Carriers ask court okay to violate contracts

The nation’s major railroads have asked a federal court to permit them to violate existing collective bargaining agreements with the UTU and the BLET when the railroads implement new hours-of-service regulations that take effect July 16.  The soon-to-be-implemented hour [...]

Know your rights when injured

WASHINGTON — The Federal Railroad Administration has issued an interpretation of its regulations on employer harassment and intimidation of injured employees — welcome pointers to help rail workers, injured on the job, know their rights. The interpretation focuses [...]

Conductor certification moving forward

The Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 provides that no later than April 2010, the FRA must conduct a rulemaking to determine the principles, elements and methods of conductor certification. The FRA says it is now prepared to move forward on that rulemaking with the assistan [...]

Medicare now requires dependents’ SSNs

A new federal law requires railroad workers to provide the Social Security numbers of their dependents. The Medicare secondary payer statute and regulations contain a series of rules for determining whether Medicare is the primary payer for a person who has both Medicare and [...]