The Fatigue Monitor Form is a tool for us rank and file members to document the NUMBER 1 issue we have for as to Safety Concerns, there has been study after study after study on fatigue and causes and none of them address lineups? Why is this? why hasn't the BLET or the UTU formed a Lineup task force? how about a lineup mobilization task force?

With the form you can tailor to your state legislative board logo and refer your paperwork to your State LR Chairman to forward to FRA and congress State and National. For more information on this propgram feel free to contact me at ruln@comcast.net for more information

 Activists organized by Occupy Oakland effectively blocked cargo shipments from moving through several Port of Oakland terminals that day, as part of a coordinated West Coast Port Blockade that featured similar actions in other cities including San Diego, Portland, Seattle, and Longview, Washington.

About 150 longshore workers were sent home from their morning shifts at Oakland shipping terminals because protesters were marching in circular picket lines outside the gates.

The day began when more than 1,000 protesters met up at the West Oakland BART station at 5:30 a.m., sleepily raising signs and banners in the chilly morning air as they proceeded down 7th Street toward the port. Once they reached the sprawling shipping hub, they formed picket lines outside terminal entrances. Police were on the scene and clad in riot gear, but no clashes with protesters occurred early in the day.

Kenosha, WI. Volunteers are working to paint Stand with Wisconsin and the Blue Fist on a rail car which will travel the USA and Canada.

The ILWU has been garnering official support letters through many Leaders, other than the BLET National Leaders and we are still lacking support from our GCA, no appearances not a single letter? Hoffa has given his full support to the ILWU as you'll see in this link on this page.

If your local or division would like to add support let us know and send it too us.

The Lost Arts: Changing times bring new rules
RWU member and former SP/UP/Amtrak conductor Linda Niemann has written an interesting article about the changing nature of railroad work and what effects new technology like RCO has upon the way our work is performed. The article was published last month.

KCS Controversy In response to the cover article of the Summer 2010 issue of the RWU newsletter, THE HIGHBALL, we received a lengthy contact message via our website from BLET General Chairman John Koonce.

The National Transportation Safety Board’s ruling last week on the need for cameras recording locomotive engineers as they work is an attack upon all working people.

This is the lead off article of the Union Democracy supplement for the RWU Winter 2010 newsletter, The Highball.

The failure of rail labor to stick together and to build a common strategy and a common platform has historically been one of the greatest impediments to railroad workers achieving their goals.  Read more about the co-ordinated bargaining campaign in the Fall 2009 Highball. 

Heather Boehlke, widow of Jared Boehlke, locomotive remote control operator, who was killed on Mother's Day, 2009, appeals for support. Send your letter to Congressman James Oberstar, head of the House Transportation Committee.

Rail freight carrier and passenger train companies have been finding ways to get their workers to do more for less for the past few decades. Considering how much the economy of the U.S. depends upon the massive amount of freight moved by trains, one would think the unions representing those workers to be very powerful. However, there are a dozen different unions, divided among craft, representing the various workers in the several rail companies in this country. To counter the divisive race to the bottom caused by cross-union fighting in the industry, rank-and-file rail workers of every craft have joined together to form RAILROAD WORKERS UNITED.

Why Black Shirt Friday?

Fatalities since Mother's Day, 2009

We Can Do It: RWU Supports Equality of ALL Railroad Workers At our Founding Convention in 2008, Railroad Workers united adopted a resolution committing RWU  to building an organization of rail labor based upon "a culture of solidarity, inclusivity, and respect for diversity, without regard to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, language, skill level, craft, union affiliation, carrier employed by, disability, age, seniority, or otherwise".   

To read the full text of the resolution, click here.

A fatal rail tragedy in Longview, Washington, last month exemplified all that is wrong with “behavior-based safety” programs that blame workers for their own injuries.

An engineer and a conductor-trainee on the Burlington Northern, along with a contract van driver, lost their lives March 23. A BN conductor was critically injured as well when the van carrying the workers crossed the tracks and was hit by the train.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe, like the other major rail carriers, spends millions on safety programs that focus on worker behavior rather than eliminating hazards. As a result, blatant hazards like the ones at the Longview accident scene continue to go unrecognized and unabated.

Escalation of Rail Fatalities; It’s Time for Real Safety
Sounding the alarm as early as March, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) urged all rail carriers, rail labor organizations, and rail workers to take action to reverse an alarming trend – rail fatalities escalating out of control. The FRA took note of the fact that the year 2008 had already witnessed a reversal of a downward trend with a high of 19 fatalities, and that by March of this year, seven employees had been killed. Despite “asking all rail employees for their help in reversing this trend,” before May was over the number of dead had nearly doubled, to 12 killed.

One half of the very first step in building union members’ involvement is to give members the ability to directly choose their union leaders, and the other half of that step is to make elected leaders directly responsible to their members.

Linda Grant Niemann.  Railroad Noir: The American West at the End of the Twentieth Century.  Photographs by Joel Jensen.  Indiana University Press, 2010.  Pp. 168.  ISBN-13: 978-0-253-35446-4

"When You're Dying You Explore Radical Medication"

By JoANN WYPIJEWSKI

Ten years ago a major shipping company based in Denmark called Nordana brought in a nonunion contractor to supplant union workers on the dock in Charleston, South Carolina. Not an uncommon event in the anti-union South of anti-union America, it was extraordinary enough at the port of Charleston that three locals of longshore workers, two of them black and one white, protested together, and one night in January of 2000, police attacked them with clubs, gas and racist slurs.