Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

19. Department of Transportation · Notable

Restore the original intent of Section 10(c) of the Urban Mass Transportation Act

Not started

635 19. Department of Transportation

“Section 10(c) of the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964 was initially intended to protect bargaining rights for workers in privately owned transit systems that were being absorbed by government-operated agencies. The provision has mutated into a requirement that any transit agency receiving federal funds cannot reduce compensation, an interpretation that far exceeds the original statute. … Returning to the original intent would allow transit agencies to adjust fringe benefits without fearing a federal lawsuit.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    The transit labor protections the Quote calls Section 10(c) are codified at 49 U.S.C. 5333(b), and the Department of Labor's certification program under them is running unchanged: DOL sought renewal of the information collection for Protections for Transit Workers Under Section 5333(b) on 2025-12-22 and submitted it to OMB on 2026-03-05, in both cases describing the existing certification process. No rulemaking, guidance withdrawal or interpretive change narrows the provision to the acquisition of privately owned systems, and no bill in the 119th Congress amends it.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Naming the instrument mattered here: the Mandate’s “Section 10(c) of the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964” is the transit employee protective arrangement now at 49 U.S.C. 5333(b), administered by DOL’s Office of Labor-Management Standards, not by FTA. A Federal Register full-text search for the quoted phrase “transit employee protective arrangements” returns zero documents; “section 5333(b)” returns the two DOL information-collection notices above and nothing else.
  • dol.gov is a 403 wall at the apex (round 4), so the OLMS 5333(b) guidance pages could not be read; the Federal Register notices carry the fact that the program continues. (Noted 2026-09-03: dol.gov/agencies/... sub-paths answer 200 to a plain curl — see #1615 — so this is worth one more attempt by whoever next touches the item.)
  • Checked 2026-09-03 against FTA’s November 2025 CIG Policy Guidance (transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/2025-11/CIG-Policy-Guidance-November-2025.pdf, read in full) and DOT Order 2100.7 of 2025-01-29, the two instruments that reset FTA’s grant standards inside the window. Neither mentions section 10(c), section 13(c), the Urban Mass Transportation Act or transit employee protective arrangements at all: across 5,000 lines of the guidance, “Urban Mass Transportation”, “section 10(c)” and “13(c)” each return zero. The negative for this ask now reaches the binding CIG guidance and the Secretary’s own department-wide order, not only the Federal Register.
Action
restore
Object
Section 10(c) of the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964
ID
1747