Great Lakes Airlines, the sole commercial carrier servicing Cortez, soars across blue skies in the red.
Servicing 30 airports across nine states, the Cheyenne-based regional airline reported a total net loss of more than $4.2 million at the close of the first quarter this year, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission report. Company filings with the SEC also reveal that Great Lakes was in breach of a $24 million loan at the end of March.
Provide video clips (High-Def preferably) of yourself saying as a GROUP the following tag lines: 1. We’re Looking Forward! (group of roughly 3-6 people) 2. We’re Moving Ahead! (group of roughly 4-8 people) 3. We Are SMART! (group of roughly 5-10+ people) Record each separately, with different people saying each tag line if possible. LOTS of enthusiasm is important, and all people should keep eye contact with the camera. It is also important to record outdoors or in brightly lit indoors. Be sure there is no music or noises in the background. WATCH THE SAMPLES here and recreate with your fellow members! All clips must be submitted by 4PM (ET), Wed. July 2. Upload your best clips to the SMART FaceBook Page so we can access and download. You can also email them to webmaster@smart-union.org
Please keep your original video files.
The June 2014 issue of the SMART Transportation Division News will be published following the proceedings of the First SMART Transportation Division Convention June 30-July 2.
Publishing the newspaper after the convention will allow the Transportation Division to provide its members and readers with fresh and updated coverage of the convention proceedings.
The combined July/August issue of the newspaper will be published following the proceedings of the First SMART Convention in August.
The MTA’s decision to publicize its newest contract offer to LIRR workers — who are threatening a strike next month — has union leaders considering whether to ditch a new round of negotiations set for Friday.
Anthony Simon, a spokesman for a coalition of Long Island Rail Road unions, which can legally strike as early as July 20, faulted the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for releasing to the media details of its proposal before the planned talks.
Former “Survivor: Blood vs. Water” contestant Caleb Bankston died on Tuesday, June 24, following a railway accident, reports People magazine.
The 26-year-old worked as a locomotive engineer/conductor at the Alabama Warrior Railway in Birmingham, and was working on one of the trains when it derailed, killing him. At this time it is still unclear as to what caused the train’s derailment, but OSHA and the Federal Railroad Administration have been contacted, reports TMZ.
WASHINGTON — The nation’s largest haulers of crude oil by rail on Tuesday appeared to abandon their insistence that information about such shipments could not be shared publicly for security reasons.
Meanwhile, states, including some that had previously signed nondisclosure agreements, also reversed course and made the information public with no protest from the railroads.
All Long Island Rail Road Union blasted MTA’s June 24th press conference as a major step backward toward settling the four year old contract dispute. MTA contacted the unions late last Friday saying they wanted to formally present a new settlement proposal. Meetings were scheduled for Friday June 27. Instead, before many of the unions even read the proposal, MTA called a citywide press conference to argue for its proposal to the public and press. “By its actions, MTA has continued its four year pattern of bad faith bargaining,” says Coalition spokesman SMART General Chairman Anthony Simon. “Instead of sitting down with the only people who can make a deal, MTA chose the route of cheap political grandstanding. It’s painfully clear MTA is not serious about negotiating a settlement.” Union leaders are debating whether they will even meet with MTA on Friday, given the unacceptability of MTA’s latest gambit. “When will MTA stop playing games?” asks Simon. “MTA had already been told that any approach that tried to pay for the contract by introducing a permanent tow-tier system was totally unacceptable.” All the unions charged that MTA’s latest ploy demonstrated its total lack of credibility. “A few months ago MTA claimed it couldn’t afford more than net zeroes without raising fares by 12%,” says Simon. “Then, after two Presidential Emergency Boards rejected that claim as phony, MTA proclaimed that it couldn’t afford the PEBs’ recommendations without slashing its capital budget. Now we hear that MTA wants to spend more money during the life of the contract than the unions are asking for, in return for savings that wouldn’t be realized for decades. It is no wonder that MTA’s claims were rejected for the lies that were by six nationally renowned neutral arbitrators.” “MTA knows full well that its latest so-called proposal has a much chance at being taken seriously as its contingency plans have of getting people to work in the event of a strike,” says Simon. “The PEB recommendation were well thought out compromises. We said all along they were affordable without raising fares or disrupting the capital program. MTA finally admitted as much at their press conference. It’s time for TMA to stop playing games. It’s not too late to avert a strike.”
