Save Our Trains Michigan
Conductor
This is an e mail i got from my union the UTU.
CREW CONSIST, FELA DOMINATE LABOR TALKS WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Negotiations between a dozen unions and the five largest U.S. freight railroads for new contracts to cover 155,000 employees have barely begun, but already face stumbling blocks, reports Larry Swisher in Daily Labor Report..
Although face-to-face sessions have yet to be scheduled, the latest round of national bargaining officially began Nov. 1, when the National Carriers' Conference Committee, representing the railroads, began exchanging written lists of demands with the unions, which negotiate separately except on health and welfare issues.
Heading the carriers' list of major demands is a proposal to do away with minimum crew sizes on trains as well as to eliminate the different operating employee crafts, such as engineer, conductor, and switchman. Instead, the railroads want to be able to use a single qualified "transportation employee" to operate a train under some conditions instead of the current requirement for at least one engineer and one conductor on each locomotive.
Unions leaders said the proposal raises safety and other concerns and has the potential of forcing some of the various unions that represent the operating crafts to go out of business or merge with others.
Paul Thompson, president of the United Transportation Union, which represents most conductors, said because of the railroads' "extreme" demands," we are in store for a difficult round of negotiations."
The unions also are fighting another sweeping proposal by the railroads to replace the industry's unique workers' compensation system, established under the1908 Federal Employers' Liability Act (FELA).That law permits railroad workers who suffer serious injuries on the job to sue companies for damages in addition to lost wages and medical costs.
Labor leaders vowed to oppose the railroads' bid to develop a legislative proposal for Congress that would enact a no-fault-type program like the joint federal-state workers' compensation system for on-the-job injuries in most other industries.
The current contracts, which become amendable Jan. 1, will remain in effect indefinitely as long as negotiations continue. In previous rounds, the two sides sometimes have taken three or four years to reach agreements.
Don Hahs, president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, which represents30,000 engineers and other railroad workers, said the key issue in this round of negotiations is the carriers' proposal to do away with the traditional train operating and engine service crafts and consolidate them into a "transportation employee" category, working under a single collective bargaining agreement.
"I doubt very seriously that they'll get to that point," Hahs told BNA Nov. 19. Hahs said he believes the railroads' underlying goal is to secure changes in the contracts that will enable them to dictate how many employees and which ones will make up the crew for any train, depending on the workload and trip ."Everything with the carriers is cost control--doing more with less," he said. “People are not equipment."
The carriers, which include the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Co., CSX Transportation, Kansas City Southern Railway Co., Norfolk Southern Railway Co., and Union Pacific, have increased volume, revenues, and employment over the past year as economic growth has picked up. Currently, because of a shortage of qualified crews and booming freight business, employees are working too many days and shifts without sufficient rest, Hahs and UTU officials agreed.
"They are being pushed in many cases beyond their limit," Hahs said, adding that a number of accidents have occurred recently because of fatigue. The far-reaching implications of the railroads' train crew proposal prompted BLE, which competes with UTU for membership among operating employees, to ask all rail unions to join in a coalition to bargain collectively with the carriers, presenting a united front against the crew change. By agreeing to bargain jointly, the unions could prevent the railroads from reaching a detrimental agreement with one union that would become a pattern for subsequent negotiations with the others, Hahs said.
UTU represents about 46,000 employees. In response to the coalition proposition, UTU along with most other major rail labor organizations sent representatives to a meeting Nov. 22 in Washington, D.C., aimed at reaching agreement on the proposed coalition.
UTU and the Transportation Communications Union declined to join, however, according to Hahs and a UTU spokesman. Organizations representing maintenance of way employees, signalmen, firemen, and oilers agreed to be part of the group, Hahs said, and most other unions also are expected to join. "Obviously we left the door open for the others to reconsider and be a part of it as time goes by," he told BNA Nov. 23. Even without UTU and TCU, the group will represent a majority--probably about 53 percent--of all railroad workers, he said.
