With the start of what advocates hope is a new era of high-speed rail in the U.S., the Transport Workers Union has a lot of organizing momentum to gain from the creation of new rail tracks.
Buoyed by recent “David-and-Goliath” contract victories, TWU has a reputation as an aggressive, hardball member of the labor coalition that has risen to the task of developing this new form of transit.
In conversation with LaborPress, TWU International President John Samuelsen shared his hopes and frustrations about America’s progress on high-speed rail projects. While Samuelson described the opportunity of more projects spurred by the groundbreaking of the Brightline West project, America’s first “true” California-to-Nevada high-speed rail system, he also expressed his wariness with the lag in political will to invest in such projects.
“When something like Brightline comes along, it’s an opportunity for us to prove our chops, so to speak, on the organizing front,” Samuelson said, before raising the question of whether the government actors will realize the opportunity they have in front of them.
“The biggest issue with high-speed rail is always gonna be the lethargic indifference of the political class decision makers, and an unwillingness to invest,” he added.
For a forceful organizer like Samuelson, the promise of coalition building on big new projects can come with stumbling blocks as well. The union represents mass transit, airline, university, utility and service workers in addition to railroad workers. In the densely unionized sector of passenger rail, the union represents the section of car inspectors — workers that are essentially train mechanics doing mechanical work and inspections of the locomotives — as well as onboard service and track workers.
Unlike other industries like school bus drivers, where the union engages in bargaining for the whole workforce, passenger rail is highly divided up among rail unions into specialized tasks.
Samuelson said that for a militant union like his, coalition bargaining can be challenging. He raised a recent example of the union’s successful campaign on behalf of its coach cleaners and car inspectors working with commuter rail operator Keolis in Boston as an example where other unions in his coalition were not willing to go on the offensive against their employer. The union ended up securing a contract that raises wages for their members in Boston by 23% and provides paid sick time for the first time, but he felt like Samuelson felt like TWU had to go it alone.
“We have been burned by this coalition model, and although we have great partners like the Brother Brotherhood of Railway Signalman, which has proved to be a big supporter of ours, it’s not every union,” he said.
Despite any limitations on coalition organizing, Samuelson has praised the groundbreaking on Brightline West as a “tremendous opportunity,” which he said politicians across the country should be replicating.
“These are job creators not only with midterm construction jobs that created, and the long-term jobs on the transport system themselves in terms of operation and maintenance, but also the massive exponentially beneficial ancillary economic activity is incredible,” he said.
Though several other high-speed rail projects are in the planning stages in the south and west, so far no cities in the northeastern corridor so far have been able to officially launch a plan for a dedicated, separated high-speed rail line. There is an idea, however, for a new 230-mile, high-speed rail link between New York City and Boston, which TWU’s Railroad Division Director John Feltz boosted as a huge potential win for the region.
“It would be very good for the economy on Long Island. That would stop people from having to go from the Long Island Railroad over to Moynihan Station, then on Amtrak, and then up to Boston. This would be a great direct route for them,” said Feltz.
Samuelson said that in New York he’s also interested in the Empire Corridor plan to create a rail system from Niagara Falls to Albany and New York City, which the state DOT studied, although several of the rail plans that state is considering don’t reach the standard 110-mile-per-hour definition of high-speed rail.
“The societal benefit is tremendous. So these legislators that are stagnating on pushing projects like this, they just don’t realize what they’re doing,” Samuelson said.
