The workers also rallied in support of an unidentified graduate student who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on March 27, 2025, and another student that was revealed to had been abducted on March 28, 2025 from the campus of Minnesota State University Mankato.

Hundreds of students and workers gathered on campus at the UMN in front of Morrell Hall, the same hall which was occupied for 24 hours back in January 1969 by 70 black students to protest institutional racism and the lack of outreach, support, and culturally relevant coursework for students of color. At the rally, AFSCME 3800 President Max Vast, GLU-UE President Abaki Beck and others addressed the crowd with both a list of demands to UMN President Rebecca Cunningham and addressing the working conditions on campus that were making it harder for UMN workers and faculty to do their jobs.

The list of demands includes the following:

1. An immediate meeting with AFSMCE-3800 and GLU-UE, to ensure the urgent concerns of our union members are addressed and swiftly acted upon.
2. A clear, written commitment to defending immigrant workers by providing immediate and full financial, material, and legal support for international students and workers facing the treat of deportation. Establish the University of Minnesota as an official Sanctuary Campus to protect our community.
3. A binding agreement to halt layoffs for one year due to federal funding cuts, providing staff with job security as legal challenges to cuts unfold. The future under the Trump administration remains uncertain and in President Cummingham’s own words, “we should not overreact to what continues to be a fluid situation”.
4. A rapid expansion of Know Your Rights trainings for all students and workers to ensure that we are fully prepared to defend out rights and stay safe in the face of increasing federal attacks.
5. A publicly communicated plan to strengthen and expand our legal challenges to federal funding cuts, outlining how the University will address the potential impact of funding cuts. We demand the University commit to leveraging the full power of the University to resist these attacks, and ensuring that workers’ jobs and research remains protected.
6. An end to union busting on campus, demonstrated by bargaining in good faith with our Unions, and immediately and voluntarily recognizing graduate fellows and newly organized workers on campus. Strong unions are the foundation of our university and make this a better place to work, live, and study for everyone.
7. Immediate action to end political repression on  campus, including a clear commitment to protect workers targeted by McCarthyist federal investigations, immediately repealing restrictive protest policies, reversing the consolidation of power over departmental speech, and ending retaliation against campus protest. We further demand the University refuse to comply with the Trump Administration’s request for names and nationalities of students and workers involvement in protest.
8. A written commitment to no cuts to cultural centers or academic programs, and the continuation of critical EDI work. The University must take concrete steps to ensure ALL students and workers feel safe, supported, and respected on this campus. This work is far from finished.

AFSCME-UMN will also be heading to the bargaining table for a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the UMN as their prior contact was three years ago. President Vast appealed for continued support from the students and workers in their fight to secure a new CBA and the rights of all students and workers in the UMN.

LUEL applauds AFSCME-UMN Local 3800 and GLU-UE Local 1105 for standing up for fellow workers and students. LUEL calls on the UMN and all university systems to respect the rights of students and workers and for the UMN to recognize the graduate fellows and other workers that want to form a union.

AFSCME-UMN Local 3800 can be found at: https://www.afscmemn.org/local-3800-university-minnesota-clerical-workers GLU-UE Local 1105 can be found at: https://umnglu.org/

The post Students and Workers Rally at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Against Layoffs and Attacks on Free Speech appeared first on Labor Today.

This cowardly and violent act is not an isolated incident—it is part of a broader pattern of escalation by organized crime, which has already taken the lives of 26 union leaders in recent years. It represents a direct assault on democracy, on the right to union organization, and on the safety and dignity of workers who struggle daily for better lives.

The WFTU demands from the Peruvian government and authorities urgent and effective action to identify and bring to justice those responsible, and to implement immediate and permanent measures to protect trade union leaders and the working class of Peru.

The criminal actions of those who seek to silence the trade union movement through terror must be met with the full force of justice and popular resistance.

