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DUTY TO BARGAIN AS AGREED
The UTU has asked a federal court to order the nation’s major railroads to bargain in good faith and honor an almost five-year-old written agreement to address in national negotiations the subjects of entry rates of pay related to employee training and experience.
The lawsuit was filed in federal district court in E. St. Louis, Ill., against BNSF, CSX, Kansas City Southern, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific -- the five major freight railroads with which, since November 2004, the UTU has been attempting to negotiate a new national agreement. The carriers are negotiating under the umbrella of the National Carriers’ Conference Committee (NCCC).
When the most recent agreement between the UTU and the NCCC was negotiated in August 2002, the carriers signed a side letter to the agreement pledging that, "at the earliest opportunity in the [current] national bargaining round, the matter of relating the existing service scales [entry rates] in effect on each participating road to training and experience will be addressed."
Instead, the carriers have declined to discuss the issues and, in January 2007, insisted the UTU withdraw its request to address entry rates, and defer to a national wage and rules panel (outside the collective bargaining arena) the matter of training.
“The carriers have been playing a shell game with us" said UTU International President Paul Thompson. "The blatant dishonesty of the carrier labor negotiators is precisely why the UTU has teamed with shippers to support increased federal oversight of the railroads, and why we are separately asking Congress, in a comprehensive safety bill, to mandate a minimum level of employee training.
“The railroads cannot be trusted to put safety and national security ahead of profitability," Thompson said. "The railroads have so convinced investors of their market power to pillage shippers and assault labor that billions of dollars in private equity and hedge fund capital is pouring into the rail industry.
“The expectation of these fast-buck artists -- many of whom have a history of destroying companies by piling on debt and firing employees -- is that railroads will double their freight rates and use the cash not to improve safety, training and customer service, but to fund a massive buyback of stock intended to pump-up share prices. In the meantime, shippers, the public and labor are being damned once again by railroad barons.
“Our lawsuit," Thompson said, "is only one of many aggressive tools we intend to use in the courts, in Congress and elsewhere to stop this runaway gravy train before it destroys more lives in its quest for a sharp boost in short-term profits at any human cost."
The UTU lawsuit lays out the carriers’ dishonesty since the carriers signed the August 2002 side letter pledging to address entry rates of pay related to training and experience. As recently as February 2006, the UTU made another attempt to address these issues at the bargaining table.
When the NCCC said it would subsequently address the issues -- but then declined to set a date to do so -- the UTU filed a lawsuit similar to this one, but withdrew it following a commitment by NCCC chief labor negotiator Bob Allen to set dates for addressing the issues.
Yet at subsequent bargaining sessions in June and October 2006, and January 2007, the NCCC reneged yet again.
In fact, at a January 2007 negotiating session, the NCCC insisted the UTU withdraw from the table its entry-pay proposal and defer its training agreement proposal to a wage rules panel -- actions that violate the Railway Labor Act’s requirement that carriers "exert every reasonable effort to make and maintain agreements concerning rates of pay, rules and working conditions."
The entry-rates proposal the UTU asked the NCCC to address would boost new hire pay to 90 percent of parity following completion of the probationary period, and hike that pay to 100 percent of parity upon completion of one year’s service. The new hires also would receive, as a bonus following their first year, the 10 percent of parity not paid them during their first year of employment.
The UTU also presented the carriers with a detailed proposal for improved training, which the carriers declined even to discuss -- much less address -- at the bargaining table.
