Union Chief Slams Lack of Federal Standards for Transit Workers

(Bloomberg) -- Federal mandates are needed to ensure bus drivers, flight attendants, transit workers and other transportation workers have protective gear because a patchwork of employer responses to the pandemic has put some workers at risk, a union leader plans to tell lawmakers on Wednesday.

Inconsistent practices in the face of coronavirus across the U.S. transportation system have been inadequate and mandatory safety rules are needed, Larry Willis, president of the AFL-CIO's Transportation Trades Department, said in written testimony prepared for a Senate hearing on Wednesday.

“Let's be clear: these failures and inactions have directly caused infections and cost lives that could have been saved with early and well-coordinated strategies,” said Willis, whose labor organization represents 32 transportation-related unions.

For example, Amtrak prohibited employees from using gloves or masks until being “pressured into reversing course” and masks that a freight railroad provided to conductors and engineers were “of such poor quality that facial hair poked straight through the fabric,” Willis said in the written remarks.

Willis plans to testify Wednesday at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on how the transportation sector and critical infrastructure have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Other witnesses include officials from trade associations representing automobile manufacturers, the trucking industry and large railroads.

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