Calls for Full Funding for Passenger Rail, Repudiates Bush Plan
WASHINGTON, D.C. — If a recent vote in the U.S. House of Representatives is allowed to stand, Amtrak would once again be brought to be the brink of a national shutdown, this according to the leaders of 35 AFL-CIO transportation unions.
The Executive Committee of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department (TTD) today unanimously adopted a policy resolution calling for $1.8 billion in Amtrak funding for Fiscal Year 2004, and a reversal of the House vote that allocated only half that amount. TTD leaders said that the House vote means, “Amtrak could face financial collapse, thereby stranding millions of passengers and eliminating more than 20,000 jobs.”
Saying that “Amtrak’s near-perennial brushes with death are the product of years of anemic funding and a lingering, ideological fallacy that a passenger railroad can turn a profit,” TTD added that passenger rail must be treated like a vital public service and funded accordingly. The resolution noted that Amtrak’s workers have paid the price for these policies, as their wages are more than 20 percent below those in freight and commuter rail, new contracts are years overdue, and “workers are subjected to a climate of economic uncertainty and scapegoating by headline-seeking politicians.”
The TTD took aim at two recent actions by the Bush Administration. First is the White House plan to nominate several individuals to the Amtrak Board of Directors who do not support a strong federal investment Amtrak and who TTD said “want to use their position to test-out privatization theories at the expense of workers and passengers.” And secondly, AFL-CIO transportation leaders opposed the Bush Administration’s proposed Amtrak reauthorization plan, which in the TTD’s words would, “slash service, pass costs to already financially-strapped states, and launch risky privatization” of the railroad.
“Congress must finally give Amtrak the resources its needs to succeed. And they must reject policies — and policymakers — that seek to ‘reform’ Amtrak for the benefit of a select few at the expense of many,” said TTD President Sonny Hall.
For a copy of the resolution, visit www.ttd.org or call TTD at 202/628-9262.
TTD represents 35 member unions in the aviation, rail, transit, trucking, highway, longshore, maritime and related industries. For more information, visit www.ttd.org