(The TTD issued the following news release on December 20.)
WASHINGTON — The following statement was issued today by Edward Wytkind, President of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department, in response to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s denial of a waiver request, before the Federal Railroad Administration, by Union Pacific Railroad to allow safety inspections of its U.S.-bound trains to be performed by private contractors in Mexico:
“We are pleased that the Department of Transportation has rejected Union Pacific’s (UP) ill-advised and unsafe proposal to outsource its cross-border train inspection responsibilities to Mexico.
“We urged the parent agency, the Department of Transportation, to intervene in this matter with the Federal Railroad Administration with the sincere hope that our safety concerns surrounding the UP petition would receive a fair hearing. We are pleased that the DOT agreed with our view that UP’s foreign train inspection scheme posed far too many safety risks to be ignored.
“Dangerous corporate maneuvers designed to boost profits at the expense of safety should be rejected whenever they are brought before federal regulators. We will remain active in future proceedings for we have probably not seen the last of these dangerous, self-serving proposals.”
TTD represents 35 member unions in the aviation, rail, transit, trucking, highway, longshore, maritime and related industries. For more information, visit www.ttd.org