The WFTU stands firmly and unwaveringly beside the working people of Peru and our militant comrades in CGTP and FTCCP. We reaffirm our commitment to defend labor rights and to fight against all forms of violence, intimidation, and repression against the working class.

We call upon all WFTU affiliates and friends across the world to raise their voices in solidarity with the Peruvian working class, to condemn this heinous attack, and to organize acts of international solidarity. Let us send a clear message: Workers are not alone.

Security and justice for the workers of Peru! Hands off trade union leaders! An injury to one is an injury to all!

The post WFTU Condemns the Bombing Attack Against Luis Villanueva Carbajal and Call for International Solidarity appeared first on Labor Today.

Transport is the emblem of this disaster: from sectors that drove the general development of work and the country have transformed after years of wage cuts, wild liberalization, worsening of working conditions and precarity, to places from which you run away with their legs raised.

For some time we have been denouncing the fact that in transport the collapse of wages in Italy is also linked to two other factors too often underestimated or ignored: the progressive expulsion of any form of democracy, which is now affecting all sectors in a transversal way, combined with the continuous reduction of the spaces of strike thanks to an iniquitous law and widely used to protect the employer’s parties.

In recent months, contracts have been renewed in the sectors of seafarers, ports, logistics and bus, tram and rail drivers with increases of less than 6% on average per year compared to a full-year inflation of more than 17%, leaving more than 10% in the pocket of companies.

All this happened without discussing a platform first with the categories and without submitting the contract to a referendum. The negotiation of the Air Transport contract has even reopened without even having been the slightest consultation, not even by mistake.

If, as in the most striking case of the railway workers but also of local public transport, the owners ignore strikes (the most democratic form of participation of workers) participated from 60 to 80%, because the rules impose limited durations, the guarantee of 50% of activity and hallucinating rarefaction, in the end it is advisable to unload on the users the inability to listen to the requests of the categories.

It is incredible how in the largest Italian company – the FSI Group- or the largest public transport company in Europe – the Atac of Rome-, the RSU have expired for more than 7 years but the renewal is prevented while the practice everywhere is now the appointment of the Company Representations from above.

The transport sector is only the most visible tip of the iceberg than what happens to work in Italy.

Convincing the working class it has no right of opinion or speech and that the strike is now a sterile exercise as useless is the great weapon that has been put in hand for too many years to those who take away our wages from the governments of all colors and from those unions now reduced to notaries in defense only of their hegemonies and prebends. And then we’re surprised that people don’t vote anymore.

It is time to take back the word, the democratic practice in the workplace and rebuild the space of conflict without which the contractual demands become almost alms.

For this reason, we will bring the patrimony of discussion of the assembly of all transports held in Bologna inside the square of April 5 in Rome for the salary and against the rearmament.

The post ITALY: Lost wages, Denial of Democracy and Conflict in the Workplace—USB Transport will be in the Streets on April 5 for Wages and Against Rearmament appeared first on Labor Today.

The NALC has organized over 250 Fight Like Hell rallies across the country, all protesting against multiple threats to the union, including Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” DOGE planning to lay off ten thousand workers, and the Trump Administration’s ambitions to privatize the USPS.

A privatized USPS would create a myriad of problems for both the American people and Letter Carriers. Currently, the USPS is under the jurisdiction of Congress, which is held accountable by representatives elected by the American people. A privatized USPS would only be held responsible to private shareholders, who will most definitely reel back services in both rural and low-service areas, areas that need the USPS the most. In Seattle, a privatized USPS would mean higher shipping prices, an issue that would only contribute to Seattle’s high cost of living compared to other cities.

After speeches and remarks from representatives of multiple labor unions, the NALC Branch 79 rally attendees, both letter carriers and NALC supporters in the hundreds, marched around Westwood Center in West Seattle in the cold, dreary Seattle weather, with a resounding message:

THE US MAIL IS NOT FOR SALE!

The post NALC Branch 79 Rallies to “Fight Like Hell” in Seattle, WA appeared first on Labor Today.

