This unique and exciting event is open to all TD Local, State Legislative Board, and General Committee officers. Attendees can expect a full slate of informative workshops, educational opportunities, and many chances to reenergize the spirit of solidarity with fellow union brothers and sisters over the three-day event.
A welcome reception is planned for the evening of Monday, July 8, with full-day training beginning on Tuesday, July 9, through Wednesday, July 10, and concluding with a half-day of training on Thursday, July 11. A group event is scheduled at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for all registered attendees on the evening of Wednesday, July 10th. Special Note: The Local Secretary & Treasurer training will conclude on the afternoon of Friday, July 12.
An “early bird” registration fee for attendance is $200 per person, covering the welcome reception, three (3) lunches, and the Rock Hall event. On May 1st, the registration fee will increase to $250, and onsite registration will be $290 to cover last-minute additional costs associated with our meeting planning. Children 11 and under are complimentary.
You may cancel your meeting registration ten days before the first day of the meetings without penalty. Call the Transportation Division at 216-228-9400 or email Nick Torres at ntorres@smart-union.org.
April 30 update: Lodging capacity at the host hotel has been filled. The SMART-TD is arranging lodging at additional sites.
Additional details on the meeting schedule will be updated on the SMART website and in the Member Portal as they become available.
Links to the Transportation Division’s workplace Safety Condition Report and the railroad Technology Event Report in the SMART app are again functional for Transportation Division members.
The links to the report submission forms should work upon opening the app and there is no need to refresh it or log out.
Members’ patience is appreciated as this technical challenge was solved. We look forward to again receiving your submissions via the union’s app. These reports help chart the proper course on to where to focus our efforts to best serve you.
An online fundraiser has been set up for the survivors of Dexter Perkins, a member of Local 171 (Aurora, Ill.), after he was slain in an act of violence Dec. 22 in Wheaton, Illinois.
Brother Perkins, 37, had been a member of our union since September 2022 and worked as a conductor for BNSF before his death.
He leaves behind two daughters, Brynn and Blair, and his mother as well as his brothers and sisters in Local 131.
“I’m sure anyone who knows Dexter will agree we were all truly blessed to call him our friend, and the amount of lives he touched is insurmountable,” wrote friend David Killingsworth, who organized the fundraiser. “The family he’s left behind has been shaken to their core.”
Visitation is scheduled 9 to 11 a.m. Jan. 5 at Lighthouse Church Cook County, 4501 W. 127th St., Alsip, IL 60803 with services immediately following from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Burial will take place in Glenwood, Illinois.
A celebration of Brother Perkins’ life will occur Jan. 7 beginning at 11 a.m. at the Piazza Aurora, 85 Executive Dr, Aurora, IL, 60504. For information, visit the After Life Chicago website.
SMART-TD expresses its sincere condolences to Brother Perkins’ family, friends and all who knew him.
INDEPENDENCE, Ohio (Dec. 27, 2023) – The International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, and Rail Transportation Workers Transportation Division (SMART-TD) has been calling for years for the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to address the epidemic of violent assaults facing our bus and transit members in their workplaces.
As an organization, this union has been out in front of this issue, raising awareness of the problem with transit carriers, legislators and by directly reaching out to FTA with a laundry list of proposed solutions to the problem. Internally, the union has established the Bus/Transit Assault Prevention and Safety (BTAPS) Committee aimed at focusing the strength of our union on this life-and-death issue.
SMART-TD, BTAPS and our men and women on the front line have gained an impressive ally in this struggle. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris called for FTA to implement Public Transportation Agency Safety Plans (PTASP) in all large urban areas developed by on-property committees. The groups, comprised of equal members of workers and representatives of management, will be charged with conducting system-specific safety risk assessments.
After the assessments are completed, appropriate mitigation measures and strategies will be identified to address the problems identified in their assessments. A general directive from the Biden-Harris administration calls for the assessments, mitigations and the monitoring of their effect to be overseen directly by FTA.
SMART-TD President Jeremy Ferguson was excited to hear the news of Biden’s personal involvement in putting an end to the rise of violence against our members.