UTU spokesman Frank Wilner said UTU already has an agreement with the carriers that every train will carry a conductor, while BLE does not have a similar agreement for engineers. "Only a fool would open the hen house door and provide a power of attorney and negotiating power to someone who might not have the best interests of the UTU at heart," Wilner said.
The current contracts require the railroads to use more employees than needed with today's improved technology and increased use of computers and other technology, NCCC Chairman Robert Allen said Nov. 9. "So we want to use only those number of employees required, not more," Allen said in an interview.
The fact that the operating employees have two unions is "their business," Allen said. "But it's like having two unions in the cockpit of an airplane. It doesn't make sense." If the change to a one-person crew means the two unions have to merge, "so be it," he said.
Unlike most railroad unions, UTU is not affiliated with the AFL-CIO, and the rivalry between UTU and BLE has intensified since BLE members voted in December 2001 to reject a proposed merger with UTU. This year, both BLE and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes, which represents about 35,000 workers, voted to join the International Brotherhood of Teamsters as independent divisions in anew railway conference of the IBT.
The carriers' group explained that over the past 20 years, new technologies, such as remote control devices, have been introduced that improve both the safety and productivity of railroad operations.
Despite recent growth in freight volume and income, companies still struggle to fund the high capital costs of building and maintaining rail infrastructure, Allen said. Consolidating the operating employee crafts and reducing crew sizes will lead to "steady business growth, new job opportunities in the long run, and a stronger, more balanced national transportation system," the railroads said.
A growing number of retirements among the aging rail workforce will allow the productivity improvements to be made without causing employees to lose jobs, Allen said. Amtrak, which bargains separately from the freight carriers, has used one-person passenger train crews on limited-duration trips for many years, he said. "When we can safely operate with one person, that's what we're after," Allen said.
But Hahs said one-person Amtrak trains are allowed only on trips lasting less than six hours. The Northeast corridor, where most of those trains operate, has automatic train stops, so if something happens to the engineer, the train cannot move, he said. "There's a lot to be considered" in discussing crew sizes and composition, Hahs said. He suggested that the railroads would be better off keeping two operating employees on each train, but training conductors to relieve engineers for short periods en route to reduce fatigue. "It would make for safer operating and wouldn't take near the redefining of the workplace," he said.
Allen criticized the rail workers' compensation system under the Federal Employers' Liability Act as a "a fault-based system that pits one side against the other. "Many injury claims end up in court and jury trials, he said. "A lot of time and money" is spent on the process, and a large portion of the damages awarded goes to trial lawyers, not the employees, Allen said. "This system breeds corruption," he added. "We feel strongly that FELA needs to be changed," he said. "We're asking labor to work with us on a win-win solution and together go to Congress."
Critics of the system gained fuel for their arguments with the recent convictions of two former UTU officials on racketeering charges for soliciting cash payments from lawyers who received official approval from the Cleveland-based union to represent members in FELA cases.
In July, a federal judge sentenced former UTU presidents Byron Boyd of Seattle and Charles A Little of Leander, Texas, to serve two years in prison without parole and forfeit to the government $100,000 each in racketeering proceeds.
UTU spokesman Frank Wilner said replacing FELA would reduce safety and that the union responded to the scandal by terminating the two officers and establishing an ethics board headed by former National Mediation Board Chairman Joshua Javits.
The new board has created and will enforce rules of conduct for UTU-approved attorneys as well as for all UTU officers, members, and employees. To continue to be designated by the union to represent members, attorneys had to attest in writing that they did not make any such illegal cash contributions.
"When juries award damages under FELA, strong messages are sent to carriers that they cannot ignore workplace safety without paying an even greater price than if they corrected the unsafe workplace conditions to begin with," UTU's Thompson said.
The railroads need to do a better job of "protecting the public and their employees from real dangers rather than attacking an injury compensation program," Wilner said. "This is another shocking example of putting profit above safety."