After the flattening of Gaza, Israel continues its atrocities in the West Bank, with daily killings of civilians, imprisonments, bombings and destruction of infrastructure. In the last months, the Israeli aggression also expands and escalates in Lebanon, in Syria and in the wider region of the Middle East, with the open violation of borders and the mass devastating bombing of civilians. The Presidential Council expresses its support and solidarity with the Palestinian people and with the people of the region, in their struggle for sovereignty, liberation, and to repel aggression against their countries.

The recent statement of the President of the USA regarding the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, constitutes a continuation of the longstanding and consistent US’s stance and support for the murderous state of Israel and its plans. With his statement, Trump reaffirms in unprecedented cynicism, the USA’s full support of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians. The World Federation of Trade Unions strongly denounces and condemns these statements and plans, and reaffirms its unshakeable solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people for their right to live in freedom in their own homeland, in the land that they were born.

The consistent and principled support and solidarity to the heroic Palestinian people had always been a priority for the international class-oriented trade union movement. It is clear that the only way to secure and consolidate peace and security for the people in Palestine and Israel, but also in the wider Middle East, is to immediately end the Israeli occupation and settlement in the occupied Arab territories, as provided for in the UN resolutions, and to establish an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital and guarantee the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

For the WFTU is clear that as the imperialist aggression intensifies, our solidarity must intensify too.

The workers from all around the world are in a continues struggle of supporting the Palestinian people! The militant trade unions join their voices with the Palestinian people, condemn the imperialist hypocrisy.

The WFTU, on the occasion of the 30th of March, observed as the Palestinian Land Day, calls on its affiliates and friends, class-oriented and militant trade unions internationally to organize mobilizations and demonstrations, both in the streets, but in the workplaces as well, under the slogan:

“Free Palestine! Stop the displacement plans! Stop the ethnic cleansing”

The post The WFTU, on the Occasion of the 30th of March, Observed as Palestinian Land Day appeared first on Labor Today.

The decision of the EU Commission to allocate 800 billion Euros for the rearmament of the EU is serious and unacceptable and prepares a future of war for the peoples of Europe. The non-formal break of the historic Atlantic bloc with the USA is accelerating the construction of the European imperialist pole which, in order to compete with the others, has to arm itself, hastily build its own army, equip itself with weapons suitable for a war in the 21st century and centralise decisions on foreign policy and defence.

There is no doubt who will be asked to pay the costs of rearmament: the workers, the common people through new taxes, cuts in welfare, wages and social spending. There is no doubt that national governments will also try to further reduce social and civil rights to prevent people from demonstrating, fighting and organising against war and military spending.

EUROF, which has always fought against budgetary restrictions and the Stability Pact, because they have been used to cut social spending and have prevented European countries from allocating funds to salaries, pensions, health and education, denounces the decision of the European Commission to authorize the lifting of budgetary restrictions and the breaking of the Stability Pact, solely in favor of increased funding for military spending. While the industrial crisis is devouring factories and destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs, the nature of production is being changed by converting it, especially in the car sector, into arms production, which will further enrich big capital, which is rapidly converting to invest in the military sector.

STOP THE ‘RE-ARMING OF EUROPE’
No Sacrifice for War! Peace and Prosperity for the Peoples!

With the militant trade unions in the front line for peace, strengthen our solidarity with the heroic people of Palestine

We organise initiatives in every country against the armament of war! The warmongering plans of Brussels and the governments of whatever colour can find obstacles to the mass, organised struggle of the peoples!

The post WFTU-EUROF: No to European Rearmament, No to War; Yes to Resources for Wages, Pensions, Health, Work appeared first on Labor Today.

Like Social Security, the Railroad Retirement is funded by employees and employers through a payroll tax. Railroad Retirement costs non-railroad employees nothing. Yet, fears from railroad workers that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by the richest man on earth, Elon Musk, is looking to cut such benefits to pay for the tax cuts to billionaires. The quasi-government body has announced already to discontinue the lease of 7 buildings around the country for the RRBs to execute its mission to improve “efficiency.”

