BY ANDREA MORELL
BOSTON - One of the initiators of a civil rights lawsuit
against Amtrak is now facing disciplinary charges by the
passenger rail carrier, charging him with allegedly making
false statements on a job application nine years ago.
William Regan, who works as a mechanic in the buildings and bridges department at Boston's commuter rail system, is a member and former president of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWE) Local 987. He is accused of omitting one prior employer on his job application and failing to disclose a workmen's compensation claim in a pre-employment medical questionnaire.
Though the disciplinary proceedings against Regan were initiated nearly a decade after his alleged misstatements, they came less than two months after he provided information to attorneys for plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Amtrak charging the passenger railroad nationwide with discrimination in hiring, training, job assignments, pay, promotions, discipline, and discharging of workers who are Black. The suit also cites racial slurs and abuses by some supervisors.
"Given the nature and timing of this charge, we regard it as a transparent attempt to retaliate against Regan for his role in helping the plaintiffs in this case," wrote Warren Kaplan in a letter to Amtrak attorneys. Kaplan is an attorney for the plaintiffs and a member of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, based in Washington, D.C., which is supporting the lawsuit.
The civil rights lawsuit was filed in federal court in the District of Columbia in April 1998. Ten current and former employees in Boston, Philadelphia, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Washington, D. C., as well as the BMWE union in Philadelphia, are named plaintiffs. As a class action suit, attorneys say it represents 1,000 Black employees and another 4,000 rejected applicants.
Regan is a longtime advocate of affirmative action and equality on the job. The lawsuit grew in part out of his and other workers' efforts to win affirmative action hiring in the engineering division of the commuter rail where they worked. They cited the presence of only a handful of Black workers out of a workforce of more than 400.
Workers also protested an on-the-job atmosphere of racial intolerance by some supervisors and attempted intimidation of them. Regan and other workers told their story to an alternative newspaper, the Boston Phoenix, in 1997.
Subsequently, there was an acceleration of hiring of workers who are Black and female for jobs as assistant conductors at the commuter rail.
A picket line and rally held outside Boston's South Station the same year drew rail workers and community activists protesting the beating and hospitalization of an Amtrak worker from Eritrea by a co-worker who was white. Demonstrators demanded the carrier provide a workplace safe from racist-inspired violence for all workers.
The discrimination lawsuit against Amtrak is now in pretrial negotiations.
Andrea Morell is a member of United Transportation Union Local 898.