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WOLVES IN WOLVES CLOTHING
When President Bush’s hand-picked Amtrak Board of Directors in August 2006 appointed (without Senate confirmation) Alex Kummant -- a former Union Pacific marketing executive -- as Amtrak’s president, a major rail shipper familiar with Kummant told a transportation law journal, "If you backed Alex into a corner and demanded he tell you everything he knows about railroads, he wouldn’t be talking more than a couple of minutes."
Kummant appears equally challenged in labor relations, where he and his chief labor negotiator, Joe Bress, stumble from one fiasco to another with the grace of a five-car derailment.
Earlier this year, Kummant and Bress sought to shower a 13 percent raise on Amtrak managers even though contract employees hadn’t received a compensation boost in almost eight years.
Lawmakers demonstrated to Kummant, once a CEO of a German steamroller manufacturer, the congressional version of Mannheim Steamroller, flattening quickly his cuckoo notion of workplace inequity.
"Now Kummant and his sidekick Bress are at it again," says UTU Vice President Tony Iannone. "Dressed as wolves in wolves clothing, they are out to trick their employees by treating truth as a rail spike to be assaulted with John Henry's hammer."
Consider the difference between the fiction Kummant and Bress authorized to be printed in a "special employee advisory," and the facts:
AMTRAK FICTION: Amtrak claims it wants "medical plan cost controls consistent with the freight settlements that extend through 2009."
FACT: Amtrak demanded that health care benefits for workers who become sick and injured, and go on disability, be cut in half. Even the freights didn’t stoop so low as to ask for such a muckworm giveback.
AMTRAK FICTION: Amtrak boasts it offered signing bonuses of $4,500 and a 25 percent wage increase.
FACT: Amtrak never offered the majority of unions without contracts -- who have been bargaining now more than eight years -- anything other than no back pay (none!), and has never put any wage increase proposals on the table.
AMTRAK FICTION: Amtrak says it wants "work rule and productivity changes unique to each union," and promises "no involuntary furloughs resulting from work-rules changes."
FACT: Amtrak has demanded the right to contract out bargaining unit jobs from each union, which makes every job less secure.
Amtrak also demanded rules where only straight time will be paid (i.e., work four hours, break for up to eight hours, and come back later and work another four hours). This could force employees to ‘hang around’ for 16 hours to collect eight hours’ pay. It is not a productivity change; it is an earnings cut.
Amtrak also wants authority to fire employees without a hearing, which is a form of harassment, intimidation and abuse -- not a productivity improvement. Finally, Amtrak wants the freedom not to answer employee grievances, making management even less accountable.
AMTRAK FICTION: Amtrak claims it has been working to reach agreements with all of its unions.
FACT: Amtrak is suing to start the already eight-year bargaining process from scratch, insists Amtrak employees are not entitled to freight railroad wage scales, and claims freight-rail equivalent work rules (under which the freights are one of the most productive industries in America) will choke Amtrak competitiveness.
AMTRAK FICTION: Amtrak claims that eliminating the jobs of assistant conductors and yardmasters will not affect rail safety or national security.
FACT: This is worse than rolling the dice on safety; it is thumbing the nose at passenger safety and national security. Of this lunatic proposal, UTU International President Paul Thompson said, "I told our national legislative director that when Amtrak begs for lobbying help on Capitol Hill, to tell Amtrak, 'We don’t go there anymore.'"
Said Iannone: "Amtrak’s unionized workforce has become chopped liver to Kummant and Bress. Alex Kummant is revealing himself as a manager who does not stand up for his employees; and when managers won't stand up for their employees, those employees won't stand up for management. He has slapped us in the face. We won't turn the other cheek."
