Railroaders place to shoot the shit.

The election was called in response to a petition by the BLE following an NMB conclusion in March 2000 that there is a single craft or class on the Tex-Mex with the appropriate craft being train and engine service employees.

The UTU, separately, has asked the NMB to order a winner-take-all election on Kansas City Southern. The NMB has not yet ruled on the UTU petition.

"I congratulate BLE President Don Hahs on this hard-fought victory," said UTU International President Byron A. Boyd, Jr. "We will support the choice made by the employees on the Tex-Mex and we wish them well with their new representation. This vote does reaffirm our belief that all the operating employees should have a vote as to what organization will represent them.

"The good news is that the employees on the Tex-Mex have one single representative for the historical operating crafts, as is our position before the NMB in the KCS matter," Boyd said.

The analysts are avoiding the term, "engineer only." The reason is because the United Transportation Union (UTU) holds crew-consist agreements that protect the employment of conductors. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLE&T) has no such agreements protecting the employment of engineers.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe CEO Matt Rose told analyst Scott Flower of Smith-Barney/Citigroup that productivity relating to train technology will be "high" on BNSF's agenda when contract negotiations commence this fall.

Flower observed that "train technology refers to the potential opportunity of one-man train crews operating a relatively large proportion of through trains."

One-person train crews "would be arguably the most significant cost savings event for the railroads in over a decade," said analyst James Valentine of Morgan Stanley.

There is speculation that the reason the BLE&T is pushing to include trainmen in the BLE&T's merger with the Teamsters is so that the Teamsters could gain control of trainmen contracts and extinguish the crew-consist agreements held by the UTU.

Repeatedly, BLE&T president Don Hahs has said he wants only "qualified engineers" on each train. UTU crew-consist agreements prevent the railroads from going to engineer-only operations.

Valentine, more specific than Flower, has been speaking to his investor clients about the new technology of Positive Train Control (PTC), designed, he said, "to automatically keep trains at proper distances from one another." PTC is similar to remote control technology in that it is computer driven. It is with PTC operations that carriers want to go to one-person crews.

Wall Street analysts have observed that when remote control technology (RCL) was introduced by carriers in the U.S., a neutral arbitrator ruled that RCL replaced the engineer and not the conductor. The conductor continued to send signals to the computer as the conductor had sent signals to the engineer.

In fact, during the arbitration hearing, BLE&T President Don Hahs conceded that no wheel of a train turns unless the conductor gives the order.

The result of RCL is that the engineer position in yard operations was eliminated and the conductor became the RCL operator. "This didn't have to happen and wouldn't have happened had the other organization accepted our invitation to jointly negotiate protective agreements," said UTU International President Paul Thompson. "It is a sad day when an organization plays politics with their memberships' jobs."

It was more than 10 years ago that RCL was first introduced in Canada. During negotiations in Canada on remote control, both the UTU and the BLE were initially involved in the negotiations with the carrier. During these negotiations, the BLE took the position that they no longer wanted to meet jointly with the UTU and talks broke down.

The carrier expressed dissatisfaction and despair with the position taken by the BLE, indicating very clearly that were there an orderly and unified process, the benefits and conditions accruing to employees would be superior. Disregarding this guidance, the BLE refused to enter into meaningful negotiations and the process continued in a different direction. The position taken by the BLE sadly resulted in the issue being submitted to arbitration.

Throughout the entire negotiations, the UTU was very willing to work to protect both engineer and train-service positions. It was the BLE that refused to sit with the UTU during these negotiations, which led to the arbitration award eliminating yard engineer positions in Canada.

When RCL raised its head in the U.S., once again the UTU offered the BLE 50 percent of remote control positions. BLE President Don Hahs said he would accept only two engineers on each remote control assignment - identical to the agreement the BLE negotiated on Montana Rail Link, where the BLE represents both engine and train service employees.

The BLE made the decision to fight RCL in the United States; and, for a second time, failed to represent its membership. The UTU, while not holding the contract for engineers, again attempted to protect engineers by negotiating with most of the major railroads protective positions for locomotive engineers in addition to train service employees.

However, the BLE again refused to accept such protections on behalf of engineers simply because the UTU, and not the BLE, had been the organization to negotiate the protection.

It is envisioned that PTC similarly could be positioned to replace the engineer on through-freight trains - leaving the conductor as the surviving member of the train crew.

In fact, the New York City subway system recently announced its intent to eliminate the engineer's position on its subway trains as it shifts to computerized operations that will leave the conductor as the surviving crew member.

So long as the UTU holds crew-consist agreements, carriers have no choice but to offer new one-person crew technology to conductors rather than engineers. This, said one Wall Street analyst, is why the BLE&T must gain control of trainmen if it is to make the engineer the surviving train-crew member. The UTU's Thompson said, "There is no way the UTU will roll over and not protect its crew consist agreements and be forced to accept leftover positions from the bottom of the BLE&T seniority roster."

In discussing PTC, Thompson said PTC has not yet been proven to meet the safety standards the UTU insists be in place for all operating crews. Here again, new technology is proceeding forward and both the BLE and UTU, sometime in the future, will once again be faced with how to address the issue.

In the past, both organizations fought new technology only to lose the fight completely. "The UTU," said Thompson, "learned long ago that in order to properly protect the membership from the loss of their livelihoods, it is always in our best interest to represent our membership instead of fighting a losing battle.

"Today, on all the major carriers, UTU-represented employees have crew consist agreements providing protection to UTU members. The UTU may have lost positions, but only through attrition," Thompson said. "In addition, UTU members have protection from the adverse affects of RCL. The BLE&T has no agreement providing for crew consist protection in the face of changing technology." "For the BLE&T," Thompson said, "it is much easier to blame the UTU for all of their failures regarding crew consist than to admit to its membership that time and again the BLE&T has failed to properly represent them. The UTU will always work to protect all crafts," Thompson said.

Unfortunately, in both Canada and the U.S., the BLE&T declined to be part of those arrangements."