When labor leaders gathered at the Labor Press-organized “High-Speed Rail Construction” conference Sept. 5 to discuss expanding the future of rail on a national scale, the conversation focused on how pivotal the next few years will be for the future of the industry.
Whether it’s projects in the works like the Brightline West project between Las Vegas and Southern California, California’s High Desert Corridor or the proposed Texas Central high-speed rail, labor leaders agreed the first instances of high-speed rail are going to showcase its promise and organized labor’s key role
Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Department with AFL-CIO, underscored the impact of labor’s advocacy in the California projects, where The U.S. Transportation Department awarded $3 billion for Brightline West and $3.07 billion to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles.
“The fact that we were able to go in there and sign these agreements and deliver, and I’m talking about again, $6.2 billion, that doesn’t happen without a full-throated labor movement behind the project,” said Regan.
The panel discussion brought Regan together with the U.S. High-Speed Rail CEO Andy Kunz; Rich Edelman, a labor lawyer with Mooney, Green, Saindon, Murphy & Welch; Arthur Sohikian, the executive director of the High Desert Corridor Joint Powers Agency; and Nancy Miller, vice chair of the California High-Speed Rail Authority Board of Directors. It was moderated by Dean Devita, president emeritus of the NCFO.
Edelman said that it took the rail unions’ full embrace of high-speed rail to ensure that they ended up with an agreement to ensure that the construction, maintenance and operations jobs created by the California projects are well-paid and covered by strong labor standards.
“What we asked for was that when we go in and we go to organize that the railroad would remain neutral when we come in and do the organizing,” Edelman said, adding that they got the companies to agree if the unions showed the National Mediation Board they had a card majority, they would agree to certification without an election.
“That is a big deal for unions to be able to do that,” he said.
Miller said that when it came to designing the train lines, unions also play a major part.
“Organized labor is not only our skilled labor force, they’re also in some respects our designers. We use them in all of our planning meetings because it’s really important to have that understanding. Because you really are the ones that are building this project,” she said.
After Brightline and the California High-Speed Rail Authority reached labor agreements, the unions successfully advocated for President Biden to fund the California rail projects. In this way, Kunz said, it’s unions’ vision of high-speed rail as a routine mode of transportation in America that has the power to push the federal government in that direction.
“We think it’s really essential that we grow this partnership and really use the power and the connections and the relationships of the unions to push America in a big way into high speed rail. To make this as it should be: as institutionalized as the way we do highways every day,” Kunz said.
Regan said that though the undertaking of California’s publicly funded High-Speed rail project from Los Angeles to San Francisco has gained a reputation for being significantly delayed, and over budget, he marveled at the scope of construction now that it has gotten underway on the project’s first phase. The project includes a huge range of rail-related crafts from iron workers to electrical workers and operating engineers.
“It’s the largest project labor agreement in the country in the history of project labor agreements. We’re talking about tens of thousands of people that are being put to work with taxpayer dollars for a good purpose. It is a massive deal that we are doing this in the right way,” he said.
