Posts tagged Department of transportation
Amtrak’s unionized workers are getting $900 holiday bonuses after their managers gave up half of theirs
December 15, 2025 // The Wall Street Journal reported that around 246 Amtrak managers gave up part of their bonuses that totaled $16.2 million. The DOT did not provide additional comment or confirm those figures when reached by Business Insider. In its announcement, the DOT touted Amtrak's record-breaking year. The national passenger rail service had a record 34.5 million customer trips in the fiscal year that ended in September, posting a record adjusted ticket revenue of $2.7 billion.
Trump administration slow-plays decision on expanding automated railroad inspection technology
November 18, 2025 // “The idea is, that while the train is in normal operations, this system is constantly scanning the track for defects, so the waiver would allow the use of this technology,” he stated. “The Department of Transportation’s Volpe Center, which is their kind of in-house think tank, has been clamoring for exactly this type of thing for decades, and now the technology has arrived that allows carriers to actually do it.” Scribner noted that the Biden administration was sued multiple times by rail carriers for, like Trump, slow- walking automated track inspection waivers, claiming that was “a situation where Railway Labor had had really captured a safety regulatory agency, which should be very, very concerning to the American public.”
Unions sue Trump over immigrant drivers license crackdown
October 28, 2025 // The employee unions challenged a rule implemented by Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy restricting foreign individuals from receiving commercial drivers licenses. Commercial drivers licenses are used for operating large vehicles such as tractor-trailers and buses. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia allow unauthorized immigrants to receive commercial drivers licenses. In California, more than 25% of commercial drivers licenses were improperly issued, according to a Department of Transportation press release.
US Transportation Secretary threatens to fire absent air traffic controllers
October 14, 2025 // Last week, the president said some employees who are not at work might not receive retroactive pay once the government reopens. Air traffic controllers, though, are considered "essential workers" and are still required to carry out their duites. "When you come to work you get paid," Duffy said. "If you don't come to work, you don't get paid. That's the way we're going to do it."
Baltimore union leadership faces shake-up as DPW workers push for change
August 26, 2025 // AFSCME Local 44 represents employees at several city agencies, including the Department of Public Works, Recreation and Parks, and Department of Transportation. Several DPW previously voiced their frustration with Local 44 over safety conditions within the agency and their pay. “The Union, we don't have a union. You know, we really, really don't because they totally aren't 100% for us,” said Reginald Nobel during a previous interview with FOX45 News. “Yeah, they're totally for their self.
Op-ed: Reject The Rail Crew Mandate And Embrace Deregulation
June 24, 2025 // This destructive, union-backed rule undermines voluntary labor-management agreements that already govern crew sizes in a more flexible and effective manner. The Center for Transportation Advancement points out that rigid staffing mandates override productive negotiations and mimic the failed "full crew" laws of the early 1900s—laws long since repealed because they served union interests, not public safety.
Trump Executive Order on Public-Sector Unions Clears Latest Legal Hurdle
May 26, 2025 // These policies have been generated in response to the snowballing effect of public-sector labor unions, whose bosses have swamped government agencies with an inefficient and excess allocation of funds. Because of these union boss abuses, tax dollars have even been paying full-time salaries to union boss lobbyists working to secure themselves higher wages for doing less work. Additionally, the Institute for the American Worker has found that the time and resources spent on collective bargaining has likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars for the taxpayer. As demonstrated, banning collective bargaining with public-sector unions at national security agencies is not only a feasible plan, but one which could return millions to the American taxpayer, increase the efficiency of the government, and allow agencies to reorient themselves toward their actual purpose and mission.
CA Public Employees and Unions Whining about Returning to the Office 5 Years Later
April 29, 2025 // Gavin Newsom created this mess. He sent state employees home when he locked the state down March 2020 ostensibly over a flu. And he let state employees work from home for 5 years. Many have done well, and are accountable employees, But many more are not, and need supervision and accountability. President Trump’s back-to-the-office order and hiring freeze has elicited a lot of kvetching in D.C., but is designed to suss out the deadwood in the federal government – something Governor Newsom should also be doing, figuratively and literally.
Federal Workers Get Second Musk Buyout Offer
April 2, 2025 // The initiative bears many of the hallmarks of Musk’s “Fork in the Road” offer in January, which allowed federal workers to leave their jobs in February but continue being paid through September. This time the offers are being made agency-by-agency as part of each department’s mandate to reduce the size of its workforce. Deadlines and rules for eligibility differ by department.
DOGE will use AI to assess the responses of federal workers who were told to justify their jobs via email
February 27, 2025 // A coalition of unions and groups that have been fighting the Trump administration's mass layoffs of probationary workers charge the effort was unlawful. They amended their lawsuit against the U.S. Office of Personnel Management over the weekend to add a claim involving the OPM email directing workers to justify their workweek.