(The International Brotherhood of Teamsters issued the following news release on April 11.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — On March 30, passengers boarding Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner route when it stopped in Solana Beach, California gained firsthand knowledge about proposed budget cuts for Amtrak. Handing out fliers, headlined “Amtrak Needs Your Help to Keep Running,” Teamster rail conference members let the riding public know that the funding for Amtrak was in serious jeopardy.
“No one knew that Amtrak funding was possibly going away. And no one knew that their congressional representative, Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA) had voted against the funding,” said Fred Hugg, a 26-year Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division (BMWED) member.
At a second location in Needles, the mood was similar. “People were not happy to learn that their main mode of transportation might be cut off,” said Ricardo Canchola, a 22-year BMWED member. Canchola handed out fliers in the early morning hours of March 30. Needles has the only Amtrak station in the congressional district of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
Solana Beach and Needles were two of the first targets of grassroots actions nationwide to inform the public about how the loss of Amtrak service could affect them. Both Lewis and Cunningham are members of the House Appropriations Committee, which will decide the funding level for Amtrak.
Amtrak employs nearly 3,500 workers in California, a portion of which are maintenance of way crew members represented by the BMWED, and engineers represented by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET). Both are divisions of the Teamsters rail conference.
“It’s a very serious situation,” said Louis Below, a BMWED member. “For us, there are a lot of jobs at stake.”