“This union’s leaders on the bus and transit side of TD have been discussing this issue and proposing solutions. We have had strong legislation at the state level from several of our State Legislative Directors Ron Sabol in New Jersey, Bob Guy in Illinois, Don Roach in Michigan, and Louis Costa in California among others. Some of our General Committee Chairman have been leading the charge on this issue as well. Jerome Johnson on New Jersey Transit, Anthony Simon from the Long Island Railroad and Anthony Petty from SEPTA in Philadelphia jump to mind, among many other strong GC’s who have been with us in this fight.” Ferguson said. “This administration has given proof positive with this directive that we are being heard and that we have not only a friend but a strategic partner in the White House. The directive echoes some of the most important points this organization made to the FTA earlier this year. The door is open for SMART to work hand in hand with the FTA and all other facets of the federal government to protect our members better than we ever could have before.”
“This strong mandate will amplify the efforts of our new BTAPS Committee led by Chairperson Christine Ivey, and the administration’s leadership will allow our ideas on changes to equipment and policy to take root throughout the country. This is a great sign for our union and for working men and women throughout the transportation industry that the need for improvement in protecting bus and transit workers from violence cannot be ignored.”
If you would like more information on the administration’s general directive, and SMART-TD’s plans to maximize the leverage it gives our efforts, we would be happy to put you in touch with:
President Jeremy Ferguson, a member of Local 313 in Grand Rapids, Mich., was elected president of SMART’s Transportation Division in 2019.
President Ferguson, an Army veteran, started railroading in 1994 as a conductor on CSX at Grand Rapids, Mich., and was promoted to engineer in 1995. Ferguson headed the recent national rail negotiations for the union with the nation’s rail carriers.
Christine Ivey, a member of Local 1785 in Santa Monica, California, was appointed chairperson of the BTAPS Committee in the summer of 2023 and has been pivotal in the committee’s founding. Sister Ivey has been a bus operator for 30 years and has been working for the City of Santa Monica’s Municipal Bus Lines (Big Blue Bus) since 2014.
Vice President Hughes, a member of Local 1596 out of Charlotte, N.C., began his career in transportation with the Charlotte Area Transportation System (CATS) in 1999 and has been a SMART-TD member ever since. Hughes was an Alternate Vice President at SMART-TD from 2014 through 2019 when he was elevated to his current role as vice president.
The SMART Transportation Division’s next Regional Training Seminar (RTS) is scheduled to take place March 4 through 7, 2024, at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Albuquerque.
Attendee check-in begins the afternoon of March 4, and those attending should plan to arrive then. Classes and workshops kick off the morning of March 5.
Attending an RTS is an exciting opportunity for local leadership and members to engage one on one with union experts to help fulfill the need for live, in-person training from local leaders closer to home.
The cost for TD members to register to attend the seminar is $50.
The RTS includes classes for local governance, roles of a local president, secretary & treasurer, legislative representatives and local chairpersons in protecting members and on the SMART Constitution, among others.
The classes are taught by national officers and other subject matter experts associated with SMART-TD.
TD President Jeremy Ferguson will attend a welcome reception 6 to 8 p.m. Monday evening before addressing the RTS on Tuesday. He and other union leaders also will be available to answer membership questions.
Please note: Attendees are responsible for making their own hotel reservations.
A room block has been reserved at the site of the meeting, 1000 Woodward Place NE, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87102. The SMART-TD event rate is $142 per night.
But something changed this year — perhaps it was seeing legislatures and governors in both Ohio and Minnesota to the west take the steps to pass legislation or the catastrophic derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that happened in February.
On Dec. 8, Hochul signed S.5775 into law, capping a superlative effort from SMART-TD’s New York State Legislative Board led by State Legislative Director Sam Nasca.
A mere three years ago, a bill establishing a minimum freight crew size did not even make it out of a state Senate committee. Now, New York is the third state this year to pass and have the governor sign 2PC legislation, bringing the total number of states to have implemented legislation or regulations regarding a minimum two-person crew to a dozen.
“Another state has come to the conclusion that a two-person crew is appropriate and necessary for safe railroad operations,” National Legislative Director Greg Hynes said. “We thank all of the legislators, especially state Sen. Timothy Kennedy, who introduced the bill in his chamber, and Assemblyman Bill Magnarelli for their leadership.”
“Congratulations to all on the TD New York State Legislative Board for pulling together and achieving another victory.”
The bill was introduced in March and establishes an escalating structure of fines for violations by Class I and II rail carriers that run freight trains without two on the crew in the state. It takes effect in January 2024.
A national regulation on crew size remains pending before the Federal Railroad Administration.
As the expression goes, there is strength in numbers. The SMART Transportation Division is about to get a whole lot stronger thanks to yesterday’s announcement by President Joe Biden in Las Vegas, Nevada.
On Dec. 8, President Biden and SMART-TD President Jeremy Ferguson announced a $6 billion investment Biden’s administration is making in this country’s rail infrastructure and in the value of union rail jobs through two projects in California and Nevada.
“When I ran for president, I made a commitment to build a high-speed rail worthy of America. I mean it — put our nation on track with the fastest, safest and greenest rail ays in the world and high-speed,” President Biden said. “You have no idea how much this pleases me, at long last, we are building the first high-speed rail project in our nation’s history, and it’s starting here.
“It means growth and opportunity for towns and communities between here and the California coast. It’s on track to be completed by the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. And here’s the best part — it means jobs. Union jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs!”
SMART Transportation Division National Legislative Director Gregory Hynes shakes hands with President Joe Biden on Friday, Dec. 8, after Biden’s announcement about funding a pair of high-speed rail projects in California and Las Vegas.
Representing the nation’s largest freight rail union at today’s press conference, SMART-TD President Jeremy Ferguson had this to say: “The idea of high-speed rail has been discussed in this country for decades, and it is beyond exciting to see it coming together here today. Our members, and our brothers and sisters throughout rail labor should see this as a day when our nation’s president and the country itself recognize our value and what we bring to the table. The skills our conductors, engineers, and yardmasters possess were not an afterthought when the plans for this rail line came together. They are invaluable to this project and woven into the fabric of what will make this high-speed rail project a success. It’s a proud day for us, and we thank Congresswoman Dina Titus from Nevada’s First Congressional District, Congressman Steven Horsford from Nevada district 4, Congresswoman Susie Lee from Nevada’s 3rd district, and Nevada’s U.S. Senators Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, along with the Department of Transportation, and of course, President Joe Biden himself for all of their work to make this dream a reality for our men and women.”
This project has been years in the making and is becoming a reality now due to the public-private partnership between the federal government and the Brightline West Railroad. In plans submitted to the administration, Brightline highlighted the efficiency of this high-speed rail project stating the trains will travel at speeds upwards of 186 mph and that will make it possible to get 218 miles from Southern California to Las Vegas in just over two hours which is a fraction of the time it takes on the highway.
Some of the benefits of this high-speed rail project include taking traffic off the heavily congested U.S. Interstate 15, as well as having positive impacts on the environmental emissions. This project will also bolster the economies of some of our nation’s largest cities.
As a stipulation for receiving federal funding for this project, Brightline West committed to using an organized workforce. SMART-TD has been part of the planning for this project since the railroad made that commitment to Biden and Congress. Along with employing thousands of our brothers and sisters in the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way, Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, SMART-MD, TCU and all of our rail labor partners, they also committed to running their trains with SMART-TD crews.
Labor representatives at the announcement Friday of two U.S. high-speed rail projects have their picture taken with Federal Railroad Administrator Amit Bose in Las Vegas.
This is obviously a big win for the U.S. economy, but more directly it is a win for us as a union family. SMART-TD would like to thank the Biden administration, and the U.S. Department of Transportation for their leadership. This project will provide hundreds of good union jobs in our industry and is a wonderful example of what can be accomplished when private industry, federal government, and a strong labor coalition are all pulling in the same direction.
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If you would like more information about this project or about rail labor’s participation in it, we would be happy to connect you with:
President Jeremy Ferguson, a member of Local 313 in Grand Rapids, Mich., was elected president of SMART’s Transportation Division in 2019.
