A Transtar statement said,“we are investigating the incident and are cooperating with investigations by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board”. Due to the nature of the ongoing investigations, we will not be commenting further on the incident.”

Transtar, which operates seven railroads serving U.S. Steel facilities, was sold by the steelmaker to Fortress Transportation in 2021. Its Fairfield Southern railroad provides in-plant rail service for U.S. Steel’s Fairfield Works, located approximately 10 miles west of Birmingham.

While we are saddened at the news of our brother’s death, we must double our resolve to build a safer workplace where such tragedies are not so commonplace.

The Railroad Workers United Program for Fallen Rails urges you to do the following on behalf of our fallen brother, his friends and family, co-workers and all railroad workers:

Commit yourself to following up on how and why our brother or sister was killed. What is the behind-the-scenes story? What role did unsafe conditions, including short staffing, crew fatigue, inadequate training and/or qualifying, deferred maintenance, or other factors play in this fellow worker’s death?

Get involved in the national movement against blame the worker “behavior-based safety” programs. Help build real union-based safety committees and programs that focus on hazard elimination and do not ignore the underlying causes of accidents, injuries and fatalities sustained on the job. For more information, see the RWU webpage entitled “Oppose Behavior Based Safety.”

Take part in the RWU annual Railroad Workers Memorial Day each April 28th. For more information, see the RWU webpage “Fallen Rails.”

Join RWU and fight to build solidarity and unity among all railroad workers, and make safer workplaces for all.

Thank you,
Railroad Workers United

The post RWU: Rail Fatality Alert! – Transtar Rail Worker Killed June 16th in AL appeared first on Labor Today.

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May Day has its early origins in the United States, in the late 19th century, with a pathbreaking and historical strike for the eight-hour day. International Workers’ Day commemorates the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago. On May 1, 1886, Chicago unionists, reformers, socialists, anarchists, and ordinary workers convened as part of a long-term organizing campaign to make Chicago the center of the national movement for an eight-hour day.

During this extended period of struggle, on the evening of May 4, 1886, Chicago police attempted to disperse a peaceful assembly of workers in Haymarket Square when an unidentified assailant threw a bomb. The police reacted by firing on the workers, killing a number of protestors. Organizers of the demonstration were charged with murder — but no evidence was ever found linking them to the bombing. Four of them – known as the “Haymarket Martyrs” were hanged the following year. 

In 1889, the first congress of the Second International Workingmen’s Association, meeting in Paris on the centennial of the French Revolution, called for international labor demonstrations on the 1890 anniversary of the Chicago protests. Then, in 1891, May Day was formally recognized as an annual event at the International’s Second Congress. In subsequent years, the working class in many countries sought to make May Day an official holiday, and their efforts largely succeeded. 

In the United States and Canada, however, the official holiday for workers is Labor Day in September. After the Haymarket Incident in Chicago, U.S. President Grover Cleveland “feared” that commemorating Labor Day on May 1 would become an opportunity to commemorate Haymarket and radical worker struggle. Thus, he pushed for U.S. Labor Day to be the first Monday in September.

In the United States, efforts to officially switch Labor Day back to the May 1 have been unsuccessful. However, a number of unions and locals — especially in urban areas with strong support for organized labor — have maintained a connection with labor traditions through their own unofficial observances on May 1.

Today, May 1, 2025, working people all over the world — including millions here in North America — will celebrate International Workers’ Day. As railroaders, we will celebrate the dignity of all workers, highlighting working conditions in our own industry. The widespread negative effects of Precision Schedule Railroading (PSR) are now well known to millions of Americans. Rails have been sounding the alarm for years, educating the media, politicians and the public about unsafe and irresponsible practices of Class One billionaires.

Rails continue to fight against the dangers of long and heavy trains, the relentless profit-centered attempts to implement one-person crews, the lack of proper investment in maintenance and inspection, and the flight of workers from the rail industry due to eroding working conditions.

Further, in April 2024, RWU adopted a resolution in support of UAW’s President Fain calling for common contract expiration dates across industries to coordinate to a May Day (May 1) 2028 expiration.

Railroad Workers United has put the safety, well being, job quality, and voices of working railroaders at the center of its organizing since 2008. We amplify their voices today and keep the spirit of working class resistance, rank & file democracy, and good troublemaking alive in the rail industry.

Check the links below for May Day resources and take part in local May Day activities in your area as we celebrate OUR day — International Workers’ Day.
 
Solidarity Forever,
Railroad Workers United

The post RWU Greetings for International Workers’ Day appeared first on Labor Today.

A federal judge, supported by the U.S. Supreme Court, found no legal basis for his deportation, yet federal officials ignored court orders, made false public claims, denied him due process and violated Kilmar’s rights— setting a dangerous precedent for us all.

The SMART Union, Kilmar’s community, and his allies are demanding Kilmar’s safe return, an end to his and his family’s suffering, and a defense of due process — the foundation of fair treatment on and off the job. Railroad Workers United stands in solidarity with this call and urges all union members to defend the rights of workers born outside the U.S. who are now so unjustly targeted.

This fight is about more than one member—it’s about protecting the rights every worker depends on.

The full resolution can be read below:

The post RWU Resolution to Bring Brother Kilmar Garcia Home appeared first on Labor Today.

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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.”

The post RWU Greetings for Martin Luther King Day 2025 appeared first on Labor Today.

The two crew members died after their Union Pacific train collided with a tractor-trailer truck on Wednesday (Dec. 18) and derailed, sending railcars into a trackside building.

Pecos Police Chief Lisa Tarango said the deceased workers were “veteran employees” of the railroad. Union Pacific has identified them as engineer Clay Burt, 63, an employee since 1998, and conductor Phillip Araujo, 47, who had been with the railroad since 2012.

The incident occurred about 5 p.m. with a collision near Oak and Dot Stafford streets, and led to derailed cars hitting the Pecos Chamber of Commerce building, a former Texas & Pacific Railway station. Video circulating widely on social media shows the train hitting a truck carrying an oversized load that was blocking the grade crossing.

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, in a statement today, said, “Our hearts go out to the families of the conductor and engineer who lost their lives” in the incident. The union said it is limited in what it can say about the incident because it is a party to the NTSB’s investigation, but that it “should serve as a wake-up call to legislators to improve rail safety all across the United States. All railroad accidents are avoidable.”

While we are saddened at the news of our brothers’ deaths, we must double our resolve to build a safer workplace where such tragedies are not so commonplace.

The Railroad Workers United Program for Fallen Rails urges you to do the following on behalf of our fallen brother, his friends and family, co-workers and all railroad workers:

Commit yourself to following up on how and why our brother or sister was killed. What is the behind-the-scenes story? What role did unsafe conditions, including short staffing, crew fatigue, inadequate training and/or qualifying, deferred maintenance, or other factors play in this fellow worker’s death?

Get involved in the national movement against blame the worker “behavior-based safety” programs. Help build real union-based safety committees and programs that focus on hazard elimination and do not ignore the underlying causes of accidents, injuries and fatalities sustained on the job. For more information, see the RWU webpage entitled “Oppose Behavior Based Safety.”

Take part in the RWU annual Railroad Workers Memorial Day each April 28th. For more information, see the RWU webpage “Fallen Rails.”

Join RWU and fight to build solidarity and unity among all railroad workers, and make safer workplaces for all.

Thank you,
Railroad Workers United

The post RWU: UP Rails Phillip Araujo, 47, and Clay Burt, 63, Killed December 18th in Pecos, TX appeared first on Labor Today.

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