Retaliation at the Rails-Union Pacific Railway Targets Workers In Vegas
http://www.lasvegasnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=8726422&nav=menu102_2

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Threats and Warnings Against Former Rail Yard Employees
I-Team: Las Vegas Safety Derailed Part 1
I-Team: Las Vegas Safety Derailed Part 2

Federal inspectors have found a notable absence of security here.

Also on LasVegasNow.com
I-Team: Las Vegas Safety Derailed Part 1
I-Team: Las Vegas Safety Derailed Part 2

Former employees of Union Pacific who gave information to the I-Teamsay they've received death threats and other warnings because they were willing to talk to us.

Two men who worked at the Union Pacific yards for a subcontractor say they've received threatening phone calls and knocks on the door since providing information about serious problems at the train yards.

And neither the railroad nor its subcontractor wants to talk about it.

Las Vegas Safety Derailed Part 1

"They're not acting like what I interpreted a big business to act like. They're acting like thugs or actual criminals." The former rail yard employee nicknamed Tony says his former employer is acting like a street punk in the wake of I-Team stories detailing glaring security lapses within the Union Pacific facilities in Las Vegas.

TWSC Statement of Solidarity With Doro-Chiba Against Raid By Japanese Police Forces During G-8 Meeting

The Transport Workers Solidarity Committee TWSC protests the vicious assault on the offices and members of Doro-Chiba union on July 4, 2008. Using false pretenses, the Japanese police forces were alledgedly looking for evidence of illegal activity in the protest against the G-8 conference in Japan. This effort to intimidate and silence those unions, workers organizations and many others who are protesting this governmental meeting is a flagrant violation of democratic rights. The record of the G-8 is a history of trampling on the rights of working people not only in the under-developed world but in the more industrialized countries. This organization which is fundamentally a tool of the United States and the multi-nationals which run it has pushed deregulation, privatization and the destruction of democratic rights for working people. The world drive by the G-8 and other organizations representing the billionaires to destroy the labor movement through privatization, deregulation and other union busting policies must be stopped. These neo-liberalism policies have been opposed by US workers including the shutdown of all West Coast ports by the ILWU to protest the November 1999 meeting of the WTO. The ILWU also joined with many other protesters.

Anti-G8/Railroad Workers Union Doro-Chiba Protesters Denounce Tokyo Police Ban Of 6/29 Demonstration

June 27 2008

On June 27 the Tokyo Metropolitan Public Safety Commission decided to ban the demonstration in front of Shibuya station planned on June 29 as a part of Anti-G8 Summit Workers’ National Rally against war, poverty, unemployment and privatization. (The application of the demonstration with a course passing in front of Shibuya railway station (downtown Tokyo) had been filed by the Organizing Committee of the Anti-G8 Summit Rally to the Tokyo Metropolitan Public Safety Commission.) This ban is an impermissible brutal crackdown by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department on the movement to oppose the G8 Summit.

The Organizing Committee of the Anti-G8 Summit Rally denounce this outrageous measure and declare our firm determination to carry out the demonstration as was planned in front of Shibuya station in defiance of the police ban.

The streets running in front of Shibuya station are usually open for marches and demonstrations of every kind and are regarded as the most popular course. The only reason given by the Tokyo Metropolitan Public Safety Committee to ban the demonstration is that it could provoke disturbance. We shall never admit the right of workers to demonstrate to be regulated and infringed in such way.

www.doro-chiba.org

Declaration of 59th Regular Central Committee of Doro-Chiba

Doro-Chiba adopted today a new policy of struggle on the 59th Regular Central Committee meeting held in the Union Hall. We have confirmed the achievement of the struggle of the first half of 2008, which was focused on crushing the corporate policy of enforcing the so-called “Life Cycle System” and outsourcing of inspection and repair work. The most outrageous corporate plan is the “Life Cycle System” that intends to deal with serious shortage of station personnel, a result of failure of the company, by a makeshift measure, that is, by periodically transferring drivers in rotation to the station duty. JR companies are fully responsible for all these precarious situations. They have put their absolute priority on greedily seeking profit by means of outsourcing and cutting down personnel costs in total negligence of rail safety. Currently, necessary driving personnel are barely maintained by sacrificing days off and forcing even elderly drivers of the retirement age to run the train at 130 km/h. Another deadly Amagasaki rail accident is inevitable and worsening working conditions as well as further outsourcing is anticipated.

Meeting in Dearborn, Michigan, even as a growing political and economic crisis stoked fears in the United States and the rest of the world, a new caucus of North American railroad workers established an organization that hopes to spur solidarity, unity and democracy within and between unions that represent rail workers across North America. Caucus members came from five different unions in the rail industry, traveling from coasts, as well as north and south, to attend the proceedings. All came on their own time and their own dime.