President Ferguson, an Army veteran, started railroading in 1994 as a conductor on CSX at Grand Rapids, Mich., and was promoted to engineer in 1995. Ferguson headed the recent national rail negotiations for the Union with the nation’s rail carriers.
Greg Hynes is a fifth-generation railroader and was elected national legislative director in 2019.
Hynes served on the SMART Transportation Division National Safety Team that assists the National Transportation Safety Board with accident investigations, from 2007 – 2014.
In 2014, he was appointed to the Federal Railroad Administration’s Railroad Safety Advisory Committee (RSAC), which develops new railroad regulatory standards.
Hynes was appointed the first chairperson of the UTU Rail Safety Task Force in 2009 and served in that capacity until being elected SMART Transportation Division alternate national legislative director at the Transportation Division’s 2014 convention.
Jared Cassity, a member of Local 1377 (Russell, Ky.), was elected to the office of alternate national legislative director at the Second SMART Transportation Division Convention in August 2019 and became director of the TD National Safety Team in June 2021.
Cassity started his railroad career with CSX in September 2005 and was promoted to engineer in 2008.
In addition to his elected roles, he has been a member of the National Safety Team since 2014, where he was subsequently elected to the position of Alternate Director (East) for the NST in 2016. Likewise, he was elected by his fellow peers of state directors to serve as the directors’ representative on the CSX Safety Model Executive Board in 2013.
Independence, Ohio — The International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers — Transportation Division (SMART-TD) has announced the members who will participate in the Bus and Transit Assault Prevention and Safety (BTAPS) Committee.
This committee, which was voted on at the SMART Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C. earlier this year, is known as the Bus and Transit Assault Prevention and Safety (BTAPS) Committee. BTAPS is being chaired by Christine Ivey who is a bus member of SMART-TD Local 1785 and works as a bus operator for the Santa Monica Municipal Bus Lines.
In addition to Sister Ivey, the eight members of the BTAPS Committee will be the following:
Bus members
Russ Gaillard, Local 1582 Adirondack Transit Lines, Albany, New York
Sandra Pineda, Local 1563 LACMTA, El Monte, California
Bruce Cheatham, Local 1594 SEPTA, Upper Darby, Pennsylvania
Pedro (Pete) Lara Jr., Local 1563 LACMTA, El Monte, California
Transit/commuter members
Cole Czub, Local 898 KEOLIS, Boston, Massachusetts
Scott Carey, Local 95 Amtrak, Rensselaer, New York
Ernest Higgerson, Local 1525 Amtrak, Carbondale, Illinois
Joseph Williams, Local 800 New Jersey Transit, Newark, New Jersey
The committee is composed of 4 bus members, and 4 representatives of our transit and commuter rail membership. This committee will be lobbying both at the state level and in Washington D.C. to promote bills that ensure the best demonstrated practices for transit worker safety and bring down the alarming rate of assaults on our brothers and sisters. Our BTAPS members will also be working with carriers, the FTA and other federal agencies to promote the best practices to make our members safer on the job.
“I want to thank all our bus and transit members who volunteered to serve on this important committee. After careful consideration, we have chosen eight members that represent a geographically diverse cross section of our bus, transit, and commuter service workforce,” SMART-TD President Jeremy R. Ferguson said. “We are lucky to have many talented people in our union and we look forward to the progress this BTAPS Committee will make. Under Christine Ivey’s leadership, I am sure they will make an immediate impact on the safety of our bus and transit rail members.”
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If you’re interested in speaking more about transit worker safety, and the changes SMART-TD is calling for, we’d be happy to connect you with:
President Jeremy Ferguson, a member of Local 313 in Grand Rapids, Mich., was elected president of SMART’s Transportation Division in 2019.
President Ferguson, an Army veteran, started railroading in 1994 as a conductor on CSX at Grand Rapids, Mich., and was promoted to engineer in 1995. Ferguson headed the recent national rail negotiations for the union with the nation’s rail carriers.
Christine Ivey, a member of Local 1785 in Santa Monica, California, was appointed as the chairperson of the BTAPS committee in the summer of 2023 and has been pivotal in the committee’s founding. Sister Ivey has been a bus operator for 30 years and has been working for the City of Santa Monica’s Municipal Bus Lines (Big Blue Bus) since 2014.
