CLEVELAND, June 19 — Rail labor’s campaign to defeat Senator Kit Bond’s (R-MO) anti-labor provision in the Amtrak appropriation was successful yesterday.
The Senate Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, the Judiciary and Housing and Urban Development adopted an amendment by Washington’s Patty Murray, the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, which removed Senator Bond’s provision that would have inserted Congress “into the collective bargaining process with Amtrak’s trade unions.” Senator Bond’s proposal also contained many other anti-labor provisions and sought to eliminate crew consist agreements, increase employee health and welfare contributions and eliminate union work rules.
The panel also voted to boost funding for Amtrak. The passenger rail service would receive $1.4 billion. The money allotted for capitol improvements was also increased to $750 million which was approximately $100 million more than enacted for fiscal 2006.
The Senate’s Amtrak total is about $500 million more than Bush requested and about $300 million more than the House proposed in the version of the bill it passed June 14.
The Senate bill will next be voted on by the full committee.
Democrats also are gearing up to fight the passenger railroad’s plans to investigate the outsourcing of its reservation operations overseas. Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) says he has been informed that Amtrak’s board of directors will invite private vendors, including those based overseas, to take over major parts of its national reservation system.
“After having to fight to keep Amtrak alive in the face of budgets that would have put the railroad into bankruptcy, now we are fighting to keep Amtrak’s jobs here in the United States,” Byrd said in a joint statement with Senator Murray. “Amtrak is America’s railroad. It is funded in part with American tax dollars. Its jobs should be American jobs.”