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HANDS OFF!!! RWU Proposes Action in Defense of Amtrak, Railroad Retirement, and all Federal Workers

HANDS OFF!!! RWU Proposes Action in Defense of Amtrak, Railroad Retirement, and all Federal Workers

By Railroad Workers United on April 5, 2025 |

National

The International Steering Committee (ISC) of Railroad Workers United met on April 2, 2025, at which time we adopted the following three resolutions. Considered together, these raise alarm over the manifold harm that attacks on federal workers, threats to our scarce social safety net (including retirement security), and the privatization of our public goods are exacting on all workers, our democracy, and our future.

We urge you to read these resolutions in full (click on the links), join with activists across the U.S. this Saturday, April 5th, and on May Day, Thursday, May 1st to fight back and say Hands Off! our dignity, safety, and security. To find a local April 5th action near you, visit the Hand Off! national campaign website.

👊🏽 RWU Resolution on Solidarity with Unionized Federal Workers

RWU strongly opposes the federal government’s sweeping staffing cuts across agencies, causing harm to public services — especially for poor and working-class communities — and threats to the livelihoods of dedicated civil servants. We call on railroad unions, workers, and labor activists to unite in solidarity with federal workers and actively resist these attacks.

We strongly endorse April 5th and May 1st, “May Day,” as days of action and urge broader labor organizations, including the AFL-CIO, to organize and participate in national efforts defending unionized federal workers.

📢 RWU Resolution in Support of the Railroad Retirement System 

RWU defends the Railroad Retirement System, opposing field office closures and funding restrictions despite the system being self-funded and essential for workers. We call for modernization and protection, urging the government to release internal funds for tech upgrades and to preserve the system’s infrastructure. We urge collective union action, and encourage all railroad workers and retirees to mobilize and advocate for the system’s preservation.

🚆 RWU Resolution in Support of Amtrak

RWU supports keeping Amtrak public, and we oppose any efforts to privatize it that would reduce service, compromise safety, and eliminate good union jobs. We call for expanded investment in Amtrak, including more routes, better stations, new trains, and a larger union workforce. We urge unions, communities, and allies to stand with us in protecting and growing Amtrak as a critical public transportation system.

Published in National

RWU Greetings for Martin Luther King Day 2025

RWU Greetings for Martin Luther King Day 2025

By Railroad Workers United on January 21, 2025 |

National

Today, we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, honoring the birthday, life, work, and activist struggle of the iconic Civil Rights leader. This day has been a designated federal holiday since 1986.
While roughly one in three U.S. workers are granted this holiday, MLK Day has yet to be recognized by U.S. rail carriers. Please see the RWU Resolution in Support of a Paid Holiday for All Railroaders on MLK Day.

Railroad Workers United (RWU) urges all railroad workers to remember and honor the life of this great American. A tireless fighter for civil rights, King was also a champion of organized labor and trade unionism. Rhetoric on this day often overlooks that when he was murdered by assassination on April 4, 1968, King was in Memphis, Tennessee to support the efforts of the sanitation workers there to organize a union.

King’s support of unions was longstanding, though that endorsement was not reciprocated by unions, including most rail unions that did not offer membership to Black Americans. In 1961, King’s address at the AFL-CIO’s annual convention was considered a turning point. At the Convention, King observed:

“Our needs are identical with labor’s needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old-age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children, and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor’s demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth.”  

In the last year of his life, King embarked upon organizing a “Poor People’s Campaign” designed to unite people of all races in a struggle to redistribute the wealth and power in society to common everyday working people.

“I think it is necessary for us to realize that we have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights … [W]hen we see that there must be a radical redistribution of economic and political power, then we see that for the last twelve years we have been in a reform movement…That after Selma and the Voting Rights Bill, we moved into a new era, which must be an era of revolution…In short, we have moved into an era where we are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society.”

Published in National

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