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For immediate release 
March 1, 2023 
Phone: (216) 228-9400  
Department email: news_td@smart-union.org   

“This legislation goes a long way toward protecting American families and communities while fortifying the rail industry to be sustainable and safe long into the future. The voices of SMART-TD’s brothers and sisters have been heard by these senators and are echoing through the halls of the United States Congress.” 

INDEPENDENCE, Ohio (March 1, 2023) — Jeremy Ferguson, president of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers Transportation Division (SMART-TD), is calling for national support of The Railway Safety Act of 2023, a bipartisan bill that acknowledges the real-world conditions that shape the day-to-day safety concerns of the railroad workers who haul America’s freight.  

U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) have listened to the concerns of their constituents and put forward a comprehensive package in the Railway Safety Act that lives up to its billing — prioritizing the safety concerns expressed by the public and rail worker alike. In this bill, they give credence to the common-sense safety measures that our union and others in rail labor have advanced for years. 

“The provisions in this act add up to the end of the era of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) and attempt to take back control of our nation’s supply chain from Wall Street’s ‘profit at any cost’ mentality. It offers a chance for the nation to make the giant rail corporations take rational measures to get the industry to do what it’s designed to do — move freight through our nation safely and efficiently and be an example for the rest of the world to model,” President Ferguson said. “SMART-TD is proud to support this bill and its efforts to bring about generational changes in this country and to take a major step to stop PSR. We will work tirelessly with this team of like-minded Senators to realize their vision for a safer and stronger rail industry.” 

The safeguards offered in the bill include, but are not limited to: 

  • A nationwide mandate for well-trained two-person crews on all freight trains; 
  • Restrictions on train length and weight; 
  • Regulations on the installation, frequency, upkeep, and response to wayside defect detectors; 
  • Speed restrictions; 
  • Drastically increased fines for rail companies and management employees who do not adhere to rail safety protocols; 
  • Universalized track maintenance standards; 
  • Universalized rail-car maintenance standards; 
  • Higher standards for tank cars carrying hazardous material; 
  • Emergency response plans for carriers and communities; 
  • Phasing out of rail cars that do not meet strengthened safety requirements; 
  • Annual government audits of rail carriers to validate compliance to new heightened safety standards. 

“Hedge fund management of rail companies and their PSR strategy have careened the United States rail industry into a dark and dangerous place in the last six years. This bill has the potential to put safe operations into its rightful place as the gold standard in railroading and not what the next quarterly report can bring. We owe it to the people of East Palestine, Ohio, and to all communities that have railroad tracks running through them to have members of Congress do the right thing — to support this bill and insist that it makes it to President Biden’s desk without being watered down by negotiations or the special interests that will seek to stop it and claim that it is too ‘burdensome’ for a highly profitable industry to implement,” Ferguson continued.  

A recently released Ipsos-USA Today poll shows that 53% of Americans believe that strengthened rail industry safety regulations could have prevented the disaster in East Palestine, Ohio. 

Read the text of the bill

Fact sheet about the bill

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SMART Transportation Division is comprised of approximately 125,000 active and retired members who work in a variety of different crafts in the transportation industry. These crafts include employees on every Class I railroad, Amtrak, many shortline railroads, bus and mass transit employees and airport personnel.

If you’re interested in speaking more about the Railway Safety Act of 2023, PSR, East Palestine, rail safety, and the next steps for the rail industry, we’d be happy to connect you with:  

SMART Transportation Division President Jeremy Ferguson 

President Jeremy Ferguson, a member of Local 313 in Grand Rapids, Mic., 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. 

SMART Transportation Division National Legislative Director Gregory Hynes 

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. 

SMART Transportation Division Alternate National Legislative Director Jared Cassity

Jared Cassity was elected by his peers in 2019 and currently serves as the Alternate National Legislative Director. In addition to his elected roles, Cassity has also been appointed as the union’s chief of safety, serves as the director for the SMART-TD National Safety Team (which assists the NTSB in major rail-related accident investigations), is SMART-TD’s voting member on the Federal Railroad Administration’s C3RS Steering Committee, and is the first and only labor member to ever be appointed to the Transportation Security Administration’s Surface Transportation Safety Advisory Committee. 

