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After BNSF announced it would demand highly personal information from employees relating to off-duty medical procedures and issues, the UTU and the Sheet Metal Workers International Association (SMWIA) asked the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to investigate.

The proposed new carrier rule, said the UTU and SMWIA, is discriminatory and violates federal law by requiring workers to provide highly personal medical information.

Within days, BNSF rescinded the policy rather than face an EEOC investigation.

As the UTU and SMWIA documented in its complaint to the EEOC, BNSF had no statutory right to view the information – that its proposed rule was in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Genetic Information Nondisclosure Act, the Civil Rights Act and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act by requiring that employees provide the railroad with doctor’s notes, diagnostic test results and hospital discharge summaries.

“Each day that BNSF’s policy remains in effect, more employees face the likelihood of having their statutory rights violated,” the UTU and SMWIA told the EEOC.

“And once an employee’s rights are violated – that is, once BNSF has been notified of the away-from-work medical condition or event and has obtained the employee’s statutorily-protected medical information – there is no way to undo the violation,” the UTU and SMWIA told the EEOC.

Additionally, said the UTU and SMWIA, the medical information that BNSF sought was likely to reveal a disability that is neither job related nor consistent with business necessity, and is likely to result in BNSF obtaining genetic information.
 
Moreover, the proposed BNSF rule would have discriminated against women affected by pregnancy and/or related medical conditions, the UTU and SMWIA told the EEOC.

Other labor organizations filed similar complaints with the EEOC.

CSX says it is looking to fill 150 positions in Tennessee, mostly in and around Nashville; 140 jobs in Maryland, mainly in Baltimore and Cumberland; and 90 positions in Alabama, primarily in Birmingham. 

The hiring comes as the company prepares to meet the demands of a growing regional, national and global economy and to offset attrition, CSX said. The new employees will operate trains and maintain tracks, locomotives and rail cars. 

CSX estimates it will hire 3,500 people in 2012, many of them military veterans. In 2011, CSX hired approximately 4,000 workers. 

Find more information and apply on CSX’s website (www.csx.com) by clicking the tab for “Working at CSX.”

U.S. Capitol Building; Capitol Building; Washington D.C.Public transportation funding, transportation jobs, workplace safety, Railroad Retirement and Medicare are under a mean-spirited and sustained attack by congressional conservatives who are trying to muscle their agenda through Congress prior to the November elections.

The UTU and Sheet Metal Workers International Association – now combined into the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART) – along with other labor organizations, public interest groups, congressional Democrats and moderate Republicans are working on Capitol Hill to block these attempts, which could be devastating to working families.

UTU National Legislative Director James Stem and SMWIA Director of Governmental Affairs Jay Potesta outlined the conservatives’ agenda that has surfaced in proposed congressional transportation reauthorization and budget legislation:

* Cut $31.5 billion in federal transportation spending, which would threaten some 500,000 American jobs.

* Eliminate federal spending for Amtrak and expansion of intercity rail-passenger service and high-speed rail, with a direct impact on jobs associated with that service.

* Gut federal spending for the Alaska Railroad, which would force elimination of scores of train and engine workers represented by the UTU.

* Delay implementation of positive train control, which is a modern technology to reduce train accidents and save lives and limbs.

* Eliminate federal spending for expansion of local and regional transit service as Americans scramble to find alternatives to driving in the face of soaring gasoline prices. The federal spending cut would prevent the return to work of furloughed workers from budget-starved local transit systems and likely cause layoffs of still more transit workers.

* Encourage privatization of local transit systems, which would open the door for non-union operators eager to pay substandard wages and eliminate employee health care insurance and other benefits.

* Remove any requirement for shuttle-van operators, whose vehicles cross state lines, from paying even minimum wage or overtime – a proposal, which if enacted, could lead to applying that legislation to interstate transit operations.

* Eliminate Railroad Retirement Tier I benefits that exceed Social Security benefits even though railroads and rail employees pay 100 percent of those benefits through payroll taxes, with no federal funds contributing to Tier I benefits that exceed what is paid by Social Security.

* Replace direct federal spending on Medicare in favor of handing out vouchers to be used to purchase private insurance, which will undercut the viability of Medicare.

* Provide large tax breaks to millionaires and preserve tax breaks for Wall Street hedge funds that cater to the wealthy, while cutting by two-thirds federal assistance to veterans and public schools.

The UTU member-supported political action committee (PAC) is helping to fund election campaigns by labor-friendly candidates, and a labor-wide “get out the vote” drive will go door-to-door across America in support of labor-friendly candidates in advance of November elections.

In the meantime, UTU and SMWIA legislative offices will continue their education campaign on Capitol Hill, visiting congressional offices to explain the economic devastation the current conservative agenda would impose on working families.

WASHINGTON – Few commodities are as essential to railroads and railroad jobs as coal. Fully 25 percent of railroad revenue, one-in-five railroad jobs and 40 percent of freight cars owe their existence to coal, according to the Association of American Railroads.

But a proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this week could put a crimp in coal’s future – imposing the first-ever limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants and encouraging the substitution of natural-gas fired energy plants to generate electricity.

The EPA is accepting comments on its proposal prior to finalizing the rule. If the EPA does not back down, coal interests are expected to mount a federal-court challenge to the rule, according to news reports.

The senior Democrat on the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia, said the ruling “could have a crippling effect” on U.S. coal production, effectively prohibiting the construction of coal-fired power plants in the U.S. and causing many of the existing coal-fired power plants to be phased out.

The EPA said its ruling is “a common-sense step to reduce pollution in our air, protect the planet for our children, and move us into a new era of American energy.”

But the Edison Electric Institute, which represents electric utilities, said that the EPA proposal “threatens the viability of coal.” News reports quote experts that the EPA ruling, if it stands, could eliminate 15 percent of U.S. coal-fired plants.

China, meanwhile, uses more coal than the United States, Europe and Japan combined, according to The New York Times. 

By Calvin Studivant
Alternate Vice President, Bus Department

When reading about the conservatives’ attack on mass transit in the House of Representatives, all I can ask is, “What are they thinking?”

With gas prices rising to record levels, even low-wage workers who own an automobile can’t afford to drive to work; and for the millions of low-wage workers without an automobile, their only means of going to and from their jobs is by mass transit.

Yet mean-spirited conservatives in the House of Representatives are pushing legislation that would scale back federal funding for mass transit. Moreover, they want to prevent transit systems from using a portion of the federal funds they do receive — and which previously were earmarked for new equipment — for retention of curtailed service that would bring furloughed employees back to work.

Equally mean-spirited is legislation encouraging transit-system privatization, which would open the door for non-union operators eager to pay substandard wages and eliminate employee health care insurance and other benefits.

One conservative lawmaker is seeking to remove any requirement for shuttle-van operators whose vehicles cross state lines from paying even minimum wage or overtime. We can be sure that if this provision is enacted into law, an effort would follow to apply the legislation to bus and transit operators.

Congratulations go to the UTU’s District of Columbia Legislative Director Willie Bates, a member of an Obama administration Transit Rail Advisory Committee , who is working to draft language creating standardized federal safety regulations for transit system nationwide – an effort staunchly opposed by congressional conservatives.

Never in my career have I witnessed such mean-spiritedness by members of Congress. Our National Legislative Office is working diligently to educate more moderate Republicans on the potential danger to public safety and the economic well-being of working families from these harmful legislative attempts.

Each of us has an obligation to help in this effort, by encouraging our coworkers, families and friends to register to vote and vote in November in favor of labor-friendly candidates. UTU members also can make a difference by joining the UTU PAC, or increasing our donations to the UTU PAC. 

We must make our voices heard on Capitol Hill – for the sake of our jobs, our economic security and the millions of Americans who depend on public transportation to take them to and from work.

By UTU International President Mike Futhey – 

It has been said that the comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.

Working families today feel the pain of that comment. Most are struggling to keep their heads above water as the gap between the middle-class and the rich continues to widen.

In decades past, labor unions forged America’s middle-class, fighting for livable wages, employer-paid benefits including health-care insurance, seniority rights and prohibitions against discrimination in the workplace.

Today, we are seeing a vicious assault on labor unions by conservative lawmakers — helped into office through political contributions of large employers and other anti-union forces – whose objective is to eradicate collective bargaining rights and labor unions.

In Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and other states, anti-union legislation has been advanced – and, in some cases, passed. In Congress, the House of Representatives has advanced legislation to weaken the ability of unions to organize and bargain collectively.

As our nation grapples to recover from a long and deep economic recession, many of those finding new employment must accept minimum wage — or only slightly more — in jobs providing no health-care insurance or other employer-paid benefits that are the foundation of building a solid middle class.

We have heard about the top 1 percent in America, whose earners make more than $700,000 annually. Middle-class families earn considerably less, and the little wealth they have acquired – in home equity and modest retirement savings – has been whittled away during this recession. Almost one-in-four home owners now owe more on their homes than they are worth, while most of the remaining home owners have seen the value of their homes decline as much as 40 percent.

A study out of the University of California (Los Angeles) concluded: “Never in the history of the United States has there been such a concentration of wealth in the hands of a small elite.”

During the 1940s, as America’s middle-class grew and prospered, 40 percent of American private-sector workers belonged to labor unions. Today, that figure is below 12 percent. Anti-labor forces wish to make that percentage even smaller.

Yet, as Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson recently observed: “When it comes to elections, unions are still the most potent mobilizers.” As shown in the centerfold of the March UTU News, UTU members go to the polls and larger numbers than most any other grouping of voters. And that is true for all labor union members.

The November general elections – at the state and federal levels — could spell doom for organized labor and millions of middle-class Americans whose job security, wages, benefits and working conditions depend on collectively bargained contracts. It needn’t be so if families in the labor movement, and others in the middle class, vote to end the war on labor.

We can make a difference this November. We must make a difference this November. Our job security, wages, benefits and working conditions hang in the balance.

As Benjamin Franklin observed when signing the Declaration of Independence, we must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately. For America’s middle class, the words ring as true today as they did in 1776.

WASHINGTON – Buses manufactured over the past two decades by Motor Coach Industries (MCI) are the object of a federal investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration into whether drives shafts can dislodge during operation and cause bus operators to lose control of the coach.

The investigation is focusing on 4,000 MCI D-Series buses with a steerable rear axle and manufactured between 1992 and 2012.

The Associated Press reports that the loss of a drive shaft is thought to have caused two fatal crashes.

FirstGroup America, which operates Greyhound, alleges that several drive shafts became dislodged from MCI buses over the past two years, causing drivers to lose control.

A training course in safe handling of radioactive material transported by rail is offered April 26-28 at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md. The course is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The college says that with the number of rail shipments of radioactive materials expected to increase in coming years, there is increased risk for rail incidents involving that hazardous material, and thus a need for this training.

A federal grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences will provide transportation, lodging and meals for training participants. The training will be conducted on the George Meany Campus of the National Labor College. Silver Spring, Md., is just outside Washington, D.C.

For more information and an application for attendance, click on the following link:

http://www.hazmatgmc.org/

Additional information may be obtained by calling the labor college’s hazmat office at (301) 431-5457.

On behalf of members employed by BNSF, the UTU and the Sheet Metal Workers International Association (SMWIA) have asked the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to investigate the railroad’s new medical reporting policy, which the organizations say is discriminatory and violates federal law by requiring workers to provide highly personal medical information.

BNSF is demanding employees report off-duty medical procedures and issues. This highly personal information is protected, and BNSF has no statutory right to view the information, the UTU and SMWIA said in  their complaints.

The discrimination complaints filed with the EEOC allege BNSF is in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Genetic Information Nondisclosure Act, the Civil Rights Act and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act by requiring, since Jan. 1, 2012, that employees provide the railroad with doctor’s notes, diagnostic test results and hospital discharge summaries.

“Each day that BNSF’s policy remains in effect, more employees face the likelihood of having their statutory rights violated,” the UTU and SMWIA told the EEOC. “And once an employee’s rights are violated – that is, once BNSF has been notified of the away-from-work medication condition or event and has obtained the employee’s statutorily-protected medical information – there is no way to undo the violation.”

