NEWS CLIPS April 26, 2013

Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters NEWS CLIPS April 26, 2013 Randall Brassell, Director of Communications Telephone: 615-521-4097 (Fax) 615-824-2164 Email: [email protected] Recently, an article written by former UTU employee Frank Wilner appeared in "Railway Age" magazine titled "Threatened BMWE Strike Could Cripple, or Kill, Amtrak". Wilner's article criticizes BMWED for fighting for its members. The following is a rebuttal written by Pennsylvania Federation General Chairperson Jed Dodd; Rebuttal Frank Wilner has been a writer and reporter on the railroad industry for nearly forty years. He is a well known hatchet man who will always serve his paymaster at the expense of the facts. Recently, he wrote an article about the current status of bargaining between Amtrak and the BMWED for the management magazine, “Railway Age.” He certainly lived up to his reputation of reporting the facts incorrectly. For instance, he reports that it is the BMWED that is forcing Amtrak to a strike with unreasonable demands and does not even mention that we are in a coalition with the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, who are also demanding the same wage and benefit package as us. Frank Wilner reports on bargaining and does not even know who is sitting at the bargaining table. Additionally he asserts that a BMWED strike would destroy Amtrak. Strikes in the railroad industry are heavily regulated by the Federal government and no one believes that this particular government would permit a strike on Amtrak that would actually threaten Amtrak’s existence. This is just more fear baiting by management’s little tool, Frank Wilner. For an accurate report of the current status of bargaining please read the membership letter sent by General Chairman Dodd of the BMWED and General Chairman Ingersoll of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen late last year. Frank Wilner did get one thing straight in his recent article. We are seeking the same wage and benefit package recently negotiated on the freight railroads. This package is better than the wage and benefit package that has been agreed to by some of the other Amtrak unions. While Frank Wilner apparently believes he has been elected to represent Amtrak workers, all of the Unions who have previously settled on Amtrak have offered support and have wished the BMWED and the BRS good luck in our current endeavor. We are seeking the national freight pattern because this is the pattern that has governed our bargaining relationship for forty years in voluntary agreements with management. It is also the pattern that has been recommended, by three different Presidential Emergency Boards, as the appropriate pattern we should use to settle our disputes. These emergency boards have been appointed by both Republican and Democratic Presidents. The agreements reached with Amtrak over the past forty years have been negotiated during a period of time when by any measure used Amtrak has become a healthy and vibrant company. Frank Wilner’s premise that good labor agreements are a threat to Amtrak’s existence is simply not proven by the facts. We believe that we are entitled to more than the freight patterns because of the unique dangers that we face on the Northeast Corridor which are not faced by any other railroad worker in the country. However, we also recognize that we have made this argument to the same three Presidential Emergency Boards that have recommended our national freight pattern as the settlement and have lost it. We should be way beyond the hysterical nonsense written by Frank Wilner. It is time for everyone to behave like adults and settle our contracts using the same formula that has served the parties well for forty years, or agree to be released from the services of the National Mediation Board so that a process can begin and we can ultimately obtain help from a Presidential Emergency Board to settle our differences. Finally, Frank Wilner’s premise that Amtrak workers should further subsidize the Amtrak operation with substandard compensation is bad public policy. Passenger Railroads do not make money, but they do contribute greatly to the economic success of the nation. Passenger Railroads are also expensive to maintain and operate efficiently and safely. Congress is entitled to a correct accounting of what it will cost to operate the railroad. In terms of labor costs, it has been determined by overwhelming precedent that the costs of maintenance of way and signal work should be governed by those agreements reached voluntarily in the private sector. Once Congress understands the correct costs of operating the railroad they can elect to fund it or not fund it, but the men and women who have made Amtrak successful with our blood, sweat and tears should not be asked to also subsidize the operation with our paychecks. The Real Terrorists are the Corporate Execs Who’ve Bought the Regulators By Dave Lindorff The way I see it, we had two acts of terrorism in the US this week. The first took place at the end of the historic Boston Marathon, when two bombs went off near the finish line, killing three and seriously injuring dozens of runners and spectators. The second happened a couple days later in the town of West, Texas, where a fertilizer plant blew up, incinerating or otherwise killing at least 15, and injuring at least 150 people, and probably more as the search for the dead and the injured continues. It’s pretty clear that the Boston Marathon bombing was an act of terrorism, with police making arrests and having killed one of the two suspects who had earlier been captured on film and video at the scene of the bombings. The villains in the West Fertilizer Co. explosion can be much more easily identified: the managers and owners of the plant. West Fertilizer was built starting back in 1962 in the middle of the small town of West, TX, a community founded in the 19th century and named after the first local postmaster, T.M. West. It makes no sense, of course, to locate such a facility that uses highly toxic anhydrous ammonia as a primary feed stock (a compound that burns the lungs and kills on contact, and that, because it must be stored under pressure, is highly prone to leaks and explosive releases), and one that makes as its main product ammonium nitrate fertilizer, around lots of people. Ammonium nitrate, recall, is the highly explosive compound favored by truck bombers like the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. It was the fertilizer, vast quantities of which were stored at the West Fertilizer plant site, which caused the colossal explosion that leveled much of the town of West. Building such a dangerous facility in the midst of a residential and business area, and allowing homes, nursing homes, hospitals, schools and playgrounds to be built alongside it, is the result of a corrupt process that is commonplace in towns and cities across America, where business leaders routinely have their way with local planning and zoning commissions, safety inspectors and city councils. Businesses small and large also have their way with state and federal safety and health inspectors too. We know that the EPA, back in 2006, cited West Fertilizer for not having an emergency risk management plan. That is, a dangerous and explosion-prone plant that was using a hazardous chemical in large quantities, and that was storing highly explosive material also in large quantities, had made little or no effort to assess the risks of what it was doing. Indeed, it has been reported that the company had assured the EPA, in response to the complaint, that there was “no risk” of an explosion at the plant! An AP article reports that the company, five years after being cited for lacking a risk plan, did file one with the EPA, but that the report claimed the company “...was not handling flammable materials and did not have sprinklers, water-deluge systems, blast walls, fire walls or other safety mechanisms in place at the plant.” Yet the AP article goes on to say that “State officials require all facilities that handle anhydrous ammonia to have sprinklers and other safety measures because it is a flammable substance, according to Mike Wilson, head of air permitting for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.” The article says: “Records reviewed by The Associated Press show the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration fined West Fertilizer $10,000 last summer for safety violations that included planning to transport anhydrous ammonia without a security plan. An inspector also found the plant's ammonia tanks weren't properly labeled.” Then the article gets to the crux of the problem, saying: “The government accepted $5,250 after the company took what it described as corrective actions, the records show. It is not unusual for companies to negotiate lower fines with regulators.” Aside from the ridiculousness of West Fertilizer management’s reported assertion that the plant wasn’t handling flammable materials (a claim that the current deadly catastrophe has demonstrably proved was false), consider the incredible response of the EPA to this incredible assertion: The agency, emasculated by the Bush administration, and still a joke under the Obama administration, levied a pathetically small fine, but did nothing to shut the operation down until it put in place critical safety measures. The other agency that could have acted, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), is even more of a paper tiger than the EPA. Despite their inherent risks and hazards, it is reported that OSHA has made only six investigations of fertilizer plant operators in Texas in the last six years.

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