In the AM session, those in attendance adopted the name “Railroad Workers United” as the official name of the organization, adopted a “Statement of Principles” to serve as a moral compass for the group, and approved, with a number of amendments, a set of bylaws to govern the organization until the next Convention. In the afternoon, nominations and elections were held. Eleven members were elected to the leadership body – the International Steering Committee (ISC). From this body were then elected an Executive Committee composed of three Co-Chairs, a Secretary and a Treasurer. Finally three Trustees were elected. For a complete listing of those elected to lead RWU, see the listing that accompanies this article. Finally, the participants passed twelve resolutions ranging from safety issues to contracting out work, from questions of diversity in the workforce to support for West Coast dockworkers union members protesting the Iraq War. For a comprehensive listing of the Resolutions passed, see the list below. For the full text of the Resolutions that were passed by the Convention, please see the RWU website

By Dietmar Henning and Anna Rombach, 6 December 2007 - World Socialist Website

The current conflict between train drivers and the German Railways (Deutsche Bahn—DB) is taking place against the background of the planned privatisaation of the German railway system. This accounts for the determination and obstinacy on the part of the DB management led by Hartmut Mehdorn, which has rejected any concessions to the train drivers.

The aim of the privatisation is to transform a national service built up over decades with taxpayers’ money into a globally operating logistics enterprise and a lucrative asset for private investors. Such a step presupposes low levels of wages and social conditions. The high levels of profits expected by the private investors can be only be achieved at the expense of the workforce and the quality of a service that, up until now, has been carried out by the railways as a public service.

In this respect, the strike by train drivers comes at a very inopportune moment. To launch German Railways on the stock market, it is necessary to demonstrate to investors that it has an obedient and submissive workforce.

Originally published on the IWW Website

By Ron Kaminkow

Rail Labor activists from across North America are coming together to form a new cross-craft inter-union caucus that includes all rail workers in North America. Membership is open to union members from all the various unions (once known as the “brotherhoods”) in this new organization. In addition, special efforts will be made to include Canadian and Mexican workers as well.

To build this broad based unity and solidarity, the activists have launched Railroad Workers United (RWU). “We want everyone to understand that we are not creating another rail union to compete with those already in existence”, explains Jon Flanders, member of Machinists #1145 in Selkirk, NY. “Instead, we are creating an industry-wide caucus where we can all come together to help each other build the solidarity, support, democracy and strength that is missing in our individual craft unions. Who knows what the potentials and possibilities could be for such an organization of all rail labor.”

From The Matier and Ross report, November 28, 2007 - San Francisco Chronicle

Railroad reversal: Two years after Amtrak conductor Rebecca Gettleman was fired for injuring herself while keeping a passenger from stumbling down the train stairs, a federal arbitration panel has ordered her reinstated with back pay.

As we reported last year, Gettleman's Orwellian adventure began in August 2005 when she wrenched her right arm while preventing a drunken traveler from falling while getting off the train at the Amtrak station in Emeryville.

Faster than you can yell, "All aboard!" she was brought up on Railroad Labor Act safety charges - namely, allowing herself to get hurt helping the passenger.

Her Amtrak bosses wrote her a letter saying she had violated a rule that says, "Employees must be careful to prevent injuring themselves or others. They must be alert and attentive when performing their duties and plan their work to avoid injury."

By Antoine Lerougetel - World Socialist Web Site, 11 August 2007

On August 2, the French National Assembly passed a new law requiring public transport workers to maintain a minimum level of service. The new measure represents a historic restriction of the right to strike and is directed in particular against rail, bus and urban transport workers. At the same time, the new law gives trade unions the responsibility of organising and policing, in collaboration with the employers, minimum service levels in the event of a strike.

The minimum service law stipulates that transport staff must, individually and on pain of sanctions, give 48 hours notice of their intention to strike and that—after a week on strike—management may organise a secret ballot of workers on the continuation of the industrial action. This measure essentially hands over responsibility for any further industrial action to the company management.

The vote on the law took place on the last day of an extraordinary session of parliament starting on July 3, called by the newly elected right-wing Gaullist president Nicolas Sarkozy of the UMP (Union for a Popular Movement). The session passed a series of reactionary “emergency” legislative measures designed to transfer wealth from working people to the rich through regressive tax reforms, the lowering of the age of responsibility for delinquent youth, and the reorganisation of university education, opening it up to market pressures and capitalist enterprise.

German rail strikes brought rail transportation to a halt in many areas of the country earlier this month and revealed the enormous frustration and discontent that has accumulated over the past years. The power of the working class was felt when locomotive engineers, signal box workers and others in key positions proved that they could paralyse Deutsche Bahn (DB), Germany´s still state-owned railway company. In the railway stations most passengers affected by the stoppages that caused long delays and chain reactions for several hours showed sympathy towards the strikers. An opinion poll revealed that 71 per cent of all Germans supported the strikes.

The determination was overwhelming. Wherever union pickets turned up and called upon the railway employees to come out, the response was impressive, as though many workers had been waiting for such a call for a long time. This is not surprising as railway workers have suffered losses in living standards over the past few years.

DB boss Hartmut Mehdorn has been pressing for a privatization for a long time and keeps urging politicians to take a final decision to sell up to 49% of DB shares on the stock exchange in an initial public offering (IPO). DB management have done their utmost to squeeze the workforce and create an economic balance sheet with record profits in order to prove that DB is "marketable" and "fit for the stock exchange". Yet cutbacks in staff and investment have made working life even more difficult. For example, they have reduced the staff and rolling stock in the freight section, Railion, to the extent that they cannot even cope with the present increasing demand for rail transportation and have to tell potential customers that they should rather go for road transportation.