Rail workers on the Union Pacific are on strike in Chicago, but they are not traditional railroaders. They are contract workers who service locomotives, work traditionally done by railroad employees paid much more than the $14 an hour at Mobile Rail Solutions.

The 30 workers who oil and fuel the locomotives and empty their toilets went public with a union recognition drive July 8. Mobile promptly hired the union-busting law firm Ogletree and Deakins. Workers filed several OSHA complaints that prompted inspections—and the company fired three of them.

Now the workers are staging an unfair labor practices strike that has seriously affected Mobile’s ability to fulfill its contract with Union Pacific. The manager has refused to meet with organizers and workers about the firings.

Their union is the Industrial Workers of the World—the Wobblies. The IWW filed unfair labor practice complaints with the National Labor Relations Board on Monday that included surveillance, intimidation, firings, and promises of payment for non-participation in the strike. The NLRB has set August 14 for a recognition election.

Because the Mobile workers are contract employees, they are not bound by the Railway Labor Act that makes it almost impossible for railroaders to strike. But neither are they in the Railroad Retirement System; they have no pension or health benefits. They are organizing for safe vehicles and for pay equivalent to that of other union workers doing the same job.

Railroad Workers United, a cross-union caucus of rank-and-filers, has been helping with the campaign by lending organizing and strategic assistance and sharing contacts with railroaders and organizations in the Chicago area. RWU has donated to the strike fund that will cover the cost of the strike and help the fired workers. You can support the Mobile Rail Workers Union by donating here.

As the railroads prop up their bottom line by contracting out, some rail workers see contract workers as scabs and feel threatened by the companies’ continued attack on their higher-paid jobs. Other railroaders ask why the traditional rail unions have not been on the heels of these smaller contract companies, organizing them. Before deciding to organize with the IWW, the Mobile workers had gone to the United Transportation Union and the Transportation Workers Union, but neither union showed interest.

In 2010 the United Electrical Workers organized 160 minimum-wage van drivers who ferry rail crews from yard to yard—work that, 20 years ago, was done by rail union members at $20 an hour.

The IWW is known for emphasizing direct action and the principle of “one big union” of workers in the same industry (rather than separate unions for different crafts). Railway union leaders were among the union’s 1905 founders, and railroads figure prominently in the lore of the union’s early years, when organizers would travel the country by hopping freight trains.

“We chose the IWW because of their hands-on, do-it-yourself fighting model,” Ahern Owen said. “There is no better way for workers to feel like they own it than to have them do it themselves.”

The fact that the Mobile workers decided to organize with the IWW may be a look into the past and future of the movement to organize low-paid workers.

J.P. Wright is a Railroad Workers United organizer and a locomotive engineer with CSX railroad. Wright serves as an alternate on the TDU Steering Committee.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration has signed an accord with BNSF Railway Co., headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, announcing BNSF's voluntary revision of several personnel policies that OSHA alleged violated the whistleblower provisions of the Federal Railroad Safety Act and dissuaded workers from reporting on-the-job injuries. FRSA's Section 20109 protects railroad workers from retaliation for, among other acts, reporting suspected violations of federal laws and regulations related to railroad safety and security, hazardous safety or security conditions, and on-the-job injuries.

"Protecting America's railroad workers who report on-the-job injuries from retaliation is an essential element in OSHA's mission. This accord makes significant progress toward ensuring that BNSF employees who report injuries do not suffer any adverse consequences for doing so," said Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Dr. David Michaels. "It also sets the tone for other railroad employers throughout the U.S. to take steps to ensure that their workers are not harassed, intimidated or terminated, in whole or part, for reporting workplace injuries."

The major terms of the accord include:

• Changing BNSF's disciplinary policy so that injuries no longer play a role in determining the length of an employee's probation following a record suspension for a serious rule violation. As of Aug. 31, 2012, BNSF has reduced the probations of 136 employees who were serving longer probations because they had been injured on-the-job.
• Eliminating a policy that assigned points to employees who sustained on-the-job injuries.
• Revising a program that required increased safety counseling and prescribed operations testing so that work-related injuries will no longer be the basis for enrolling employees in the program. As part of the negotiations leading up to the accord, BNSF removed from the program approximately 400 workers.
• Instituting a higher level review by BNSF's upper management and legal department for cases in which an employee who reports an on-duty personal injury is also assessed discipline related to the incident giving rise to the injury.
• Implementing a training program for BNSF's managers and labor relations and human resources professionals to educate them about their responsibilities under the FRSA. The training will be incorporated into BNSF's annual supervisor certification program.
• Making settlement offers in 36 cases to employees who filed whistleblower complaints with OSHA alleging they were harmed by one or more of the company's previous policies.

"Ensuring that employees can report injuries or illnesses without fear of retaliation is crucial to protecting worker safety and health," said Michaels. "If employees do not feel free to report injuries or illnesses, the employer's entire workforce is put at risk because employers do not learn of and correct dangerous conditions that have resulted in injuries."

Between August 2007, when OSHA was assigned responsibility for whistleblower complaints under FRSA, and September 2012, OSHA received 1,206 FRSA whistleblower complaints. The number of FRSA whistleblower complaints that OSHA currently receives surpasses the number of whistleblower complaints that OSHA receives under any of the other 21 whistleblower protection statutes it enforces except for Section 11(c) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. More than 60 percent of the FRSA complaints filed with OSHA involve an allegation that a railroad worker has been retaliated against for reporting an on-the-job injury.

The accord with BNSF Railway Co. can be viewed at http://www.whistleblowers.gov/acts/bnsf_accord.html.

The whistleblower provisions of the 22 statutes enforced by OSHA protect employees who report violations of various commercial motor vehicle, airline, nuclear, pipeline, environmental, railroad, public transportation, maritime, consumer product, health care reform, securities, food safety, and consumer financial reform laws and regulations.

Employees who believe that they have been retaliated against for engaging in a protected activity may file a complaint with the secretary of labor for an investigation by OSHA's Whistleblower Protection Program.

Detailed information on employee whistleblower rights is available online at http://www.whistleblowers.gov.

For more information about OSHA, visit http://www.osha.gov.

Back in the old days, in order to operate safely, a freight train used a five-person crew—an engineer, a fireman, two brakemen, and a conductor.

After two-way radios and electronic air brake monitoring allowed the railroads to eliminate the caboose in the 1980s, crew size went down to three.

Tough contract negotiations eliminated another crew member, so now almost every freight train rolling across the U.S. is operated by just an engineer and a conductor.

Railroaders fear the conductor will be next to go. The railroads say they want single-employee trains, and leaders have allowed language to seep into contracts that says if crew size is reduced to one, that last remaining crew member will be an engineer or a conductor—depending which union is negotiating the language.

With union officials asleep at the wheel on this dangerous prospect, Railroad Workers United, a cross-union coalition of rank-and-file railroaders, is taking up the challenge to stop the runaway train.

Some trains are over 10,000 feet long and weigh more than 15,000 tons. Engineers drive the train and take care of the engines, but the freight conductor does the rest. If anything goes wrong with the equipment, the conductor walks the train to find blown air hoses, broken couplers, or trespasser accidents. If the train stops in a busy town, the conductor can quickly separate the train to allow emergency equipment to reach blocked rail crossings.

Both engineer and conductor are licensed by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), with constant retraining and on-the-job testing to ensure compliance with the many operating rules and regulations that govern trains.

We are drilled in the railroad's Homeland Security awareness plan and told that the security of the nation's railways depends on our two sets of eyes observing every inch of our unsecured railroad infrastructure.

DIVIDE AND CONQUER

The rail industry in the U.S. is highly unionized and divided along craft lines into 13 unions. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), now part of the Teamsters, mostly represents engineers, and the United Transportation Workers (UTU), which merged into the Sheet Metal Workers to form SMART, represents the conductors.

For years the railroads have divided train crews by pitting the leaders of these two unions against each other.

Several years ago, the railroads introduced a technology called Remote Control Operation (RCO). Inbound train cars come to the "yard" to be received, separated, and regrouped into tracks so that outbound trains are built with cars all going to the same destination. Yard crews used to consist of engineer, brakeman, and conductor.

Now many yard crews have been reduced to a lone conductor with a remote control device strapped to his/her body. He remotely operates the engine’s throttle and brakes to move cars from track to track, while also uncoupling cars, throwing switches, and talking on the radio to the yardmaster and to incoming engineers.

At first BLET and UTU leaders stood united against remote control, but because an attempt to merge the two unions failed, UTU leaders broke ranks and agreed to remote operations—eliminating many engineers' jobs.

Several remote control operators have been killed or severely injured, crushed or run over by their own equipment. Of course, the companies' accident investigations blame operator error, but they never address the underlying cause of these errors: forcing one person to take over the duties of three while operating dangerous equipment.

POSITIVE TRAIN CONTROL

The railroads want road freight crews to face similar downsizing. After a freight train and a commuter train collided in Chatsworth, California in 2008, killing 25 and injuring 135, Congress mandated another new technology, Positive Train Control, by 2015.

The unions have been advocating PTC, as a safety measure, for years, while the railroads have claimed it was too expensive. PTC monitors trains by computer and satellite GPS. The computer can stop the train if the crew does not brake or slow down correctly.

Plans are to phase in PTC first on passenger train routes and where there is a heavy volume of hazardous material. Some railroads are already experimenting with a form of PTC for “cruise control” to conserve fuel.

But the railroads believe PTC will position them to reduce crew size to one—a safety problem not only for train crews but also for the public, since train crews in over-the-road freight service are subjected to grueling fatigue.

Crews are on duty 24/7/365 and receive only a two- or three-hour notice to report for work at any time of the day or night. They normally take a train from their home terminal to an assigned away-from-home terminal and lay over there until a train is available to return home. They can be called again, and often are, after only 10 hours off. Then they may remain on duty for up to 12 hours.

