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Public transit is crucial for SMART members and working families in Illinois. The state’s public transportation system, the second largest in the country, helps people get where they need to be every day — and provides jobs for rail workers, transit operators and tradespeople.

But earlier in the year, as a result of funding issues, Metra and other transit agencies in the Chicago area had proposed service cuts of approximately 40% — which would have had devastating consequences for SMART-TD members, Railroad, Mechanical and Engineering members, and union sheet metal workers in the region.

“Metra, publicly, earlier this year, came out with what we call a ‘doomsday scenario,’” explained SMART-TD Illinois Safety and Legislative Director Robert Guy, referring to the funding cliff that faced transit agencies in Northern Illinois.

“We consider ourselves to be the face of Metra; we interact with the passengers more than any other craft,” he added. “So when you’re talking about reducing 300 on-board personnel, that would have been mostly our members. It would have been devastating.”

Unions united in response, creating the Labor Alliance for Public Transportation and organizing fiercely to pass transit funding legislation that would protect members’ jobs.

That effort paid off on December 16, 2025, when Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed the Northern Illinois Transit Authority Act into law.

“Failing to address the transit fiscal cliff simply wasn’t an option, so we applaud those in the General Assembly who supported SB 2111, along with the other stakeholders and the thousands of our fellow union members of the Labor Alliance for Public Transportation for fighting every day to get this vital piece of legislation over the finish line,” Guy said.

An existential funding crisis

Back in early 2025, finding a solution for Chicagoland’s transit crisis looked anything but guaranteed.

The root of the problem dated back decades. Years of underfunding, made even worse by the Covid-19 pandemic, led to an impending fiscal cliff that would have exceeded $750 million in 2026. The only possible outcome from such an extraordinary funding shortage would have been dramatic cuts to Metra, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) and Pace — leading to lost jobs for SMART members and disrupting the lives of millions of people in Northern Illinois. The CTA has 309 million riders annually, while Metra and Pace have 35 million riders and 17 million riders each year, respectively.

“[Proposed service cuts] would mean less weekday service,” Guy said. “It would mean drastically reduced early morning service, late evening service, less express service, which really would have made commutes longer.”

Notably, the cuts affected not just SMART-TD members, but the SMART RME members who work on the railroad and the Chicago-area sheet metal workers who build and maintain transit infrastructure.

“This would impact SMART Railroad, Mechanical and Engineering employees, SMART-TD members as well as Local 73 members at the CTA,” said Rob Shanahan, International representative in the SMART RME Department.

SMART-TD and sheet metal leaders joined RME members at a Chicago rally for a fair contract with Metra in 2022

Labor organizes to protect jobs, transit

The fight to save SMART members’ jobs and public transit in Northern Illinois lasted throughout 2025.

The Labor Alliance for Public Transportation lobbied in the Illinois General Assembly, fighting to win legislation that would fund public transportation, fix existing inefficiencies in the transit systems and keep members working. At the same time, union members made their voices heard, talking about what the Chicagoland transit system means to them and spreading the word about the upcoming fiscal cliff.

The most important thing throughout the process, Guy said, was solidarity.

“Everyone brought their own perspective, their experience, the stories from the membership. We stayed strong, we stayed together. If we would have cracked at all, we probably couldn’t have got this over the finish line,” he noted. “We really did work as one.”

The result? The Northern Illinois Transit Authority (NITA) Act, passed in December. The law creates a new regional authority (NITA) to oversee CTA, Metra and Pace, invests in public transit, capital projects and tollways across the state, and addresses the fiscal cliff that threatened so many SMART members’ jobs.

“The bill is going to provide robust funding to continue operations as they currently exist,” said Shanahan, who is a member of SMART Local 256 in Chicago. “It will offer improvements as far as potential expansion, more money to improve facilities and equipment. And finally, it provides some security and stability; it’s a long-term solution to the problem of funding transit in Illinois.”

The law calls for there to be a transition team to move from the current system to the new NITA board system. In a nod to the crucial role unions played in securing the legislation, labor will be part of the transition, Guy said.

“As we were as the legislation moved through the General Assembly, our voices will be heard to protect not only our members currently but hopefully our future members, as we look to expand transit and have a transit system worthy of 10, 15, 20 years down the line,” he concluded.

dan-elliott-STB
Chairman Daniel R. Elliott

Chairman Daniel R. Elliott III of the Surface Transportation Board (STB) visited the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) in Ottawa, Canada, and signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to facilitate information sharing between the agencies.
The CTA is the economic regulator of the freight railroads and other modes of transportation in Canada. Chairman Elliott signed the MOU with Dr. Scott Streiner, chairman and chief executive officer of the CTA.
The MOU memorializes the ongoing relationship that the two agencies have cultivated in recent years. It recognizes the importance of their engagement to promote ongoing information exchanges on developments in rail transportation, best practices in their respective regulatory approaches, and recent regulatory activities and current events. The agencies will exchange only information that is in the public domain in the United States and Canada to ensure that no confidentiality concerns are breached. 
“The United States and Canada are linked in so many ways, not least of them by a vast rail network,” Chairman Elliott stated in Ottawa. “It is an honor today to be signing this Memorandum of Understanding between the STB and the CTA, marking our commitment to be a resource to each other in the economic regulation of freight railroads. This friendship will enable us both to engage in productive dialogue on better regulatory practices to our stakeholders and the citizens of our countries.”
Click here to view the electronic version of the MOU.

TTD_FotorYesterday (January 11), the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case you may have heard about — Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association (CTA).

The gist of the case is this: many California public school teachers are members of CTA. Like all union members, California teachers can choose whether or not to join the union. However, when the majority of people vote to form a union (as is the case with California school teachers), the union is required by law to represent everyone in the workplace, whether that employee is a union member or not. Teachers who don’t want to belong to a union only have to contribute to the costs of the representation they receive. Because all teachers enjoy the benefits, job security and other protections the union negotiates, it is only fair that all employees contribute to the cost of securing those benefits and protections.

Pretty simple, right? Not so fast. Those challenging this common-sense system argue that simply paying fair-share fees is a violation of free speech.

So why should transportation workers across the country care about teachers in California?

  1. Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association (CTA) is an orchestrated, malicious attack on workers’ rights. This case isn’t just about teachers in California—it’s about weakening the rights of workers, specifically those employed in the public sector. The group behind the court case is the Center for Individual Rights, which has ties to greedy CEOs and wealthy special interests. If the court finds that teachers no longer have to pay fair-share fees (and sides with those wealthy extremists), teacher unions (and all other public sector unions) will lose considerable strength and leverage. By the way, if details of this case sound familiar to you, it’s because they are. The same special interests that backed Gov. Scott Walker’s attack on public sector workers in Wisconsin in 2011 are the same groups and individuals at play here.
  1. Many transportation workers are public sector workers. Transportation workers account for less than 3 percent of all public sector workers, but nearly 50 percent of those workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements. A bad decision by the Supreme Court could significantly weaken the power these workers have to stand up for basic workplace rights, like fair wages and safe working conditions.
  1. A bad decision by the Supreme Court will only make the rich richer. For far too long, America’s economy has unfairly favored the wealthy at the expense of ordinary people. Our middle class is shrinking and it’s getting harder to get by, let alone get ahead. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs, things will only get worse. That’s because unions act as a check against corporate power. When unions are weak, corporate CEOs and wealthy individuals have more power to manipulate the rules in their favor and exploit working people.

Learn more by visiting http://americaworkstogether.us/ and by following #WorkTogether on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on the TTD’s MoveAmerica Blog, January 11, 2016.