For more years than I care to count, we having been telling the carriers that if we couldnt come up with a mutually acceptable solution at the bargaining table to the problem of availability policies and train-crew fatigue that we were going to ask Congress to impose a solution.
And still the carriers dithered, placing profits ahead of safety and ignoring the quality of life and safety threats of 30-day availability policies, seemingly never-ending limbo time, rolling the dice on circadian rhythms with wild swings in start times, and assuming human beings could maintain situational awareness as their cumulative sleep deficits mounted.
We provided the carriers with exhaustive evidence of train crews being called to work in a fatigued condition; and reminded the carriers that sleep scientists have concluded that going to work fatigued is equivalent to going to work drunk.
Even in the face of horrific accidents involving deadly hazmat releases and NTSB findings with regard to crew fatigue, the carriers continued to ignore our pleas to negotiate a solution to the fatigue problem. The carriers refused to negotiate.
So we went to Congress, which in the fall of 2008 acted with the most far reaching rail safety bill in decades. It was our only of relief. The law didnt give us everything we wanted, but it is a good, overdue and necessary law.
Most troubling now is that even with the new safety laws changes in hours of service and limbo time elimination, the carries continue to resist providing train and engine service employees with predictable starting times.
How can it be that an industry so fully computerized cant provide its operating crews with predictable starting times?
The fact is, the railroad industry can.
In fact, on Canadian National, which Wall Street analysts say is the most efficient North American railroad, senior management is committed to train scheduling. CN CEO Hunter Harrison considers this good business, safe business and appropriate labor-management policy.
We are now negotiating with CN in hopes we can reach agreement permitting CN and the UTU jointly to petition the Federal Railroad Administration for a pilot project -- under provisions of the new safety law -- to demonstrate every railroad can efficiently provide train and engine-service employees with start and stop times within a predictable range of hours.
We stand willing to negotiate with any carrier a similar joint petition to the FRA for such a pilot project if that carrier is agreeable to structured start times.
Our objective is a changed culture that reduces employee fatigue, fully eliminates limbo time, assures situational awareness of all crew members, improves our members quality of life, boosts customer service, and contributes positively to each carrier's bottom line.
It is high time to bring the railroad industry into the 21st century. This pilot project has the potential to do just that.
The International president of the largest rail labor organization, the United Transportation Union, is calling for railroads and customers to settle their fight over rail industry regulation, and reach a deal that also brings labor to the table, reports John Boyd in the Journal of Commerce.
Mike Futhey, in remarks posted to the UTU's Web site, asked rail officials and shippers to meet with the UTU and other rail labor groups and produce a joint position before Congress as it considers shipper-backed legislation to toughen oversight of railroads.
"This quarrel is fracturing congressional support for railroads, and its continuation will only further erode the industry's ability to shift freight from the highways, expand commuter rail access and strengthen our national intercity rail passenger network to include high-speed rail options," Futhey said.
The UTU has several considerations in making the appeal, including that President Obama name UTU's legislative director for Illinois, Joseph C. Szabo, to be the next head of the Federal Railroad Administration.
Szabo will be the first labor leader to head the agency charged with rail safety enforcement as well as financial aid to many railroads.
Analyst William Greene said that with the UTU getting into the regulation issues "rails could earn the support of a powerful ally in Washington, but at a price. Labor could help craft legislation that is less dire, but rails will need to make concessions in the next round of bargaining" on union contracts.
"As a result, one-man crews are unlikely in the next round of negotiations," Greene said, "and we expect labor to push for a greater share of profits going forward."
(The preceding article was published by the Journal of Commerce)
The UTU continues aggressively pursuing with the National Carriers' Conference Committee an equitable resolution of the entry-level rates of pay issue after an arbitrator ruled in January that the dispute be returned to the bargaining table.
While a daylong bargaining session in mid-March failed to produce a tentative agreement, it did add a new dimension to the talks: Reducing member layoffs and protecting the incomes and benefits of those members who are laid off.
Notwithstanding the impact of the recession on freight loadings, we are approaching the peak employee-vacation season, and the carriers must soon comply with new hours of service regulations, which have the potential of creating shortages of train crews and yardmasters if the carriers continue with their layoffs," said UTU International President Mike Futhey.
"Moreover, the number of retirements, encouraged by the restored 60/30 provision of the Railroad Retirement Act, reduces the overall number of seasoned train crews and yardmasters," Futhey told the carriers.
"We sought also to impress upon the carriers that layoffs will jeopardize their ability to crew their trains with experienced train and engine service employees once the recession ends," Futhey said.
"Many recently hired employees, who are laid off, are not going to return to the railroad when the recession ends," Futhey said. "Not only will the carriers have lost the $30,000-plus cost of having trained those lost employees, but they will have to spend another $30,000-plus to train a replacement."
"Finding innovative ways of keeping employees on a partial work schedule, which continues their healthcare benefits, their Railroad Retirement credits and their seniority accumulation is just good business," Futhey said.
"And paying fully trained new hires, who are given the same responsibilities and accountability of their longer-employed peers improves morale and lessens the likelihood that those new hires will depart the railroad."
Although some railroads have scrapped entry-level rates for newly hired and fully-trained conductors and yardmasters that are given full responsibilities, it is the industry norm to pay them less for the first five years.
A second bargaining session over these issues is scheduled for late April. Representing the UTU at the bargaining table are Futhey, Assistant President Arty Martin, International Vice President Robert Kerley, and General Chairpersons John Hancock, John Lesniewski, Jim Huston, and Alternate Vice President - East Delbert Strunk.
The carriers -- BNSF, CSX, Kansas City Southern, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific -- are represented by their chief labor negotiators.
