SMART UnionHERMON, Maine — The runaway Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway train that plowed through a small Quebec town killing 50 people on July 6 had one engineer assigned to it.
The American union of railway workers representing most of Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway workers thinks the practice is dangerous, and has fought that work condition unsuccessfully since it began several years ago, its representatives say.
Read the complete story at Bangor Daily News.
FARNHAM, Quebec — Locomotive engineer Tom Harding was likely the last person at the controls of the runaway train that rolled into downtown Lac-Mégantic Saturday morning, causing untold death and destruction.
But though Harding himself has remained silent, a new picture is emerging of the Farnham man as a hero, whose bravery may have prevented an even greater catastrophe from engulfing the small town about 200 kilometres down the track.
Read the complete story at The Montreal Gazette.
A team from the Federal Railroad Administration is expected to arrive in Maine on Thursday to begin a comprehensive inspection of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway’s tracks, operations and equipment.
If inspectors find safety problems on the 275 miles of track owned by the company in Maine, they can order the company to make repairs.
Read the complete story at KJOnline.com.
A new and improved site – www.yourtracktohealth.com – replaces the previous Railroad Information Depot (www.rrinfodepot.com).
Bookmark the new website address for easy future access: www.yourtracktohealth.com.
The new yourtracktohealth.com is your online gateway to information, tools and resources about your health and welfare benefits to help you:
Be sure to check out the new video library, “Question of the Week,” and the featured monthly health topic when you’re on the site.
More enhancements are coming soon.
There will be several new features added to the site in the coming months that will include:
Stay tuned for future enhancement announcements and benefits communications on www.yourtracktohealth.com.
(This site contains information for railroad employees and/or their eligible dependents covered in the national railroad medical, prescription drug, dental, vision, behavioral health and life insurance benefits plans. If you and/or your dependents are not covered under these plans, including Amtrak employees, you should continue to seek information about your health care benefits from your employer.)
In the spring of 1999, Greg Barnes was a senior at Columbine High School when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 12 students and one teacher and injured 24 others. Always good at math and problem solving, Barnes didn’t take to classroom learning, and when his last days of high school were marred by violence, he left, earned his GED and tried to get on with his life. (Barnes does not share any relation to the former Columbine basketball standout with the same name.)
He attempted community college, but going back to traditional schooling reminded him of the massacre. After a year-and-a-half, he left school again and went to work in a body shop. There, he was introduced to sheet metal, and his outlook on education officially changed.
Deciding to pursue sheet metal as a career, he became an apprentice at the International Training Institute (ITI), the education arm of the unionized sheet metal and air conditioning industry. There, he realized he responded better to hands-on learning than classroom instruction. And where math and problem solving were once assignments he completed at a desk, they were now calculations he performed on a job site, in a testing, adjusting and balancing (TAB) lab, or in a fabrication shop. Education no longer just meant school, it meant learning. It also was the form of higher education that fit him best.
“I was learning about what I was doing every day. I was learning in the classroom and in the field. And they coincided with each other,” Barnes said. “I could work and earn at the same time. It was perfect for me.”
Once sheet metal apprentices are accepted into an accredited program at one of 160 training centers across North America, they complete four to five years of education and training in the classroom and on the jobsite, where they are paid for their work. Apprentices can choose to study architectural sheet metal, industrial/welding, service, TAB, building information modeling and design, and HVAC, among others, and graduate from the program with a career and zero college debt. College credits earned can also be put toward a higher level degree.
After Barnes found his niche as a sheet metal worker with a knack for testing, adjusting and balancing the air flow in commercial buildings, he quickly progressed in the industry. He graduated from the apprentice program in 2009, and four years later is a vice president and project manager for Jedi Balancing in Erie, Colo.
“The old adage that labor work is for the uneducated has never been further from the truth, and Greg is proof of that. Instead of learning his best in a classroom, he made sense of the material better out in the field,” said James Shoulders, administrator of the ITI. “His intelligence and success as an apprentice is proven with his position. You don’t move up in a company that fast in four years without intelligence, a good work ethic and an education you can truly learn from.”
Today, he continues to learn as he’s hardly ever in the same building doing the same job two days in a row. “Everything we do is calculations or problem solving,” Barnes said. “It’s a new challenge every day.”
“If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan.”
President Obama spoke those words in the midst of the 2009 health care debate.
