Transportation Trades Department, AFL–CIO
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| Full name | Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO |
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| Founded | February 1990 |
| Affiliation | AFL–CIO |
| Key people | Larry I. Willis, President Greg Regan, Secretary-Treasurer |
| Office location | Washington, D.C. |
| Country | United States |
| Website | www.ttd.org |
The Transportation Trades Department, AFL–CIO (TTD) is a constitutionally mandated department of the AFL–CIO. It was founded in February 1990 to provide AFL-CIO-affiliated unions whose members work in the transportation industry or who build transportation infrastructure a unified policy-making voice on transportation issues. TTD had 32 member unions as of August 2017.
The TTD is divided into five sections, each of which covers a different area of transportation: Railroads, trucking, aviation, mass transit, and maritime transportation. Each section is headed by a president of a union in that transportation sector. By 2014, many maritime unions who used to be members of the Maritime Trades Department, are now members of the TTD.
Efforts to create a department within the AFL-CIO which united all transportation unions began in the 1960s. The effort received a boost two decades later when Richard I. Kilroy, President of the Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks, and James Kennedy, President of the Transportation Communication Union, began advocating for a new, unified transportation trades department after the abolition of the Railway Employees Department in 1980. The idea was not well-received until after 1987, when the Teamsters (a major transportation union) reaffiliated with the AFL-CIO.
At its founding, TTD represented 1.4 million (10 percent) of the AFL-CIO's 14 million members. Richard I. Kilroy was named the first president of the new department. Walter Shea (director of the Eastern Conference of Teamsters in Washington, D.C.) was elected Secretary-Treasurer. James Kennedy, who was also the executive director of the Railway Labor Executives' Association, was named TTD's first (and, at the time, only) full-time professional staff person.
The United Transportation Union did not join TTD at its formation.
The TTD's inaugural convention was held in early October 1990 in Washington, D.C., with representatives from its 24 member unions (who represented more than 1 million members). The largest delegations came from the Teamsters, the International Association of Machinists, and the Association of Flight Attendants. Other unions well represented at the convention included the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, Communications Workers of America, International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, Marine Engineers Beneficial Association, Transport Workers Union, Transportation Communication Union, United Auto Workers, and the United Steelworkers of America. Richard Kilroy was elected to a five-year term as TTD President.
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