The Switching Operations Fatality Analysis (SOFA) Working Group issued a one-page information sheet last week regarding shove movements, reminding workers to take care during shove moves — “When in doubt, dismount!”

According to the flyer, 27 of 34 fatalities analyzed by the SOFA group in the decade from 2011-2021 occurred during shove moves.

The SOFA Working Group is a cross-industry collaboration for over 25 years that works to identify any possible contributing factors for each of the more than 210 switching operations fatalities that have occurred in the rail industry since 1992. The SOFA Working Group reports its findings and on emerging data trends with the goal of zero fatalities in the railroad industry.

2023.02.22_SOFA_1pgr-shove-movesDownload

The state of Washington and its State Legislative Director (SLD) Herb Krohn have had legislative victories in the past. Washington is one of the states that has succeeded in passing a two-person crew regulation into law, with their state crewing law being the most stringent in the nation. Now Washington state Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos (D-District 37) has sponsored a bill in the state Legislature that may end up being the first of its kind.

Herb Krohn

With HB 1839, Tomiko Santos is seeking to limit the length of trains in the state to 7,500 feet.

This bill would go a long way toward the safety of our crews traversing the state and create additional trains for our members to operate.

HB 1839 also has a provision in it that states rail carriers in Washington can seek permission from the state’s Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC) to run trains up to 10,000 feet in length on specified routes. However, carriers would have to add at least one additional crew member to all trains between 7,500 and 10,000 feet under this provision, the state UTC can require additional crewmembers if it determines doing so is in the interest of reducing risk, such as on key trains. These 10,000-foot trains would not be as advantageous as their 7,500-foot counterparts in terms of train handling, but the addition of a third or more crew members would prove to be an advantage when yarding trains of this size. The requirement for railroads to request UTC approval to run larger trains and the restrictions on what subdivisions they can run on will also serve to discourage carriers from trying to work around the 7,500-foot restriction.

This bill seems to have momentum, making its way from initial introduction through the House Transportation Committee in just four days and passing out of committee with a do-pass recommendation Feb. 23 by a vote of 15-9. (Five members voted do not pass, and four members voted that they did not have a recommendation on the bill. One committee member was absent and did not vote).

HB 1839 has the potential for rail labor and common sense to regain a foothold in an industry that carriers have corrupted with Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR). The effort to get this bill signed into law is being led by Rep. Tomiko Santos with strong support by SMART-TD and SLD Krohn.

“The prospect of imposing reasonable train length limitations and eliminating the dangers of monster length trains will increase public safety as well as reduce the risks on train crews across the state of Washington,” Krohn said. “This legislation will go a long way toward reintroducing rational, common-sense regulatory oversight of how trains are operated.”

SMART-TD and our National Legislative Department are very proud of Brother Krohn and the work he’s doing in his state. The next step in the process for HB 1839 is to pass it forward from the House Rules Committee onto the House floor calendar. If it’s successful there, it will advance to the state Senate for committee hearings and votes.

The Legislature in Nebraska’s capital of Lincoln is not known to be a hotbed of activity for rail labor lobbying success stories, but SMART Transportation Division’s newest State Legislative Director (SLD) Andy Foust is actively making moves to change that. In his first week on the job, Brother Foust introduced two strong pieces of legislation that have gained bipartisan support. 

Nebraska State Legislative Director Andy Foust

The Legislature has initial hearings scheduled in March for SMART-TD’s two-person crew bill as well as a blocked crossings bill. Brother Foust’s 2PC bill, LB 31, was put forward by state Sen. Mike Jacobson, (District 42) sponsoring. The bill also has picked up traction in Nebraska’s unicameral Legislature by adding an impressive list of seven bipartisan co-sponsors, including Sens. Jane Raybould (District 28); Danielle Conrad (District 46); Tom Brewer (District 43); Lynne Walz (District 15); Myron Dorn (District 30); George Dungan (District 26) and Sen. Robert Dover (District 19). 