(The preceding story, by Larry Swisher, was published by Daily Labor Report, a division of the Bureau of National Affairs)
CREW CONSIST, FELA DOMINATE LABOR TALKS WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Negotiations between a dozen unions and the five largest U.S. freight railroads for new contracts to cover 155,000 employees have barely begun, but already face stumbling blocks, reports Larry Swisher in Daily Labor Report..
Although face-to-face sessions have yet to be scheduled, the latest round of national bargaining officially began Nov. 1, when the National Carriers' Conference Committee, representing the railroads, began exchanging written lists of demands with the unions, which negotiate separately except on health and welfare issues.
Heading the carriers' list of major demands is a proposal to do away with minimum crew sizes on trains as well as to eliminate the different operating employee crafts, such as engineer, conductor, and switchman. Instead, the railroads want to be able to use a single qualified "transportation employee" to operate a train under some conditions instead of the current requirement for at least one engineer and one conductor on each locomotive.
Unions leaders said the proposal raises safety and other concerns and has the potential of forcing some of the various unions that represent the operating crafts to go out of business or merge with others.
Paul Thompson, president of the United Transportation Union, which represents most conductors, said because of the railroads' "extreme" demands," we are in store for a difficult round of negotiations."
The unions also are fighting another sweeping proposal by the railroads to replace the industry's unique workers' compensation system, established under the1908 Federal Employers' Liability Act (FELA).That law permits railroad workers who suffer serious injuries on the job to sue companies for damages in addition to lost wages and medical costs.
Labor leaders vowed to oppose the railroads' bid to develop a legislative proposal for Congress that would enact a no-fault-type program like the joint federal-state workers' compensation system for on-the-job injuries in most other industries.
The current contracts, which become amendable Jan. 1, will remain in effect indefinitely as long as negotiations continue. In previous rounds, the two sides sometimes have taken three or four years to reach agreements.
Don Hahs, president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, which represents30,000 engineers and other railroad workers, said the key issue in this round of negotiations is the carriers' proposal to do away with the traditional train operating and engine service crafts and consolidate them into a "transportation employee" category, working under a single collective bargaining agreement.
"I doubt very seriously that they'll get to that point," Hahs told BNA Nov. 19. Hahs said he believes the railroads' underlying goal is to secure changes in the contracts that will enable them to dictate how many employees and which ones will make up the crew for any train, depending on the workload and trip ."Everything with the carriers is cost control--doing more with less," he said. “People are not equipment."
The carriers, which include the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Co., CSX Transportation, Kansas City Southern Railway Co., Norfolk Southern Railway Co., and Union Pacific, have increased volume, revenues, and employment over the past year as economic growth has picked up. Currently, because of a shortage of qualified crews and booming freight business, employees are working too many days and shifts without sufficient rest, Hahs and UTU officials agreed.
"They are being pushed in many cases beyond their limit," Hahs said, adding that a number of accidents have occurred recently because of fatigue. The far-reaching implications of the railroads' train crew proposal prompted BLE, which competes with UTU for membership among operating employees, to ask all rail unions to join in a coalition to bargain collectively with the carriers, presenting a united front against the crew change. By agreeing to bargain jointly, the unions could prevent the railroads from reaching a detrimental agreement with one union that would become a pattern for subsequent negotiations with the others, Hahs said.
UTU represents about 46,000 employees. In response to the coalition proposition, UTU along with most other major rail labor organizations sent representatives to a meeting Nov. 22 in Washington, D.C., aimed at reaching agreement on the proposed coalition.
UTU and the Transportation Communications Union declined to join, however, according to Hahs and a UTU spokesman. Organizations representing maintenance of way employees, signalmen, firemen, and oilers agreed to be part of the group, Hahs said, and most other unions also are expected to join. "Obviously we left the door open for the others to reconsider and be a part of it as time goes by," he told BNA Nov. 23. Even without UTU and TCU, the group will represent a majority--probably about 53 percent--of all railroad workers, he said.
