Amtrak runs into flack over outsourcing plan

By Michael Cooney, NetworkWorld.com, 07/10/06

Amtrak always seems to be in a fight for its life. Now the national rail line is under fire for saying it wants to outsource maintenance, on-board food service and call-center operations in an effort to save money.

Published reports say U.S. Senators Robert C. Byrd, D-WV., and Patty Murray, D-WA, wrote to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta and David M. Laney, Chairman of the Amtrak Board of Directors, to protest the outsourcing plan and to urge the railroad not to take jobs out of the United States. The letter was also sent to U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta along with the other members of the Amtrak Board. If the railroad does not reverse its plans, the Senators pledged to offer an amendment to the Amtrak funding legislation that would block the overseas outsourcing plan.
Byrd and Murray are prominent Democratic members of the Senate Appropriations Committee and transportation subcommittee respectively. Both will play key roles in moving the current federal transportation funding bill, which includes Amtrak’s operating funds, slated to move through the Appropriations Committee this month.
“After having to fight to keep Amtrak alive in the face of budgets that would have put the railroad into bankruptcy, now we are fighting to keep Amtrak’s jobs here in the United States,” the Senators wrote. “Amtrak is America’s railroad. It is funded in part with American tax dollars. Its jobs should be American jobs.”
Amtrak is seeking $1.6 billion in government funding this year, and has been roundly criticized by President Bush and Republican lawmakers, who would like cut funding for the organization or make it operate as a privately.
“We believe it is wrong to use taxpayer dollars to ship Amtrak jobs overseas and put American workers on the unemployment line. This policy insults American taxpayers who expect their elected and appointed leaders to strengthen rather than erode the economic security of hard-working American families….We believe that the vast majority of taxpayers would agree with us that it is wrong-headed and inappropriate to use their tax dollars to ship jobs overseas -- especially jobs necessary to operate our national passenger railroad,” Byrd and Murray wrote.

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