The U.S. Surface Transportation Board (STB) announced that it had appointed Jeremy Ferguson, the president of the Transportation Division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART-TD), to the Board’s Railroad-Shipper Transportation Advisory Council (RSTAC) as an at-large member.

Ferguson brings almost 30 years of railroad industry experience to the council and has been an advocate for improved communications between shippers and railroads.

“Since joining the Board, I have been a proponent of labor being represented on RSTAC, one of the Board’s most important advisory committees,” said STB chairman Martin J. Oberman. “A labor voice on the committee would have provided us with an essential perspective on the causes and potential solutions to the significant degradations of rail service and would have ensured that we understood, firsthand, the fundamental role working men and women have in the essential functioning of the rail network and the problems those workers have faced as a result of the pandemic and working conditions at their railroads. I am confident that Jeremy will fill that crucial role going forward. I am committed to giving rail labor a seat at the table, and I am delighted to appoint Jeremy to the at-large position on RSTAC.”