During the past couple of weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to travel to some of the work locations of our new members who had worked for Greyhound’s former subsidiaries. It was good to meet with them and to hear their experiences as they become part of our once again growing union. We’ve faced all of the predictable problems in merging the work and the workforces, as well as a few unpredictable ones, and I think we’re doing pretty well at making the adjustment.

The Run Committee is in Dallas this week putting together what we all hope will be as balanced a run bid as we can make. The fall bid is scheduled to go into effect on August 19. Thanks to everyone who has been participating in the process.

The company says they are continuing to work on problems with online bidding of work. They hope to have a fix soon for the problem of not being able to tell who has bid on hold downs and permanent vacancies. This past week, they were able to fix the problem of the system awarding hold downs to drivers who were not active at award time. Thanks to those who called attention to those errors.

In a huge legislative victory for the ATU, Congress has passed legislation to require federal regulators to revoke the licenses of the infamous, illegal curbside carriers that have unfairly snatched much of our work over the past several years. The new law was needed because, even though many curbside carriers operated in violation of numerous laws, the union’s attempts to get the government to enforce existing laws failed. The bill is now awaiting the President’s signature.

The Local 1700 executive board will be meeting during the week of August 11 in Chicago. We will consider many grievances for arbitration, and we will continue making plans for our fall activities, mainly an all out effort to help elect labor-friendly and public transportation-friendly candidates this fall.