LB 31 was referred to Nebraska’s Transportation and Telecommunications Committee and is slated to have its first hearing before the committee March 6.

At its core, LB 31 is a bill regulating two-person train crews on all freight trains that travel within the borders of Nebraska. However, it also includes language that aims to levy fines against rail carriers for violations of the two-person crew. The fines start off as low as $250 for the first infraction (which is already around the same rate as paying a basic day to a second employee) and quickly goes up to be as high as $10,000 on a third offense and stays at that rate for additional offenses going forward. 

Foust and Sen. Jacobson have included the series of fines to ensure that there is no financial incentive for carriers to bypass the law, if approved by legislators. With $10,000 on the line for every train they improperly crew, carriers will not be able to chalk violations up as the cost of doing business and continue their pursuit of using single-employee engine crews augmented by roving (expeditor) conductors in company vehicles. As the UP and Norfolk Southern have both publicly spoken of plan to start experimenting with this new vision of rail crews in the near future, Brother Foust’s bill is well timed to stomp it out and defend the craft of on-board freight conducting. 

The blocked crossings bill, LB 234, sponsored by Sen. Walz also has been referred to the Transportation and Telecommunications Committee and is scheduled for a first reading, also on March 6. In LB 234, Foust and Walz have established a requirement for the railroad companies to report to the Nebraska State Highway Patrol and state Public Service Commission annually. Their report will need to include the number of public complaints each carrier received about blocked crossings. The report will also go into the specifics surrounding each complaint. They will have to report data on each complaint they receive to include information such as the dates, locations of the blocked crossing, the duration of time that each crossing was blocked, and the action taken by the railroad company to resolve the complaint. 

Making records of the complaints may be tedious enough for the railroads to handle, but the last requirement is going to prove to be the part the companies like the least. This bill is looking to force the carriers to put into public record what efforts they make to listen to the people of Nebraska, be accommodating corporate neighbors and to respond to residents’ needs and concerns. 

It is our hope that with this bill’s passage that carriers such as UP, BNSF, KCS and others there then engage in some much-needed self-reflection. It will be very telling about their corporate outlook on the role of being a considerate community partner when they attempt to massage language to talk about how the Precision Scheduled Railroading business model of ever-longer trains is compatible with access to emergency services and the free flow of vehicle traffic in the state’s rural and urban areas alike.

SMART-TD applauds the collective efforts of SLD Foust and the Nebraska state senators for doing the people’s work. You are all taking the path less traveled to defend our members and citizens of your state and are doing a wonderful job at pulling on the threads of PSR itself. With momentum around the country in state legislatures, we have every intention of helping you succeed in unraveling it!

Please help SLD Foust, and all of SMART-TD’s legislative team to achieve this overarching goal. It is the challenge that defines our time in the rail industry.

For information on how to contact your state legislators to support these and other bills being considered in Nebraska and beyond, please follow this link to the SMART-TD’s Legislative Action Center.

SMART-TD, behind the leadership of National Legislative Director Greg Hynes and Alternate National Legislative Director Jared Cassity, have unprecedented positive momentum in the halls of state legislatures across the country. Our legislative directors currently have bills in front of 17 state legislatures and many are showing signs of being successful. SMART-TD is very proud of the progress that the SLDs are making in all of these states and would like to share some of the highlights.

· Washington HB 1839 — SLD Herb Krohn’s train-length bill is scheduled for a vote in the Washington House Transportation Committee at noon Feb. 23.

· Arizona HB 2531—SLD Robert Jones has a train length bill limiting trains to 8,500 feet. It was passed through committee and is heading to the floor of the Arizona House.