But more than 26 million Americans covered by multiemployer health plans are at risk of losing their benefits altogether thanks to loopholes in the Affordable Care Act.
For more than 65 years, multiemployer plans have provided affordable, quality coverage for American workers. Found in many industries, the plans allow small businesses to team up with other employers to pool risk and reduce costs in order to provide high-quality health care for workers. Because it does not recognize the unique nature of multiemployer plans, the Affordable Care Act contains provisions that could undermine them and reduce the number of working families covered while lowering the quality of their care. Click here for more information
ROANOKE, Va. – According to Robin Chapman, a spokesperson for Norfolk Southern (NS), 170 furloughed NS employees are headed back to work.
Of those hired back, 60 were hired back permanently to train services and 70 were transferred to temporary positions that are guaranteed until December 2013.
Of the 170 originally laid off, 42 are heading back to work permanently at their original place of work at the Roanoke locomotive facility. Thirty who were employed within the mechanical department were hired back as communication and signal workers. The other twelve positions hired back at the facility were newly created, says Chapman. Chapman credited the hire-backs to a surge in business and high traffic.
MONTREAL — Nearly two decades ago, the fiery derailment of a Wisconsin train became a rallying point in a union fight to make the state the first in the United States to require two-person crews on locomotives.
The 1996 wreckage of the train, which sent fireballs exploding 90 meters in the air, was operated by Wisconsin Central Transportation Corp., then headed by Ed Burkhardt, the CEO of the railway now under scrutiny for a rail disaster early Saturday in Lac-Mégantic.
During the Wisconsin derailment, union leaders credited the actions of the conductor — who uncoupled the cars carrying chemicals and propane to prevent the fire from spreading further — at a time when several rail companies, including Burkhardt’s Wisconsin Central, were experimenting with the use of one-person crews.
Read the complete story at the Montreal Gazette.
In an early morning accident Tuesday, July 9, Local 794 member Kevin Beggs was trapped under a BNSF boxcar, causing him to lose his legs. Currently, Beggs is listed in critical condition at Via Christi on St. Francis Hospital in Wichita, Kan., where he was flown via helicopter. It has been reported that Beggs has internal injuries and doctors have been struggling to regulate his blood pressure.
Officials don’t yet know what happened at the scene, but it is believed that Beggs fell from the boxcar and was run over and trapped beneath it.
Wellington Fire Chief Tim Hay, who was on the scene, sai that Beggs was working at the BNSF switching station when he fell from the boxcar. Hay said that Beggs allegedly fell to the tracks and was run over and pinned by two of the wheels of the 1,000-plus pound rail car.
Hay contends that BNSF employee Blaine Zeka was very helpful in the rescue when he produced a jack for the rail cars that could simultaneously lift the axel and the wheels at the same time.
“He had the expertise to operate the jack,” Hay said. “He was instrumental in assisting with the 45-minute extrication.”
Beggs has a wife and a son, Eliot, currently serving in Afghanistan. He has been an active member of his Wellington community, having served as the Chamber of Commerce president, ran a bakery and owned the Regent Theater.
The SMART Transportation Division’s Legislative Office in Washington has announced a contest for SMART TD members, with a three-day, two-night, all-expenses-paid trip to our nation’s capital as the grand prize.
The SMART TD member who raises and returns the largest amount of UTU PAC fund contributions between July 1 and Labor Day (Sept. 2) will receive the trip, which includes: two round-trip airline tickets to Washington D.C.; two night’s lodging; a special tour of the U.S. Capitol, the Supreme Court and Union Station; access to the Smithsonian and other museums; dinner with the National Legislative Office leadership; SmarTrip METRO passes, and a Congressional office visit with members of Congress.
Second prize is a SMART TD watch.
To enter, members must notify the National Legislative Office at (202) 543-7714 or at the PAC table at the SMART Transportation Division regional meetings that they want to participate in the UTU PAC contest. Members must be registered to win.
To win, participants must raise and return the largest amount of UTU PAC fund contributions by getting as many members as possible to join UTU PAC or to upgrade their current UTU PAC contribution level prior to Labor Day 2013.
The minimum individual contributions to count for a member’s UTU PAC tally is $10 per month. PAC forms must be returned to the International Offices in North Olmsted, Ohio, prior to Labor Day. Business reply return envelopes will be supplied to all participants. Winners will be contacted by the National Legislative Office.
State legislative directors and International officers are not eligible to win.
See this flyer for additional details.