Our Own Senator Orrin Hatch

Utah Senator Orrin Hatch has stated that both former district court judge Paul G. Cassell and Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens are honorable and ethical men. We report, you decide.

We received an email from one of the bus operators who had looked at this site. He stated that he is supportive of our cause but not our methods which he believes belittle the bus drivers. This is not our intent and there is no animosity on our part towards anyone who works in the bus divisions. The problem is that the railroad skills that we in light rail and those at commuter rail possess are not compensated by UTA. ATU Local 382 deliberately allows UTA to classify rail operations the same as bus operations. The fact is that there are additional skills required for these jobs. Throughout the United States railroad jobs historically pay considerably higher wages for very legitimate reasons. The jobs require considerably more training, especially for commuter rail engineers who must meet Federal Railroad Administration requirements. But ATU Local 382 allows UTA to pay their commuter rail engineers the lowest wages in the nation and the training is the shortest that we know of. This should be very alarming to the general public who probably do not give it much thought when they board those trains. UTA and ATU drove the wedge between the bus and rail divisions. We did not. So while we empathize with our letter writer, we stand by everything that we have written here. It is time for bus employees to start demanding a decertification vote for the Amalgamated Transit Union. By law, when the membership falls below 50%, which is the case with ATU Local 382, the company is supposed to have a decertification vote. However, as our lawsuit demonstrated, there is no agency, state or federal, that will enforce labor law at UTA. The company will never, and I repeat never, decertify a union that gives them everything they want.