Spring 2000
Volume 107 - No. 1
Spring 2000
Volume 107 - No. 1
BLE Focus
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers was founded on May 8, 1863. Our 137th anniversary came and went without much celebration or fanfare.
In this issue of the Locomotive Engineers Journal, we take a snapshot of five major issues facing our members today.
The BLE scored an historic victory on February 29, when the National Mediation Board (NMB) announced that the panel appointed in early January to resolve the BLE-UTU representation dispute on the Union Pacific Railroad found in favor of the BLE on the question of establishing a single craft of "Train and Engine Service Employees." While the crisis has passed, the threat has not.
Background
For almost 15 years, the BLE has been subjected to a relentless "good cop/bad cop" routine from the UTU, which alternately urged merger and threatened annihilation. This behavior flowed from the fact that technology increasingly placed the jobs for those individuals represented by the UTU in jeopardy and accelerated the downward spiral in the number of UTU members.
When the BLE did not respond favorably enough to UTU President Fred Hardin's overtures in the 1980s, the response was an attempt to steal the BLE representation rights for locomotive engineers on the Norfolk Southern, which was defeated after the rank and file was mobilized in support of the BLE.
UTU President Tom DuBose approached BLE President Ron McLaughlin in the early 1990s, again seeking a merger. Ten-member committees were named by each chief to see what potential was there.
While certain concerns led the BLE leadership to conclude that merger was not feasible, President McLaughlin suggested a number of ways that bridges between the two unions could be built, fostering an atmosphere of trust. One way was to allocate funds by a "first of the month" dues structure, identical to that used in Canada. Another was to build joint bargaining committees, so that negotiations could proceed on a joint basis. These proposals were rejected outright.
Late in 1996 and early in 1997, UTU President Little made another such overture to the BLE. President Monin's initial response was to pick up where his predecessor had left off; he invited the UTU to participate in the BLE Wage/Rule Study Panel created by the 1996 national agreement.
President Little responded in two ways. First, UTU published Monin's offer, claiming that it proved that the BLE was in over its head and unable to represent its members without the UTU's help. Next, in the spring of 1997, UTU attempted to introduce an amendment that would have changed the Railway Labor Act to require a single union for operating crafts, with immediate elections throughout the industry.
What followed next - and has lasted over two years - has been documented in detail in all of the BLE's publications. On January 12, 1998, UTU filed an application with the NMB seeking the destruction of the historically self-organized operating crafts in the Class I railroad industry, and the establishment of a single operating craft. UTU also asked the NMB to order a representation election for this new craft on the Union Pacific Railroad (UP).
UTU was quickly blasted by the rest of Rail Labor for its actions, and a conviction for violating Article XX of the AFL-CIO Constitution (barring raiding of another affiliate) followed within a matter of weeks. Mediation efforts by former AFL-CIO President Tom Donahue failed, and the NMB application went forward.
Support for the BLE's position was unanimous throughout the labor movement, with the AFL-CIO and nine other rail unions filing briefs on our behalf with the NMB. Moreover, data produced by the UP at NMB's order showed that the amount of "cross-utilization" of engineers in train service - or vice versa - was practically nil. When the relevant case law was applied to the facts developed at the hearing, the outcome of the case should have been obvious.
However, when year's end approached with still no decision by NMB, the Board referred the case to an independent panel. That panel decided the issue in BLE's favor in late February, and the NMB then adopted the ruling and dismissed UTU's application.
Update
The UTU filed a Petition for Reconsideration, asking the NMB to review and overturn the panel's decision, a move which the BLE opposes, and which the AFL-CIO has stated will bring the NMB's credibility and competence into question. UTU next dropped out of the AFL-CIO, to avoid additional and more severe penalties for violating the "no raiding" clause of the Federation's Constitution.
UTU's argument is based, in part, on a March 1 ruling by the NMB combining all operating crafts on the Texas Mexican Railway (TexMex) into a single craft. The UTU had petitioned for this action in response to the BLE's request for a representation election, after a large majority of TexMex locomotive engineers signed "A" cards, indicating that they want to be represented by the BLE. After combining the crafts, the NMB also ruled that there could be no representation election on TexMex for two years, despite the fact that enough additional "Train and Engine Service" employees signed "A" cards on the BLE's behalf to give us majority support.
In early May, the UTU filed "A" cards - and an application to combine all operating crafts - on the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis. The NMB's investigation into this request is in its earliest stages. The UTU also has taken steps on CSX and Norfolk Southern to attempt to provide for one single seniority date, which would govern an operating employee's seniority in all operating crafts.
What's in Store?
The reason behind UTU's attack on the BLE is simple; the UTU is a union in steep decline. It has lost members for decades, while the number of active BLE members has risen by a third during the 1990s. The UTU's leaders apparently foresee their own demise and have decided to try to destroy the BLE while UTU still has more members, as their only means of survival.
For nearly 30 years, the crafts represented by UTU have been caught in an ever-tightening technological vise. As a result, the bargaining leverage of UTU's leadership has been dramatically reduced. This has produced a string of agreements that eliminated thousands of jobs and - by preserving conditions for current workers at the expense of those who had not yet been hired - imposed a two-tiered compensation system.
The internal impact on UTU has been equally devastating. The decrease in membership has eroded UTU's dues base and, consequently, its operating funds. Add to this a number of legal judgments of $1 million or more, and an artificially suppressed International dues structure (so UTU can position itself as a "better deal" than the BLE when recruiting) and you have just the sort of tenuous financial situation that UTU leaders have faced for more than a decade.
These are the true reasons for UTU's ongoing attempt to take over or destroy the BLE. The very real objective conditions that drive the UTU leadership's strategy will continue to increase in pressure over time, which means that the attacks will increase in frequency and ferocity, not decrease.
While the UTU leadership lip synchs solidarity songs, its actions portray something far different. In addition to a series of attacks on the BLE for more than a decade, a succession of UTU administrations rejected attempts by former Presidents McLaughlin and Monin to forge closer ties by negotiating jointly with the carriers. And the Little Administration has stepped up its offensive, hurling invective and epithets against the current BLE leadership.
By its actions, UTU leaders have played right into the carriers' hands. Since the open hostility of the UTU leadership makes it impossible to work jointly or in tandem, the industry focuses on UTU's diminished bargaining leverage, and targets UTU to set lackluster settlement patterns. Thus, for all its rhetoric about operating craft unity and "The Power of One," the deeds of the Little Administration actually operate to divide and weaken all railroad workers.
In the end, the compass of the current UTU leadership points to preservation of its own political power and all the trappings that accompany it.
For BLE and UTU members alike, this means more raids, more single craft applications and more attempts to homogenize operating craft seniority and work. In that way, as Little & Company press their "fight to the finish," they advance the industry's agenda. ·
© 2000 Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers