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Senate Passes Rail Safety Enhancement Act of 2008
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Posted On: Aug 03, 2008 (21:16:46)
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Senate Passes Rail Safety Enhancement Act of 2008
Yesterday afternoon, the Senate passed the "Railroad Safety Enhancement Act of 2008" (H.R. 2095) by unanimous consent. A copy of the bill is attached. The bill will now go to a Conference Committee to resolve the differences between the House and Senate versions of the legislation.
This all started with the Teamsters' "High Alert" report released in September 2005. That report cited the systematic failure of the carriers to ensure rail safety spawned over 40 TV news stories and dozens of newspaper articles across the breadth of this nation. The issue was picked up by state rail safety agencies, pushed by labor legislative representatives in State Houses and by national labor legislative representatives in the Halls of Congress.
This is a big victory for all of rail labor, as this is the most meaningful rail safety bill in over two decades.
When Congress returns after Labor Day, a joint House-Senate conference committee will work out differences in the two bills and return a final version for both chambers to approve. It is anticipated that President Bush will sign the final measure given its bipartisan support.
The bill would make changes in the hours-of-service law and provide more rest time, and require railroads to reduce the limbo time imposed on train crews for which they receive no compensation. It also would require railroads to develop safety-risk reduction programs, and expand mandatory employee safety training, one of the big issues we've been pressing the carriers on.
For the Safe Rails Secure America campaign, the Rail Conference developed a comprehensive campaign plan. Since September 2005, legislative representatives for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees and the Teamsters Department of Government Affairs have circulated the report "High Alert: Workers Warn of Security Gaps on Nation's Railroad" to federal and state-elected representatives.
In addition, the report was widely distributed to national and local news organizations.
Because of the enormous grass roots-support generated by the Safe Rails Secure America campaign in cities and town across this nation for meaningful rail safety reform, the commitment of the thousand of our members who filled out our rail safety surveys, and skill of our extraordinary team of legislative representatives, the carriers huffed and the carriers puffed but were unable to stop the progress of the bills in Halls of Congress.
David Ossian Cameron
Assistant to the Director
Rail Conference
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
202-437-3177 cell
dcameron@teamster.org
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