It’s not every day that members of the GOP and the Democratic Party agree on anything. It’s especially rare when they agree to both stand behind union members in a strong show of support. That is what happened this past week when 10 members of New York’s Congressional delegation called upon the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority to adhere to the findings of two Presidential Emergency Boards set up to stop a strike that would affect Long Island commuters. The text of the document is available here. At a rally this past Saturday, members of congress and local leaders called on the MTA to do the right thing and adhere to to PEB recommendations. Republican State Assemblyman Joe Saladino told the crowd that all members of the New York State Assembly from Long Island were strongly pro-labor. “Republicans and Democrats, all of us are unified, because we stand with you,” Saladino said. Kevan Abrahams, a Democratic Nassau County assemblyman, who is also running for Congress, agreed with Saladino. “Parties do not matter. People are what matter.” Another According to the process outlined in the Railroad Labor Act of 1926, once the PEB report is submitted, both labor and management must maintain the status quo for an additional 30-day cooling off period, but once the cooling off period is over, each side is free to act in its own economic interest (unless they agree to extend the cooling off period). This means that management can impose any proposal it wants or force a lock out, and labor can strike. A strike would be devastating to the Long Island economy, particularly that of eastern Long Island, according to Democratic Congressman Tim Bishop. “The pillar of the eastern economy is travel and tourism,” Rep. Tim Bishop announced while slamming the MTA for its contingency plan that does nothing but tell people to stay at home in the event of a strike. “If people stay home and don’t come to Eastern Long Island,” Bishop said, “That’s the death knell of the eastern Long Island economy.
Nigro
By Joe Nigro, SMART General President –
Recently, SMART Sheet Metal Division Local 9 and Transportation Division Local 202 came together to honor the memory of the victims of a massacre that occurred 100 years ago.
On April 20, 1914, the Colorado National Guard joined with security guards hired by a local mining company to launch a bloody and devastating assault on 1,200 striking coal miners and their families camped at a tent city set up in Ludlow, Colo.
The event, known today as the Ludlow Massacre, saw one of the most egregious acts of violence committed by company guards and mine owners against their workers in a time when acts of violence against workers were commonplace. More than two dozen people, including 11 children and the four women shielding them from harm, were killed in the assault when a tent they were hiding in was lit on fire by company guards.
The man who led the attack on the miners, Gen. John Chase of the Colorado National Guard, had no love for the men and women who made up the labor movement, nor their families. According to historian Howard Zinn, in his book Three Strikes, Chase led a cavalry charge right into a group of protesting women a week earlier who had been supporting the striking miners. His troops tore banners and flags from the women’s hands while slashing bystanders with their sabers. Chase later went on to call this an effective means of mob control.
This massacre was a watershed moment in American history. The outcry was so fierce and loud that workers across the country struck as a result to demand justice for the women and children that were murdered in cold blood. A hostile Senate was forced to convene hearings looking into labor conditions and actually made incremental changes that began to form the foundation of the New Deal reforms two decades later. The incident continued to serve as a rallying cry for working families on through the following decades as the memory of those women and children was not left to die.
The Ludlow families helped bring our local unions closer together today just as they did a century ago when the labor movement demanded an end to this brutal violence in one loud voice.
This is the power of unity on display – a force for change and for progress that is as strong today as it was strong in those dark, early days where workers lost their lives fighting to improve their working conditions.
SMART members are already taking advantage of this unity. In New Mexico, Sheet Metal Division Local 49 was involved in assisting the Transportation Division in organizing 40 new members at Herzog Transit Services – a subcontractor responsible for running New Mexico Rail Runner Express commuter rail service. In New York, Sheet Metal Division locals are standing shoulder to shoulder with their brothers and sisters on the Long Island Rail Road against a difficult management at the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
This is the kind of unity and strength envisioned by our predecessors when this merger was voted on and passed seven years ago. We are now gradually starting to see the fruition of that vision.
I look forward to standing with you in securing a better future for ourselves and for our families and ask that you join us in commemorating the victims of this heinous massacre. Their memory lives on in our actions and in our work to strengthen the solidarity and bonds of the labor movement we are all a part of.
Otto Arch “Tom” Otto, 91, former national president of the Railroad Yardmasters of America from 1971 to 1985, passed away Feb. 23, 2014. Otto was born Aug. 24, 1922, in Wheeling, W.Va., graduated from Wheeling High School and attended Bethany College. A member of SMART Transportation Division Local 1951 at Albany, N.Y., Otto began his 45-year railway career as a clerk, quickly advancing to yardmaster for the Pennsylvania Railroad in Weirton, W.Va. He served as a local chairperson and a general chairperson for Pennsylvania Central yardmasters before being elected national president of the Railroad Yardmasters of America in 1971. He served in that role until his retirement – and the RYA’s merger with UTU – in 1985. As national president, he negotiated 12 national agreements on behalf of RYA employees and their families, including wage increases, creation of a new dental plan and improved health benefits. After his retirement, he and his wife relocated from Mt. Prospect, Ill., to Palm Beach Leisureville in Boynton Beach, Fla., where he served on many committees and was elected president of the community’s board of directors. Otto is survived by his wife of 67 years, Kay, daughters Alison and Heather, son-in-law Mike Liddicoat and granddaughter, Kathleen Liddicoat. He was pre-deceased by his son, Alan Thomas (“Tim”) Otto of Chicago, who was also a yardmaster. A celebration of his life was held Feb. 28 in Leisureville, with a burial in Wheeling.