UE Convention Resolutions
Revitalize Our Nation’s Rail System
The U.S. is by far the world’s most automobile-dependent nation. Far too many of our natural resources are in jeopardy. We as UE members owe it to ourselves and to following generations to break the chains that bind us to the slavery of oil dependency.
Through most of the last century, we enjoyed a boom in the utilization of rail transportation. People and products moved economically and reliably on a well-maintained network of tracks. Companies became conglomerates and owners became barons as trains facilitated a new industrial revolution. Railroad owners reaped huge profits as a result of government land subsidies for rights of way and by monopolizing the industry. Profits earned from the rail business were never reinvested, but were instead earmarked for other ventures. Without capital reinvestment, America’s rail infrastructure began its decline midway throughout the century.
We continue to experience the effects of decades of squandering and neglect. An epidemic of past rail mergers resulted in the loss of hundreds of jobs as rail lines were consolidated and closed. All the while, government has taken a hands off attitude towards a mode of transportation that could, if developed, reduce our dependency on foreign oil, resolve highway gridlock problems, create safer highways and help clean up the environment.
Designed failure on the part of government-run enterprises in the areas of mass transit, freight rail, Medicare and the Post Office are examples of big business and political special interests convincing us they can do better, when it’s simply about their quest for new sources of profit. Revitalizing the plant and equipment of our nation’s declining rail system will benefit all working people.
As we permit the national rail system to deteriorate, we provide massive subsidies to the auto and trucking (highway maintenance) industry in the form of public roads and highways. In addition, auto’s allies in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund provide loans for the expansion of automobile transit in developing countries, but rarely for the development of railway systems. Rail is the technology that is proven to be the most economical in moving our nation’s workers, travelers and goods, especially with the rising cost of energy. Mass transit makes good common, technical, and economic sense, but unfortunately the rail system is a joke.
The locomotive builders of Erie, PA, members of UE Local 506 and 618, produce today three times the number of locomotives with one-third the number of workers in one-third the amount of time as compared to the past. But instead of benefitting the working class women and men of our nation, it is the corporate interests who have profited.
Thousands of UE members who work for General Electric and other companies produce rail equipment and devices. It should be our national government policy to foster investment and expansion of this safe, reliable, and environmentally friendly industry.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 70th UE CONVENTION:
- Calls on UE members to reject the myth that government does not belong in the business of providing useful services for the benefit of society;
- Demands that our lawmakers make major improvements in the funding and implementation of a national rail policy;
- Urges UE locals to educate our elected officials and our communities on the economic and environmental benefits of mass transit and an improved rail system;
- Calls on employers – such as General Electric – to actively pursue new transit, rail, and high-speed, rail-related products that could be profitably built by UE members;
- Calls on UE locals to educate our membership on our ever-increasing dependency on oil imports and the associated environmental impact;
- Encourages UE at all levels to support, where possible, improvements in our existing rail systems;
- Calls on legislators to pass the Federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act of 2007.