The National Mediation Board rejected Brightline’s anti-union stance and directed a representation election to take place in the coming months.
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The Transport Workers Union of America (TWU) secured a victory for Rail Labor on November 12 when the National Mediation Board formally recognized commuter agency Brightline as a rail carrier. Brightline is now subject to the Railway Labor Act for purposes of forming a union and contract negotiations.
In August, the TWU announced that about 100 attendants on Brightline’s Orlando-to-Miami route had filed to form a union. The passenger railroad took an adversarial stance and hired a union-busting law firm to block the organizing effort. As part of its anti-union campaign, the company’s lawyers argued that Brightline was not a railroad, and that the election process should be governed by the National Labor Relations Board instead of the NMB. The NMB didn’t buy that argument and directed the representation election to take place from November 27 through January 14, 2025. The NMB’s ruling is final and cannot be appealed.
Brightline’s anti-union stance appears to have backfired in another way. After insisting that it was not a railroad subject to NMB jurisdiction, the TWU asked the U.S. Department of Transportation to reconsider Brightline’s request for millions of dollars in federal grants for various rail infrastructure projects. As part of the DOT’s eligibility requirements for the grant program, applicants must prove that they are a railroad entity and that they “support strong labor standards and the free and fair choice of a union.” After TWU’s effort, DOT denied two of Brightline’s requests for multi-million dollar projects in Florida.
Photo courtesy of Brightline