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About NASHTU
NASHTU’s roots extend back to 1999
when a number of unions and employee associations representing
engineers and related professionals employed by state and local
transportation departments throughout the country began to share
information and discuss common issues and how to address them.
NASHTU, the National Association of State Highway and Transportation
Unions, has now grown into a coalition of 38 unions and affiliates
from 20 states and the District of Columbia representing hundreds of
thousands of state and locally employed public transportation
workers throughout the United States.
The 11th Annual NASHTU Conference was held April 27-29,
2010 in Washington, D.C. Conference participants from around the
nation discussed local responses to state outsourcing policies, and
heard from U.S. DOT Deputy Secretary John Porcari, Members of
Congress, and other transportation experts. NASHTU members also met
with their state’s Representatives and Senators to advocate safe and
cost effective transportation solutions.
NASHTU is pursuing two important
legislative proposals that are designed to protect public safety and
tax dollars as the federal government and states embark on new or
expanded transportation improvement programs.
The first legislative proposal is
H.R. 2104 (Filner), which would require public employees to
perform the inspection on all state and local transportation
projects that utilize federal funds. On transportation
projects, public inspectors ensure that construction standards are
met, that projects meet safety requirements and that the materials
used will stand the test of time. When the construction inspection
function is outsourced, there is no representative of the public on
the job site and private companies are left inspecting other private
companies. Examples in which the lack of public inspection
oversight has resulted in a threat to public safety, increased costs
and project delays include including Boston’s “Big Dig” (where a
concrete slab from a tunnel ceiling fell and killed a woman), the
Los Angeles Red Line Subway (Hollywood Boulevard collapsed), the
8-805 Interchange in San Diego (10,000 defective welds on a seismic
retrofit project), and many other projects.
NASHTU’s second legislative proposal
will ensure taxpayers receive safe, high quality transportation
services at the best possible price by requiring state and local
transportation agencies to prepare a simple cost comparison
prior to contracting for transportation services. Increasingly,
transportation agencies are spending hundreds of millions of federal
dollars on private contracts for architectural, engineering,
construction inspection and related transportation services without
determining if these contracts are cost effective, result in the
construction of safe projects, or in any way serve the public
interest. In state after state, independent and comparative
analyses have determined that outsourcing engineering work and
similar transportation functions costs significantly more than doing
the work with public employees.
Each year, since 2000, NASHTU members
have participated in a national conference in Washington D.C. to
help its members learn more about federal practices and procedures
and generate an exchange of ideas and possible solutions to common
problems.
The annual conferences have
demonstrated that outsourcing for engineering, technical, and other
transportation services is a problem in nearly every state. By
coming together and sharing strategies and perspectives, NASHTU can
help each member union be more successful in its fight to limit
outsourcing. Even though outsourcing has proven to be wasteful and
inefficient, it has strong political and institutional support
within state and local governments and transportation agencies.
The NASHTU attendees have heard from a variety of speakers over the
years including: Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, Former
Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta, Representatives James
Oberstar, Peter DeFazio, Don Young, Stephen Lynch, Elijah Cummings,
Robert Filner, Carolyn Kilpatrick, William Pascrell, Donna Edwards
and Senators Amy Klobuchar, James Jeffords and Robert Menendez.
John Horsley, Executive Director of AASHTO, and Ed Wytkind,
President of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department have also
addressed our Conference.
In 2002, NASHTU produced a highly acclaimed report Highway
Robbery, which focused on the problems of outsourcing (fraud,
inefficiency, and waste) from around the country and brought them
together in one document.
In 2007, NASHTU released Highway
Robbery II, an update of the 2002 report that highlights the
enormous problems, including delays in project delivery, cost
overruns, and reduced project safety that have been created in
recent years when transportation agencies unnecessarily outsource
design, construction management, and inspection on transportation
projects.
For more information, please visit
NASHTU’s website at
www.nasthu.us or call 916-446-0584.
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NASHTU
National Association of State Highway
and Transportation Unions
455 Capitol Mall, Suite 501
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: 916-446-0584 | Fax: 916-446-0489
Copyright ©2010 NASHTU.
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