image: public domain
U.S. House Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz
“Since 1926, the Railway Labor Act has protected rail workers and their right to form a union and collective bargain — a core principle we all unequivocally support,” the U.S. House delegation of eight Congressional members, led by U.S. House Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, shared in a statement. “With the news of employees working onboard Brightline trains from Miami to Orlando seeking to organize with the Transport Workers Union (TWU), we reaffirm and publicly support the right and ability to organize with the National Mediation Board as intended under the Railway Labor Act.”
Democratic Members of the Florida delegation support Brightline employees’ right to organize. Read our statement: pic.twitter.com/srqxEXZE36
— Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (@RepDWStweets) September 30, 2024
The statement, pretty uncontroversial on its face, comes shortly after TWU president John Samuelsen sent a letter to U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg this month, urging him to direct the DOT to deny additional federal funds to Brightline and to investigate the for-profit passenger train’s “compliance with its obligations” under previously-awarded grants.
“Faced with workers' desires to unionize, Brightline and its president, Patrick Goddard, have deliberately chosen the path of confrontation and acrimony,” Samuelsen wrote in a letter to Buttigieg dated Sept. 19. “Although Brightline bosses are anti-worker, President Joe Biden is not.” The U.S. DOT, he continued, “must give funding priority to companies that don’t interfere with workers seeking to unionize.”
The statement from the Congressional delegation notably does not directly reference union-busting allegations, nor condemn such behavior.
The Transport Workers Union, representing some 155,000 workers in the transportation industry nationwide, first announced a historic organizing drive among onboard attendants for Brightline in early August. The company, which has been friendly to labor unions out west, runs a high-speed rail line in Florida, from Miami up to its new station in Orlando. The company does not have other union-represented workers in Florida.
Shortly after the Florida workers filed cards of support for unionization with the National Mediation Board, however (as part of the standard process to request a union election in the rail industry), Brightline hired on attorneys from Littler Mendelson, a firm notorious for its “union avoidance” services, to represent them. An archived list of “do”s and “don't”s from the firm, for instance, encourages employers to“[t]ell workers that they are free to support the union or not, as they see fit, but you hope they vote against it.”
Brightline president Goddard sent an email to Brightline employees last month, according to screenshots shared with Orlando Weekly, where he basically did just that. In his email, Goddard wrote that, while he can now see that some employees feel “unheard,” he’d prefer to approach such discontent “by working together, without a third party involved.”
“There is a legal process that is currently playing out and we will keep the team updated as more information becomes available,” Goddard wrote.
Brightline, a private company, has already been awarded billions of dollars in federal grants to construct its high-speed rail line out west — a connection from Las Vegas to Southern California — and has similarly sought out government funds for expansion plans in Florida.
“Elected officials in Florida are sending a clear message to Brightline — stop interfering with Brightline’s onboard workers' efforts to form a union," wrote union president Samuelsen in a statement responding to the congressional delegation's show of support. “Brightline must stop delaying an election so workers can join the TWU and begin collective bargaining.”
In addition to anti-union messaging, the TWU has said that Brightline is also trying to delay a union election by claiming it does not fall under the jurisdiction of the National Mediation Board, which oversees union elections in the rail and airline industries.
Instead, Brightline has argued that a union election should take place through the National Labor Relations Board, which oversee private sector labor relations in all other industries. The union, however, has claimed this argument is meant to drag out the organizing process, thus giving Brightline (and their lawyers) more time to intimidate employees against unionization.
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