UTU spokesman Frank Wilner said UTU already has an agreement with the carriers that every train will carry a conductor, while BLE does not have a similar agreement for engineers. "Only a fool would open the hen house door and provide a power of attorney and negotiating power to someone who might not have the best interests of the UTU at heart," Wilner said.
The current contracts require the railroads to use more employees than needed with today's improved technology and increased use of computers and other technology, NCCC Chairman Robert Allen said Nov. 9. "So we want to use only those number of employees required, not more," Allen said in an interview.
The fact that the operating employees have two unions is "their business," Allen said. "But it's like having two unions in the cockpit of an airplane. It doesn't make sense." If the change to a one-person crew means the two unions have to merge, "so be it," he said.
Unlike most railroad unions, UTU is not affiliated with the AFL-CIO, and the rivalry between UTU and BLE has intensified since BLE members voted in December 2001 to reject a proposed merger with UTU. This year, both BLE and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes, which represents about 35,000 workers, voted to join the International Brotherhood of Teamsters as independent divisions in anew railway conference of the IBT.
The carriers' group explained that over the past 20 years, new technologies, such as remote control devices, have been introduced that improve both the safety and productivity of railroad operations.
Despite recent growth in freight volume and income, companies still struggle to fund the high capital costs of building and maintaining rail infrastructure, Allen said. Consolidating the operating employee crafts and reducing crew sizes will lead to "steady business growth, new job opportunities in the long run, and a stronger, more balanced national transportation system," the railroads said.
A growing number of retirements among the aging rail workforce will allow the productivity improvements to be made without causing employees to lose jobs, Allen said. Amtrak, which bargains separately from the freight carriers, has used one-person passenger train crews on limited-duration trips for many years, he said. "When we can safely operate with one person, that's what we're after," Allen said.
But Hahs said one-person Amtrak trains are allowed only on trips lasting less than six hours. The Northeast corridor, where most of those trains operate, has automatic train stops, so if something happens to the engineer, the train cannot move, he said. "There's a lot to be considered" in discussing crew sizes and composition, Hahs said. He suggested that the railroads would be better off keeping two operating employees on each train, but training conductors to relieve engineers for short periods en route to reduce fatigue. "It would make for safer operating and wouldn't take near the redefining of the workplace," he said.
Allen criticized the rail workers' compensation system under the Federal Employers' Liability Act as a "a fault-based system that pits one side against the other. "Many injury claims end up in court and jury trials, he said. "A lot of time and money" is spent on the process, and a large portion of the damages awarded goes to trial lawyers, not the employees, Allen said. "This system breeds corruption," he added. "We feel strongly that FELA needs to be changed," he said. "We're asking labor to work with us on a win-win solution and together go to Congress."
Critics of the system gained fuel for their arguments with the recent convictions of two former UTU officials on racketeering charges for soliciting cash payments from lawyers who received official approval from the Cleveland-based union to represent members in FELA cases.
In July, a federal judge sentenced former UTU presidents Byron Boyd of Seattle and Charles A Little of Leander, Texas, to serve two years in prison without parole and forfeit to the government $100,000 each in racketeering proceeds.
UTU spokesman Frank Wilner said replacing FELA would reduce safety and that the union responded to the scandal by terminating the two officers and establishing an ethics board headed by former National Mediation Board Chairman Joshua Javits.
The new board has created and will enforce rules of conduct for UTU-approved attorneys as well as for all UTU officers, members, and employees. To continue to be designated by the union to represent members, attorneys had to attest in writing that they did not make any such illegal cash contributions.
"When juries award damages under FELA, strong messages are sent to carriers that they cannot ignore workplace safety without paying an even greater price than if they corrected the unsafe workplace conditions to begin with," UTU's Thompson said.
The railroads need to do a better job of "protecting the public and their employees from real dangers rather than attacking an injury compensation program," Wilner said. "This is another shocking example of putting profit above safety."
(The preceding story, by Larry Swisher, was published by Daily Labor Report, a division of the Bureau of National Affairs)