Railroaders are familiar with claims of improved “efficiency” through making cuts while increasing “throughput to customers.”  Precision Schedule Railroading, the corporate railroad method that has led to countless railroad disasters, exploitive work conditions, and less service to customers is vehemently unsupported by railroad workers unions. DOGE and Elon Musk are trying to disseminate government bodies like the Railroad Retirement Board much like what Precision Schedule Railroading (PSR) has done to the railroads in order to give the railroad workers less.

The Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, in a statement posted on its website on March 7, 2025, listed three reasons how the underfunding would affect the department:

1. The RRB’s chronic underfunding has led to severe service delays, which directly impact the railroad workers and retirees who rely on the agency. If funding remains inadequate: The average wait time for occupational disability claim adjudication will remain at 450 days — meaning retirees and beneficiaries will wait well over a year for their claims to be processed.
2. The average phone hold times are already at 4 hours, leaving members struggling to get assistance.
3. With the current executive orders and government overreach, the RRB can only hire one employee for every four who leave, making it impossible to keep up with demand and worsening service backlogs.

The bottom line is that Railroad companies do not want to pay their employees the benefits they earned. Defunding railroaders’ benefits will lead to more exploitation of an already overly exerted industry of workers. Fighting for more public power for our railroads, freight, and passengers and not less is crucial to achieving a more secure Railroad Retirement. The goal of the railroad bosses is to underfund the services to make them unreliable and faulty to make it easier to dismantle them altogether.

Support the Public Rail Now campaign if you want to protect Railroad Retirement as stated on their website “There is reason to believe that public ownership of the railroads would bode well for the Railroad Retirement System because, as outlined, increased freight traffic, electrification, infrastructure expansion, a return of passenger service, shorter and safer trains, and an emphasis on service rather than profit and job cutbacks would necessarily translate into more railroad jobs and more payers into the Railroad Retirement System.”

Support for Public Rail Now will give railroaders more security for their retirement plans but it also helps protect Social Security due to the closely tied services of both programs for benefactors. An attack on either service, Social Security or Railroad Retirement hurts all Americans. LUEL calls on the American people to support and defend Railroad Retirement through support of the Public Rail Now Campaign.

The post DOGE Attacks Already Overburdened Railroad Retirement Board appeared first on Labor Today.

The Autonomous Center of Haitian Workers (CATH), a class-based trade union organization operating in Haiti for 40 years, extends its renewed compliments for all the unconditional support provided to the Haitian trade union struggle in defense and promotion of workers’ rights.

CATH also asks you to join your affiliated organizations and friends in coming to the aid of a defenseless and oppressed people, particularly workers. To this end, CATH takes this opportunity to provide you with a brief overview of the Haitian crisis to better understand the merits of its approach.

1. The Political Situation

Since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise on the night of July 7, 2021, the Republic of Haiti has been mired in an unprecedented security, political, social, and economic crisis. The first independent Black Republic has collapsed. “Liberty, equality, and fraternity”, the motto of the Republic of Haiti, are being vilified by those in power under the orders of imperialists and armed gangs. This historic turning point was predictable due to the obsolescence of governance (irresponsibility, lack of vision, laxity, and incompetence of leaders). It was the beginning of the process of destruction and deconstruction of the State of Haiti.

Governance is currently ensured by a Presidential Transitional Council (CPT) composed of nine (9) members. It was born out of a political compromise with CARICOM under the instigation of the United States of America. This governance, lacking vision and plan, established and controlled by CARICOM, a Caribbean organization that manages the interests of imperialist powers, is incapable of satisfying the wishes of the Haitian people and those of the workers. This model of governance constitutes a source of instability, plunder, corruption, and laissez-faire.