Vice President Hughes, a member of Local 1596 out of Charlotte, N.C., began his career in transportation with the Charlotte Area Transportation System in 1999 and has been a SMART-TD member ever since. Hughes was an alternate vice president at SMART-TD from 2014 through 2019 when he was elected to his current role as vice president.
Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, has been known for being anything but loving when it comes to wage increases and quality of life benefits for its transportation professionals. First-year General Chairperson Anthony Petty of SMART-TD’s SPT General Committee announced the ratification by membership of a new one-year agreement that changes that for the better.
The agreement ratified includes both a 7% raise in base pay and a $3,000 bonus for our SMART-TD members working to provide SEPTA’s bus service. Petty and his general committee also brokered a deal increasing the carrier’s contribution to employee retirement funds by 5% in addition to the 7% raise in pay.
Not only will these members be receiving these financial benefits, but Petty and his committee of Bruce Cheatham, Wayne Vincent and Jeaneen Hand, along with new Bus Department’ Vice President James Sandoval, also negotiated for substantial gains in time off and quality-of-life for their brothers and sisters.
Standard practice at SEPTA for the past two decades has been that our members have worked six days a week at all times. In this new agreement, members will only be drafted (forced to work a sixth day in the week) once per month. They can take two days off per week for the remainder of the month. If they elect to do so, they will be allowed to volunteer to work a sixth day whenever they want, but the power to decide is now in the hands of each individual member.
Yet another quality-of-life improvement in this contract is that the extra board will now be divided into an a.m. list and a p.m. list so our members are only responsible for covering the work for 12 hours each day. They won’t be expected to cover shifts outside of their coverage times. For the first time at SEPTA, employees on the extra list will have a far better understanding of when they can expect to go to work. This will go a long way towards helping to balance work and homelife for our men and women and create some consistency for them.
In another new and creative addition to the agreement, Petty and his team got SEPTA to agree to a unique dialogue centering around the ongoing problem with assaults against our members. On December 19, SEPTA’s General Manager Leslie Richards will attend a town hall meeting held by union leaders to discuss the rise in violence our members deal with on the job.
As part of the agreement, SEPTA management will meet quarterly in an open forum with the union to discuss the scenario surrounding every assault that has taken place on SEPTA property since the prior meeting and to tell us what steps SEPTA will take to prevent similar incidents in the future. They will also listen to our members’ ideas on assault reduction and take questions from attendees.
This agreement is the product of aggressive and creative thinking on behalf of Petty, Sandoval and the General Committee.
Petty said that his team’s cohesion made the difference in getting the job done and done quickly at the bargaining table in the six months negotiations with the carrier were open.
“My committee of Vice Chair Wayne Benson, Jeaneen Hand and Bruce Cheatham along with SMART-TD Vice President James Sandoval had put so much work in on this before negotiations started that once it got going, they could sense our confidence,” he said. “They could see we were all on the same page. We were prepared to justify everything we asked for and they knew it. All in all, the negotiation only took four days.
“They knew we weren’t backing down, and in the end, we are proud of the agreement we brought back to our membership. I want to thank Vice President Sandoval. James has been working on this agreement with me since the day I met him. He was with us every step of the way, and we all appreciate his commitment to getting everything we could get to better the lives of our SEPTA members.”
SMART-TD as an organization congratulates the SPT General Committee on the remarkable work done to achieve this agreement for SEPTA members.
Senior Vice President of the Bus Department, Alvy Hughes pointed out that this was the first agreement negotiated by GC Petty and for VP Sandoval in his new role as a SMART-TD vice president.
Hughes wants all members of SMART to know that they did a great job, and that he is very proud of the effort they put in and what they accomplished for our men and women.
The calendar year 2024 drug and alcohol random testing rates for specific recipients of Federal Transit Administration financial assistance were published in the Federal Register on Nov. 30, 2023. The minimum random drug testing rate will remain at 50 percent, and the random alcohol testing rate will remain at 10 percent.
