Activities
In addition to membership service, the ATU engages in politics, promoting such causes as increased transit funding, energy independence, and the maintenance of a publicly-funded Social Security system. The Department of Training & Field Mobilization works with ATU locals to foster member participation in the union, and build community-based campaigns for transit. In turn, these community-based campaigns will nurture coalitions and build grassroots support for increased flexibility in federal and state transit funding, reducing fares and improving access to transit.
In November 2010, the ATU, the Transportation Equity Network (TEN), the Transport Workers Union (TWU), other labor unions, and transit advocates convened a "boot camp" in Chicago, IL. Activists from varying backgrounds discussed the issues facing both union members and transit riders, and identified opportunities to work together in the future to address the nation's transit crisis. The ATU and Good Jobs First convened a second boot camp for transit advocates in Silver Spring, MD in March 2011.
In 2008, the ATU endorsed Hillary Clinton in her bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination; after she conceded defeat, the ATU endorsed Barack Obama in his successful bid for President.
A similar union affiliate with AFL-CIO is the Transport Workers Union of America, which represents transit workers at the New York City Transit Authority and SEPTA in Philadelphia, among others.
Read more about this topic: Amalgamated Transit Union
Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“As life developed, I faced each problem as it came along. As my activities and work broadened and reached out, I never tried to shirk. I tried never to evade an issue. When I found I had something to do—I just did it.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“If it is to be done well, child-rearing requires, more than most activities of life, a good deal of decentering from one’s own needs and perspectives. Such decentering is relatively easy when a society is stable and when there is an extended, supportive structure that the parent can depend upon.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)