CLEVELAND, August 17 — At the California Labor Federation’s Solidarity Awards Dinner on July 24, 2012, the Teamsters Rail Conference and 10 other honorees were recognized with the “Furthering the Vision of High Speed Rail Award.” The dinner was held in conjunction with the California Labor Federation’s 29th Biennial Convention at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. California Governor Jerry Brown and U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis attended as special guests. The Teamsters Rail Conference Assistant to the Director David Cameron and BLET National and California State Legislative Chairman Tim Smith accepted the Award on behalf of the Teamsters.
High-speed rail was a focal point of the dinner. Secretary Solis discussed how Gov. Brown’s commitment to investing in job-creating and emissions-reducing infrastructure projects, like high-speed rail, will put California back on the right track. Republican Governors in Florida and Wisconsin turned down billions of high speed rail grants just to make a partisan political point. They say they want to create jobs, but refuse to make the investments to do so.
“Our efforts to help make high-speed rail a reality will bring tens of thousands of jobs to Californians,” said Rail Conference Director John Murphy. “Our success here is the result of diverse advocates uniting under the goal to put people back to work. It shows what we are capable of achieving. We need to keep the pressure on and continue to push forward.”
“The Rail Conference has been working on this project, the largest construction in the history of the nation, for several years,” said Rail Conference and BLET President Dennis Pierce. “It is enormously satisfying to see a successful conclusion to this stage of our work on this historic project. Now, the real work begins, getting the project built.”
“This project will employ hundreds of BMWED members,” said Fred Simpson, BMWED President. “High speed transportation of people, goods and services on high speed rails is a formula for success in our information based economy. California is leading the way for the rest of the nation.”
At the dinner, Gov. Jerry Brown discussed the high speed rail project at length, discounting the notion that it’s “too expensive” by explaining the actual math behind the project, what it would cost and how much revenue it would produce. The visionary plan is for 800 miles of high-speed rail lines connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco, and ultimately San Diego and Sacramento. The system will move passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in an unheard-of two hours and 40 minutes. The train will reduce air pollution and ease congestion on the state’s famously clogged freeways. Construction will create tens of thousands of new jobs. Voters in 2008 approved $9.95 billion in bonds to usher in a new era of transit for the Golden State.
On July 6, the California State Senate voted to pass legislation that enabled high-speed rail construction to begin, and Gov. Jerry Brown signed the legislation into law on July 18. With a price tag of $68 billion, the new rail system will be the largest public/private works project in the nation and will employ hundreds of unionized locomotive engineers and trainmen and maintenance of way workers who are members of the Teamsters Rail Conference.
In addition to the Teamsters Rail Conference, 10 other honorees were recognized with the “Furthering the Vision of High Speed Rail Award.” Those honorees were the State Building and Construction Trades Council, California-Nevada Conference of Operating Engineers, Operating Engineers Local 3, Operating Engineers Local 12, Laborers’ International Union, California Conference of Machinists, IBEW Ninth District, SEIU Local 1000, AFSCME United Domestic Workers and United Steelworkers District 12.
The California Labor Federation is made up of more than 1,200 AFL-CIO and Change to Win unions, representing 2.1 million union members in manufacturing, transportation, retail, construction, hospitality, public sector, health care, entertainment and other industries.