Additionally, said the UTU and SMWIA in their complaint, the medical information that BNSF requires employees to provide is information likely to reveal a disability and is neither job related nor consistent with business necessity, and is likely to result in BNSF obtaining genetic information. Moreover, the BNSF policy discriminates against women affected by pregnancy and/or related medical conditions.

Other labor organizations have filed a similar complaint with the EEOC.

OSHA logo; OSHASadly, there is a part of “no” that railroads just can’t understand. So, once again, the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has hit a railroad in the wallet for violating an employee’s rights as protected under the Federal Railroad Safety Act of 1970, which was supplemented by the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008.

The latest wallet-lightening fine was imposed by OSHA against Union Pacific for retaliating against a Pocatello, Idaho, based locomotive engineer who was forced to work and prevented from seeking medical treatment for a migraine headache, blurred vision, dizziness, vomiting and a bloody nose.

OSHA found that the engineer’s supervisor – who also was ordered to pay a portion of the fine – used “threats and intimidation to dissuade the engineer from seeking or gaining access to medical care during his shift.”

Yes, the UP supervisor chose to order an ill locomotive engineer, whose situational awareness was clearly compromised, to operate the train.

Said OSHA in imposing more than $25,000 in punitive and compensatory damages, plus attorney fees: “It is critically important that Union Pacific Railroad employees know that OSHA intends to defend the rights of workers to report safety concerns. We will bring the full force of the law to make sure workers who are retaliated against for reporting health and safety concerns are made whole.”

Incredibly, this was the sixth time since 2009 that OSHA has found Union Pacific in violation of an employee’s rights enumerated by the Federal Railroad Safety Act of 1970 and the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008. BNSF, Metro North Railroad, Norfolk Southern and Wisconsin Central also have been penalized by OSHA for similar violations.

In late 2011, Union Pacific was ordered immediately to reinstate an employee and pay him back wages, compensatory and punitive damages and attorney fees totaling more than $300,000 after the employee was suspended, without pay, and then terminated after notifying UP of an on-the-job injury.

The Federal Railroad Safety Act of 1970 extended whistleblower protection to employees who are retaliated against for reporting an injury or illness requiring medical attention. The Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 added additional requirements ensuring injured workers receive prompt medical attention, and established prohibitions on carrier intimidation and harassment of injured workers aimed at ending a culture that placed the winning of carrier safety awards and year-end managerial bonuses as a higher priority than treatment and prevention of injuries.

The purpose of these laws — passed by Congress after the UTU documented a railroad culture of harassment and intimidation against injured and ill workers — is to protect rail workers from retaliation and threats of retaliation when they report injuries or illness, report that a carrier violated safety laws or regulations, or if the employee refuses to work under certain unsafe conditions or refuses to authorize the use of safety related equipment.

An employer is outright prohibited from disciplining an employee for requesting medical or first-aid treatment, or for following a physician’s orders, a physician’s treatment plan, or medical advice.

Retaliation, including threats of retaliation, is defined as firing or laying off, blacklisting, demoting, denying overtime or promotion, disciplining, denying benefits, failing to rehire, intimidation, reassignment affecting promotion prospects, or reducing pay or hours.

Earlier this year, OSHA elevated in agency priority its whistleblower protection efforts, placing enforcement directly under OSHA’s assistant secretary of labor. OSHA said the elevation was an effort “to strengthen employees’ voices in the workplace.”

UTU designated legal counsel have pledged to investigate and assist UTU members in bringing complaints under these laws.

A rail employee may file a whistle-blower complaint directly with OSHA, or may contact a UTU designated legal counsel, general chairperson or state legislative director for assistance.

A listing of UTU designated legal counsel is available at https://www.smart-union.org/td/designated-legal-counsel/ or may be obtained from local or general committee officers or state legislative directors.

To view a more detailed OSHA fact sheet, click on the following link:

www.osha.gov/Publications/OSHA-factsheet-whistleblower-railroad.pdf