Accelerated investment in high-speed rail networks will be among the programs Sen. Barack Obama would institute as president, the senator told an audience in Flint, Mich., June 16.

Obama pledged to "launch a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that will invest $60 billion over ten years – a bank that can leverage private investment in infrastructure improvements, and create nearly two million new jobs.

“We can invest in rail, so that cities like Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Louis are connected by high-speed trains, and folks have alternatives to air travel," Obama said. "That’s what we can do if we commit to rebuild a stronger America."

By contrast, Sen. John McCain is pursuing policies to do away with job protections for transit and commuter workers.

The AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department, in reviewing McCain’s Senate voting record, notes that McCain has voted to gut labor protection provisions from the law that currently provide rail transit and Amtrak employees with cherished income protection.

In fact, if McCain were successful in his anti-labor objectives, elimination of those labor protections also could gut labor protection for freight rail workers, as federal regulation sets freight-rail employee labor protection of six years based on labor protection available to transit and Amtrak workers.