This transitional governance, lacking vision, program, or project, obsolete, irresponsible, profiteering, corrupt, and irrational, only aggravates the situation of a Republic already in agony. Moreover, the state’s meager resources are being wasted, corruption is rife in the public administration, money laundering is gaining ground within financial institutions, state terrorism is spreading throughout the country, and so on. The state is a stakeholder in the decline of the Republic of Haiti and the misery of the Haitian people living on land they have sold, which they must vacate and return to their masters. However, the Haitian people must unite to fight and expel these neo-colonizers and this barbaric system to restore a livable country for the entire Haitian nation, and for workers in particular.

Elections have not been held for five years. The political leadership has not been legally renewed. Judges’ terms have expired. Institutions are not up to their mission. Democracy has collapsed, and the dictatorship of terrorism is taking its place. The capital, Port-au-Prince, has become a lawless place. In short, it is a complete political failure.

This capitalist government is abandoning more than 50 administrative buildings, representing the symbol of the state, to armed gangs. Haiti has fallen under a vast political conspiracy orchestrated in the shadows by imperialist powers who apply two philosophical doctrines: the Monroe Doctrine, “America for the Americans,” and that of Franklin Delano Rosevelt, “We must unite the barefoot against the shoe-wearing; it’s the only way to make them unstable and dominate them.” They are making the Haitian people pay for their insolence and arrogance in being the First Independent Black Republic and land of freedom. It should be noted that the gangs were united by the United Nations Integrated Office for Haiti (BINUH) through Ms. Helen Lalime.

The Presidential Transitional Council (CPT) and the armed gangs work for the same master. They were established to deconstruct the Republic of Haiti.

2. Socioeconomic Situation

The Haitian people are dominated and exploited. He is fooled by the outrageous profiteering imposed by factory owners. The daily wage is very low: $4.50 received by factory employees for an 8-hour workday, $280 monthly for a primary school teacher, $250 monthly for a nurse, $300 monthly for a middle manager in the public administration, etc.

Workers have suffered harassment and stigmatization, their rights are systematically violated, and gender equality is not respected.

Overall, almost all businesses have relocated or closed their doors. This is leading to massive job losses, which are synonymous with unemployment and poverty. Before the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, the textile sector employed 65,000 workers, and this workforce has now fallen to 21,000. This gives an idea of ​​the seriousness of the situation facing the working class and the Haitian population in general.

Today, with this untenable situation, CATH has 1,235 workers and managers who have been forced by gangs to abandon their homes. 85% of them were tenants who are currently living in tents in extremely cramped conditions.

The Haitian population is made up of 12.5 million people, half of whom live below the poverty line. This crisis is leading to an increase in prostitution, mortality, mental illness, delinquency, armed gang hotbeds, etc. Worse still, children aged 10 to 17 are being used as soldiers and scouts in armed gangs. More than a million people are being forced into involuntary displacement under pressure from armed gangs in Western countries within the capitalist system.

3. Security Situation

The country’s security situation is taking on a disorganized and uncontrollable character. Armed gangs have become more powerful, and the state is complicit. Thousands of Haitians are dying every day. The capital and its suburbs are in flames daily. Thousands of family homes are being destroyed, and 300,000 families are being displaced by armed gangs. Each family has an average of 5 to 7 dependents. These displaced families are scattered across shelter camps, across the provinces, on the streets and under the stars. Their access to food and drink is difficult. They find themselves without protection, without housing.

Armed gangs are destroying the small economy of the Haitian masses. The capital’s public ports and airport are closed, and those of the capitalist private sector operate timidly. Those that do operate are businesses owned by capitalists. The state is almost dysfunctional. Everything depends on the whims of the gangs.

Land transportation routes are blocked (National Routes 2, 3, 4, etc.). Only one road is functioning: the one connecting Port-au-Prince and Cap Haïtien, passing through Morne à Cabri, Mirebalais, Savanette, Thomonde, and Hinche, all the way to Cap Haïtien. The population is struggling to obtain supplies. However, gangs must be paid a toll, which they set arbitrarily and illegally. The illicit economic market is thriving, with drugs, organ trafficking, money laundering, and smuggling. The exchange rate has skyrocketed: 135 Haitian gourdes for 1 US dollar. Basic necessities are skyrocketing. In short, small businesses are virtually paralyzed.

In reality, Haiti’s subsoil contains more wealth (mines, oil, natural gas) than any other country on the planet. Hence the interest of capitalist countries in maintaining the status quo in Haiti. Stateless people are putting themselves at their service to exacerbate the crisis. A handful of people and capitalist countries are leveraging their opulence against workers and the Haitian population.

Inflation is eating into the population’s budget. Over the past five years, the toll has been very high, as the following indicators demonstrate:

• GINI Index: 0.41
• Gross Domestic Product (GDP): US$1.693 in 2023
• Population: 12.5 million inhabitants
• Economic contraction rate: -1.9% (according to data from international institutions); GDP contraction rate: -0.4%
• HDI (Human Development Index): 0.552
• 158th out of 159 countries;
• Slowdown in investment spending;
• Budget deficit: 0.60% of GDP
• Debt: 15.2% of GDP in 2024
• Inflation rate: 29.3% in 2024;
• 36.6% of the population lives on less than $2.15 USD;
• 54,000 homes destroyed and 88,700 damaged during the August 14, 2021 earthquake in the south of the country and not yet rebuilt;
• 18,694 people shot dead by gangs, including around 100 textile workers;
• 8,863 people burned by gangs;
• 300,000 families displaced by gang violence;
• 5.4 million Haitians struggle to feed themselves;
• More than 1,000,000 displaced people, scattered throughout the country;

These figures demonstrate the poverty in Haiti.

From all the above, the Haitian crisis is dismal.

The Autonomous Central of Haitian Workers (CATH/FSM) is outraged by this shameful and disgraceful situation. On this basis, CATH calls on all class-based workers’ movements to raise awareness in their respective communities to help Haiti emerge from this quagmire.
CATH would like to ask you for further financial support to help its members and staff in difficulty. If this would be convenient for you, here are the banking details for the necessary follow-up:

• Bank Name: SOGEBANK
• Bank Address: Rte Nationale # 1, Lathan, PAP-Haïti
• Bank Swift: SOGHHTPP
• Account Name: CATH-REDD (Centrale Autonome des Travailleurs Haïtiens)
• Account No.: 2016001659
• Account Currency: $USD

Together, we stand in solidarity to support the weakest people in humanitarian crises, and all the oppressed peoples of the planet.

Sincerely yours!

For CATH/WFTU,
Louis Fignole St. CYR
General Secretary
Autonomous Center of Haitian Workers

The post HAITI: An Analysis of the Haitian Security Crisis Coupled with Economic Recession appeared first on Labor Today.

It was during the 2022 battle between railroad workers and the major railroad corporations that much of the U.S. public was first exposed to the reality of what it is like to be a railroad worker.

Since then, public interest in the railroads and railroad workers has apparently waned. This is unfortunate, as the problems highlighted by the mainstream media during the 2022 battle have, for the most part, not been resolved.

For this reason, Public Rail Now, a coalition of railroad workers, labor organizers, trackside community advocates, environmental justice activists, and others demanding public ownership and operation of the U.S. rail system, launched a questionnaire and interview project to elevate the voices of railroad workers and bring the railroad industry back into the light. Over the two-month period of November and December 2024, we received over 130 questionnaire responses from railroad workers across the U.S. which were as enlightening as they were alarming. The follow-up interviews only reinforced our view that the problems in the railroad industry require bold action on the part of the federal government.

Excessive working hours, draconian attendance policies, dangerous conditions, and hostile managers, among other features, constitute a harrowing industrial situation which has not much improved since the Biden administration forced a highly unpopular contract down the railroad workers’ throats.

All the Livelong Day

According to one CSX conductor, using personal leave today is “like buying concert tickets . . . nine times out of ten, I’m either sleeping or working, so I can’t call off when I need to.” The workers in his subdivision have to compete to use leave, and with about 100 workers to compete with, it is nearly impossible for many workers to get the time off when they need it. “You’re competing with 100 other guys for that personal day,” he said. “If it’s a summertime weekend, good luck.”

The long working hours demanded by the rail corporations, reinforced by oppressive attendance policies, make it difficult for railroad workers to spend time with their loved ones. “We used to be able to take off,” a BNSF conductor told us. “Not anymore. I am seeing my family less.” To compensate for the hours spent away from spouses and children, railroad workers often eschew a full night’s rest. An already fatigued workforce is further exhausted.

It is important to note that while railroad workers are unable to spend time with their families, even on holidays, this is not the case for management. According to an engineer at UP, “Every day now is a Monday. No holidays whatsoever. Management does not work on holidays . . . They don’t have limited time off. It’s demoralizing as hell having to put up with that mentality. You’re expected to be at work and they’re spending time with their families.”

Many railroad workers, particularly those with children, are the sole wage-earners in their homes, as the severity of their work schedules complicates employment for their spouses and makes childcare difficult. “It’s hard for a spouse to get a job when you’ve got this job,” a UP conductor explained. “You never know when you’ll need a babysitter, or if your wife gets sick . . . especially with the attendance policy, it’s difficult to have a spouse working and having young kids.”

This household dynamic is one of the reasons railroad workers oftentimes stay on the job though they would prefer not to. “I need the job, my wife doesn’t work, I’ve got four kids,” a BNSF conductor said. “I haven’t been home this entire week. I’m home 12-12.5 hours at a time. Fatigued all the time. You hope to get a few hours of sleep before you go back out.”

“Orwellian Nightmare”

With few exceptions, workers – regardless of collar color – deal at some point or other with employer surveillance. On the railroads, surveillance of the workforce reaches well beyond necessary safety measures to the point of incredulity. “I’ll be honest, I saw the survey and I was nervous to fill it out,” a conductor told us. “They’ve got the eye in the sky; they’re always watching you.”

According to an engineer at UP, managers “hide in bushes, on hillsides with binoculars. We had a manager who parked his rig a mile away and he’d walk in the dark in the middle of the night and sneak up on you.” Recalling an incident that could not help but elicit a chuckle, a CSX maintenance of way worker said one day on the job “something came walking up to us out of the woods – it was a manager in a ghillie suit. I’ll put my hand on a bible for that one.”

A CSX engineer told us one of his past managers “would climb a tree – he bought night vision goggles and a radio for watching crews … he’d sit in that tree and watch you for hours.”

In addition to guerilla-style stalking, railroad managers have embraced the use of drones – sometimes to disastrous results – in their surveillance of workers. “I’ve seen the drones,” a CN engineer said. “They’ve flown them right at the conductor’s window. These managers want to make a name for themselves. They don’t care who they [expletive].”

“I know a couple of instances where a manager crashed a drone,” a CSX conductor said. “I know they got in trouble flying the drones by airports and near a chemical plant.”

A UP switchman who was injured at work expressed his frustration with the fact that cameras are often used not for worker safety, but for discipline. There were seven cameras in the area where the injury took place, but “somehow there was no footage of when it happened. Any shred of evidence of the conditions we’re working in, even the GPS data, none of that is ever available to us. It’s used against us.”

“Two words,” he said, “Orwellian nightmare.”

“You’re just a Number”

A sentiment that emerged time and again throughout the interviews is that working on the railroads is not what it used to be. “I’m a third-generation railroader,” a UP engineer said. “It’s not the railroad I remember, when I would go to work with my dad as a kid.” He added, “I refused to help my nephews get rail jobs – they asked me and I said absolutely not.”

“It used to be the job to have,” a BNSF conductor explained. “Good benefits, a good blue-collar job, but now they can’t keep anybody. I got hired on because I knew somebody.”

The quality of railroad work has diminished since many of the “old heads” (longtime railroad workers) were hired, not just in terms of work-life balance, but also material conditions. Several railroad workers described the shoddy equipment and furnishings they encounter on the job which management often refuses to repair, leaving the workers to do it themselves. “I have zip-ties and duct tape,” a conductor said, “you’d be amazed how often I have to use them.”

Considering the critical importance of the railroad industry in the U.S. economy, these statements – only a fraction of what we gathered in our questionnaire and follow-up interviews – are all the more astonishing. The question presents itself: how can such a crucial and profitable industry care so little for its workforce? One would think that workers with such a tremendous responsibility – keeping the U.S. economy running – would enjoy at least a modicum of respect and appreciation from their employers. This, however, is not the case.

“You’re just a number – they don’t care if you die,” a UP engineer said, “they’ll get another dancing chicken out there to do the job.”

To learn more about the campaign for a public rail system, please visit publicrailnow.org

The post Every Day is a Monday: Railroad Workers Describe Life on the Tracks appeared first on Labor Today.

Statement of the UE Officers

Last weekend, the federal government arrested, detained and threatened with deportation Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent legal resident of the U.S., not because he had committed any crime, but in retaliation for his peacefully speaking out on political issues while a student at Columbia University. The Trump administration has also cancelled over $400 million in already-allotted research funds to Columbia, essentially for failing to sufficiently repress peaceful student protests. The Department of Justice has launched investigations of 10 universities, with a threat to similarly slash federal funding, including several where UE represents graduate workers, and the Department of Education has sent threatening letters to an additional 60 schools. The clear intent of all these actions is to suppress dissent and the right to protest on campus.

These are serious attacks on our civil liberties, and will impact all working people if they are not vigorously resisted. The purpose of attacks on civil liberties is to instill fear, much like what bosses do during union organizing campaigns. People who are afraid to criticize the government will also be afraid to speak up at work. History has shown that a government that feels like it can get away with detaining or deporting legal residents for political speech will also be willing to arrest or deport union leaders who speak out about bad working conditions and low wages — especially a government of corporate billionaires like the one currently in office.

At the 78th UE Convention, in 2023, rank-and-file delegates from around the country declared, “The chilling effect of denials of our democratic freedoms curtails political debate within the U.S., limits the ability of all citizens to make democratic choices for the future of our country, and thereby undermines our livelihoods and living standards.”

In the late 1940s and 1950s, our country — and our union — faced a similar attempt to punish people for exercising their democratic and workplace freedoms: McCarthyism. The abduction and threatened deportation of Khalil, a green-card holder with the legal right to live and work in the U.S., is strongly reminiscent of the U.S. government’s attempt to deport founding UE Director of Organization James Matles in the 1950s, despite the fact that he was a naturalized citizen.

Today’s witch-hunt is no more about the purported “anti-Semitism” of campus protesters than the McCarthyist witch-hunts were about “communism.” In both cases, the point is to stifle dissent and make people afraid to criticize our government’s actions, to create a docile working class that is easier to exploit because people are afraid to speak up.

We are appalled by the outrageous extent to which university presidents and administrators are not only bowing to this effort to curb free speech and expression, but actively suppressing protest on their own campuses. The very purpose of a university is the free exchange of ideas, and we expect the leaders of those institutions to stand up for that principle. Instead, too many are doing the work of our increasingly authoritarian government of billionaires.

Civil liberties are not a luxury. Indeed, as the history of the labor movement has shown, they are essential to enable working people to fight for justice. As in previous generations, if the government will not respect our civil liberties, and if the leaders of institutions and political parties will not speak up for them, then we must defend them through mass mobilization and, if necessary, strikes.

Carl Rosen
General President

Andrew Dinkelaker
Secretary-Treasurer

Mark Meinster
Director of Organization

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