BLE signs new agreement
Brother George Hucker VP/NLR - Canada and Brother Richard Ray, GC-ACR have concluded a new collective agreement with the Wisconsin Central Railway's Canadian property - Algoma Central Railway.
The Agreement includes an across the Board wage increase of 3%, 2 1/2% and 2 1/2% for the 3 year term of the Agreement for all of the employees; an enhanced benefit package applied to 100% of basic including on Extended Health, Dental, and Drug plans; improvement in the vision care; improvements in the life insurance; an upgraded pension contributions package to 10% of earnings; establishment of an employee/management ACR pension Advisory Committee to oversee the Pension Plan; changes in the seniority provisions to protect layoff and recall seniority and better define the crafts at ACR; job posting date provisions better defined; streamlining of the grievance procedure and the establishing of an investigating procedure to follow the national railways collective agreement provisions; bereavement leave to the national standards; passenger train assignments to have two locomotive engineers assigned.
Separate from the universal Agreement, the Brotherhood has established the Locomotive Engineer's training program with input from the Brotherhood; all piloting of foreign trains on ACR lines to be manned by ACR locomotive engineers; establishing a locomotive cab committee; establishing of deadheading procedures for monthly salaried locomotive engineers; establishing of away from home terminals; establishing of calling windows for assignments; establishing of defined rest days for the spareboard; defined overtime provisions for daily worked assignments; establishing of a non taxable per-diem expenses of $27.00 per day.
Brother Richard Ray stated "that the most important aspect of this round of negotiations was the establishing of the locomotive engineer's right to work the Remote Control Locomotive (RCLS) and Belt Pack Technology (BPT) and have that system controlled by the locomotive engineer. It is the first Collective Agreement in Canada where these provisions forms part of a Brotherhood Collective Agreement."
BLE Negotiating Committee Chairman Brother Hucker stated "that this round of negotiations brought back some the concessions given to Wisconsin Central Railway in 1994 to ensure that the company survived in Sault Ste. Marie. The locomotive engineer is still the top paying position on ACR.
Copyright © 1998 Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers - National Legislative Board - Canada