· Arizona HB 2531—SLD Robert Jones has a train length bill limiting trains to 8,500 feet. It was passed through committee and is heading to the floor of the Arizona House.

· Iowa SF 184 —SLD Chris Smith has a train length bill limiting trains to 8,500 feet. It has been passed through committee in the Iowa Senate and is heading to the Senate floor.

· New Mexico HB 105—SLD Don Gallegos has a two-person crew bill that passed the floor of the New Mexico House of Representatives and is heading to the Senate.

· Minnesota SF 1417—SLD Nicholas Katich has a two-person crew bill that is currently in committee.

· Ohio HB 23—SLD Clyde Whitaker has a two-person crew bill that includes provisions for regulating adherence to wayside defect detectors that is currently in committee.

In the 17 states where SMART-TD’s legislative team is pushing legislation in this cycle, we have 49 combined bills currently in play. These pieces of legislation have the potential to bring about a tremendous amount of progress in our industry and make your day-to-day lives better while holding rail carriers accountable. Your support is needed!

SMART-TD asks that you become involved in these legislative actions. Please visit the Take Action tab of SMART’s website and look at what bills are being pushed in your state. Letters, phone calls, and emails supporting the bills involving our industry go a long way towards realizing their success. We encourage you to advocate for yourselves and your brothers and sisters in your crew base.

SMART Transportation Division President Jeremy Ferguson issued the following statement on Feb. 21:

“The greatest threat to the American railroad industry and the communities with which it intersects is Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR). The changes PSR has brought since its inception in 2017 have only served to make executives and Wall Street shareholders richer, while the risk to employees and the public has become greater.

“The derailment that occurred in East Palestine was predictable and preventable. Unfortunately, financially driven equations, like the operating ratio, have caused rail carriers to abandon fundamentally sound practices for haphazard, inherently dangerous, impetuous movements of freight and locomotives across America’s rail system — all in the pursuit of increasing the bottom line. This is neither responsible nor sustainable, and we are now seeing the reality of this fact coming into fruition.

“Because of PSR, we find ourselves in an era of exponential increases to train length, less consideration to train make-up or construction, the desire to reduce crew size and introduce automation, the reduction in frequency and quality of inspections to equipment and infrastructure, and the permissibility of railroads to self-report and self-police — none of which are consistent with safety.

“Now is not the time to introduce more technology but rather to focus on the fundamental changes needed to reverse railroading’s dangerous trajectory. Now is the time to put an end to PSR.

“While our hearts break for the people of East Palestine, Ohio, we are thankful that our calls for meaningful oversight are finally being heard. We look forward to working with President Biden and the Department of Transportation to get this right. The catastrophe in Ohio and Pennsylvania demands that we get this right.

“We stand willing and ready to do just that.”

Secretary Buttigieg’s letter is available here.

Ohio members are urged to express their support for H.B. 23, a rail-safety bill that covers two-person crews, requires documentation of blocked crossing incidents and requires state-supervised oversight to ensure the proper operation of wayside defect detectors.

In-person testimony before the Ohio House Finance Committee will occur 10 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 21, at the Ohio Statehouse and written testimony also is encouraged to be submitted by members who cannot be there in person. The meeting will take place in Room 313.

The bill:

  • Requires a two-person crew on a train.
  • Requires that the Ohio Public Utilities Commission (PUCO) and state Department of Transportation (Ohio DOT) work with railroad companies operating in the state to ensure that wayside detector systems are operational, effective and meets current standards.
  • Demands that railroads submit incident reports to PUCO for every instance when a carrier blocks a rail crossing for a duration of more than five minutes.

To submit comments, members in the state are encouraged to fill out the witness form linked below and send it, along with their written comments on the bill via email to Ohio State Legislative Director Clyde Whitaker (smartunionoslbmedia@gmail.com).

“We have an urgent need for people in Ohio to share their testimony about why H.B. 23 is necessary,” Whitaker said. “With the increased attention to rail safety, the time is now to get this legislation passed.”

Download the witness form. (Fillable PDF)

Read the bill.

A bipartisan coalition of United States Senators are seeking to get to the root of PSR. 

In the wake of the East Palestine, Ohio, derailment of a Norfolk Southern train on Feb. 3, there are many questions being asked about what caused the disaster and what is being done to prevent it from happening again. This week, U.S. senators from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, seem to have seen enough to know that no matter what the final determination of the what took the NS train off the rail literally, that the railroads’ corporate policy of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) is taking the safety of this country off the rails figuratively.  

Freshman U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) was part of two letters to federal regulators looking for answers and accountability. The first was a letter he undersigned with U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), to federal Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. In this letter, Vance and Rubio (who was one of the 6 Republican senators to vote for a bill providing paid sick days for railroad employees in December) press Secretary Buttigieg for descriptions of the DOT’s oversight roll of the railroads and how it plans to prevent incidents like the one in East Palestine going forward. 

  • “In particular, we request information from the U.S. Department of Transportation regarding its oversight of the United States’ freight train system and, more generally, how it balances building a safe, resilient rail industry across our country in relation to building a hyper-efficient one with minimal direct human input.” 
  • “[I]t is not unreasonable to ask whether a crew of two rail workers, plus one trainee, is able to effectively monitor 150 cars. While officials at the department’s Federal Railroad Administration have said that data are inconclusive when it comes to the effects of PSR on rail safety, derailments have reportedly increased in recent years, as has the rate of total accidents or safety-related incidents per track mile. The trade-off for Class I rail companies, of course, has been reduced labor costs, having shed nearly one-third of their workforce.” 
2023.02.15_rubio-vance-letter-to-DOTDownload

The second letter from U.S. Sens. Vance, and Sherrod Brown (D) of Ohio and U.S. Sens. Bob Casey (D) and John Fetterman (D) of Pennsylvania was directed toward the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). This bipartisan group was requesting the NTSB look into PSR’s role in this accident and the general reduction in industry safeguards. This letter details the lawmakers’ beliefs that, among other things, PSR’s devaluation of maintenance, staffing and inspections led directly to this environmental catastrophe.  

2023.02.15_Senators_to_NTSB-Download

SMART-TD has been sounding this same alarm since the onset of PSR, and we are very grateful for the full throated support we are receiving from these senators. Please visit SMART-TD’s Action Network on our website if you would like to contact these men and thank them for their support of our issues.  

The SMART Transportation Division and its Public Relations Department are looking to better serve you, our members. We are responding to feedback that the stories we put out should be more focused on what is happening at the ballast and road levels and within the crew bases that we aim to serve.

Over the winter, members of SMART-TD Local 195 in Galesburg, Ill., served breakfast to members of the community at VFW Post 2257 in Galesburg. (Photo courtesy Local Chairperson Jerrod Sammons)

To that end, we are humbly requesting your assistance in this goal. If you are a trainman or bus member who has a story lead about a co-worker with an accomplishment you would like to see highlighted, please reach out to us so that we can give you a voice in your union.

If you have information about your carrier changing a policy that is concerning or a TD member that has gone above the call of duty, we are asking you to email the Public Relations Department of SMART-TD at news_TD@smart-union.org.

We would love to hear from you about your brothers’ and sisters’ accomplishments and celebrations of careers as well as your perspectives on industry trends or changes that should be discussed in a large-scale forum.

In your emails, please leave your contact information so that we can discuss the topics with you further in order to give the story its just due and get it right for all involved.

SMART-TD’s Public Relations Department would like to thank you in advance for your participation, and we look forward to bringing you the stories that make a difference to all of us.

Phone: (216) 228-9400 

Fax: (216) 228-0411  

Direct email: bnagy@smart-union.org  

Department email: news_td@smart-union.org  

“As long as it is more profitable to clean up a disaster than to prevent one, these Wall Street-driven rail corporations will continue to hold communities like East Palestine hostage.” 

Independence, Ohio – The Sheet Metal, Air, Rail Transportation Union (SMART) is calling for an end to the business practice of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR). SMART Transportation Division President Jeremy Ferguson is calling for the United States Department of Transportation and the Federal Railroad Administration to implement a series of regulations with the aim of ending PSR which is the predominant business practice in the freight rail industry.  

According to Ferguson:

“Due to Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR), trains are much longer than they used to be, with some now over four miles in length. Even as the trains have gotten longer, the workforce supporting them has gotten smaller. All of this is done by rail corporations in pursuit of lower operating costs, higher profits, and a better return for shareholders. Bottom line: their deference to operating ratios over safety conditions has led us to the point where fewer railroaders with less training are taking longer trains made up of more hazardous materials down tracks with more wear and tear,” Ferguson said. “As the heartbreaking images from East Palestine show, this is a recipe for more catastrophic consequences. Unfortunately, PSR will not be a trend that runs its course and comes to an end naturally. As long as it is more profitable to clean up a disaster than to prevent one, these Wall Street-driven rail corporations will continue to hold communities like East Palestine, Ohio hostage. We must take action to end PSR now.”  

PSR, which has proliferated industry-wide amongst the nation’s Class 1 freight railroads, is highlighted by an emphasis on reducing staffing and maximizing profits. In the wake of this trend, our nation’s rail carriers have famously reduced their head counts, lengthened trains, and relaxed safety inspections on locomotives, rolling stock (rail cars) and tracks alike. All of this has been done in the name of reducing the only metric valued by PSR: operating ratio. In the name of improved operating ratios, the car departments and track maintenance departments have been ordered to do more with less. Reduced staffing levels and the increased number of cars per train have made it impossible for these railroad professionals to properly inspect equipment to ensure its safety. As an example, car inspections that used to be done with an industry standard of 3-4 minutes per car have been reduced to 60-90 seconds.   

“Norfolk Southern’s financial liability for the derailment in East Palestine is being projected by experts to amount to 1.7 percent of their net profit from 2022. It is being said that the company’s bottom line and stock price will have fully recovered by May of this year,” Ferguson continued. “How long will it take the families impacted by this disaster to recover? It is time for the federal government to step in and levy significant penalties on these companies until they feel the same level of pain as we saw in the makeshift shelters of East Palestine. This, and only this will refocus the shareholders and executives of these companies on the safety of SMART’s members and the American public.”  

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If you’re interested in speaking more about PSR, East Palestine, rail safety, and next steps for the rail industry, we’d be happy to connect you with:   

SMART Transportation Division President, Jeremy Ferguson  

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.  

SMART Transportation Division National Legislative Director, Gregory Hynes  

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.  

SMART Transportation Division Alternate National Legislative Director, Jared Cassity  

Jared Cassity was elected by his peers in 2019 and currently serves as the Alternate National Legislative Director for the SMART Transportation Division, which is comprised of approximately 125,000 active and retired members who work in a variety of different crafts in the transportation industry. These crafts include employees on every Class I railroad, Amtrak, many shortline railroads, bus and mass transit employees and airport personnel. In addition to his elected roles, Cassity has also been appointed as the union’s chief of safety, serves as the director for the SMART-TD National Safety Team (which assists the NTSB in major rail-related accident investigations), is SMART-TD’s voting member on the Federal Railroad Administration’s C3RS Steering Committee, and is the first and only labor member to ever be appointed to the Transportation Security Administration’s Surface Transportation Safety Advisory Committee.

Prior to being elected an international officer, Cassity held various local and state level positions (both protective and legislative) within the union and was a certified conductor and locomotive engineer for CSX Transportation in Russell, Ky., regularly serving the coal fields of eastern Kentucky and southwestern West Virginia. His seniority date is September of 2005.

Jared works in the union’s National Legislative Office in Washington, D.C., and currently resides in Manassas, Va., with his wife, Mikki, and his two daughters, Mykayla and Mykenna.