract expired, Wabtec informed Local 506 president Scott Slawson that it was considering permanently subcontracting out 275 union jobs, which members read as a threat. That interpretation was only confirmed when the company then told Slawson on June 20 that it would rescind that move should the workers accept the offer.

By Jason Cox - Transportation Communications Union, June 23, 2023

By Scott Slawson - United Electrical Workers, June 22, 2023

After rejecting the company’s last, best and final offer today, the 1400 members of UE Locals 506 and 618 are on strike at Wabtec’s locomotive plant in Lawrence Park.

“Building green locomotives is essential to the future of our country, and will benefit the local economy here in Erie,” said UE Local 506 President Scott Slawson. “Unfortunately, Wabtec’s unwillingness to work with us to resolve problems, either through the grievance process or through contract negotiations, is a major impediment to that bright future.”

Slawson also denounced the company’s announcement during bargaining that they are considering moving at least 275 jobs out of the plant.

“While the union is working hard to bring new work into the plant and new jobs to Erie through our Green Locomotive Project, the company is refusing to work with us on this project, and is instead holding the community of Erie hostage with the threat of moving work,” Slawson said. “We will not give in to their blackmail.”

A recent report by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst found that the production of green locomotives at the Erie plant could bring thousands of new, high-quality jobs to northwest Pennsylvania, an area that has been especially hard-hit by de-industrialization. During contract negotiations, the union has proposed language that would guarantee that green locomotive work be done in Erie.

In addition to the green locomotive proposal, the union has proposed returning to the dispute resolution process used for over eight decades prior to the plant’s sale to Wabtec in 2019. Under that process, workers had the right to strike after exhausting the grievance procedure, which gave the company an incentive to settle disputes at the lowest possible level. Since the union’s first contract with Wabtec went into effect in June 2019, the number of grievances reaching the final stage of the grievance procedure has increased tenfold.