All this makes it hard for crew members to adjust the demands of their personal lives and their rest time so that they are properly rested for work when called.

The railroads supply a "train line-up" for workers to estimate when they may go to work—but the line-ups are often incorrect by 12 to 24 hours, and a crew must work when called, whether rested or not.

The unions have been trying to negotiate fatigue mitigation for years, without much success. The railroads deem it too costly. So conductors and engineers rely on each other's help to fight fatigue and maintain awareness of all the conditions of their train and surroundings.

Single-employee crews would leave a fatigued solitary railroader alone to deal with the duties and problems of both engineer and conductor. Railroaders know that mistakes on their part can endanger not only themselves but also the communities they pass through.

RANK AND FILERS STEP UP

No rank-and-file worker thinks single-employee operation is a safe idea. But despite RWU's requests, officials of the two unions aren't saying where they stand. Many workers are afraid their leaders might agree to one-person crews in order to gain some advantage over the other union.

RWU has kicked off a national campaign to stop single-employee operations. We are distributing educational flyers and bumper stickers to spread the word, and we are reaching out to community organizations.

We are asking rail union locals to petition our union leaders to get on board. To protect rail workers and the public, we have to keep safety from going off the rails.

JP Wright is an engineer for CSX in Louisville, Kentucky, and a member of BLET Division 78. Wright is an alternate on TDU's Steering Committee. Ed Michael is an engineer on the Union Pacific in Salem, Illinois, and a member of both BLET Division 724 and UTU Local 979. Michael is a TDU member. Both are leaders of RWU, www.railroadworkersunited.org.

June 28, 2012: Corporations have targeted workers' pensions for elimination. Teamsters, teachers, fire fighters, Verizon workers and more are in this fight together. Now add rail workers to that list, including 65,000 Teamsters.

Incredibly, their pensions are under attack even though their plan is well-funded, and it costs zero tax dollars. And they are not covered by social security.

It's under attack in Congress, with Paul Ryan (R-Wisc) as the point man. Since it would require passage by both the House and Senate and the signature of the President, the attack can't succeed at this time.

Ed Michael, a member of BLET Div 724, says that "it's a continuous fight to defend our pensions, and the other side is getting more aggressive. Depending on the outcome of the November elections, we could really be under the gun."

But the 232,000 active rail workers and 270,000 retirees and spouses want to nip this in the bud, and defend and improve their pensions for the long haul.

A unique and effective retirement system

Railroad workers are covered by the railroad retirement program. This old, and well-funded program, was in fact the model for social security when that was created in the 1930s.

The system has a "Tier 1" benefit, similar to social security with the carriers and workers both contributing to it. There is also a “Tier 2” benefit, over and above social security, with workers contributing to it, and the carriers contributing much more to it. It has a “60/30” provision, allowing full retirement at age 60 with 30 years of service.

Pension plans are especially important in an industry like rail, where workers suffer a higher rate of health problems.

Rail Teamsters in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLET) and Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes (BMWE), along with other rail workers, have no other pension plan. So “Tier 2” for rail workers is the equivalent of a negotiated pension for other union members. The rail industry is very highly unionized.

So when a politician cries that a rail worker can enjoy a good retirement from a government program, they are distorting the truth in two ways. First, this “government program” receives zero funding from the government. Second, the benefit is really like combining social security and a Teamster pension together.

A unionized industry. An industry making record profits. A well-funded pension program, at no cost to taxpayers. Pensions that workers and families can live on.

This is a formula we need for the whole country. No wonder corporations and some politicians under their control want to attack it. 

UPS Pensions

Teamsters on the Canadian Pacific Railway will be ordered to end their nine-day strike shortly, when Parliament sends them back to work.

Government back-to-work legislation is becoming a trend in Canada. CP is the third private company to receive that form of government help against its workforce since the Conservatives were elected in January 2006 (Canadian National Railway was the first, and Air Canada was the second). The pace has increased since the Conservatives were re-elected with a majority in May 2011. All this follows an eight-year period (1999-2007) when the federal government actually resisted the temptation to interfere in the free collective bargaining process.

The Teamsters struck primarily because CP wants to slash pension benefits—its preferred method would be by introducing an inferior plan (defined-contribution) for new hires and for future service of existing employees. CP claims it wants to cut its pension costs and retirees' health benefits to the level of its larger competitor, CN (Canadian National).

One conductor told Labor Notes: "There isn't a whole lot workers can do in terms of fixing things with a strike, when the government can just step in and say: 'The strike is over, go back to work.' It happened with Air Canada and Canada Post not too long ago, and the teachers face it every time they want to get something fixed."

We discussed the strike and the government's action with Abe Rosner, a recently retired national representative for the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), which represents repair and maintenance employees on the Canadian Pacific.

Click here to read the interview.

Canadian Pacific Railway suspended its freight service across Canada after engineers, conductors and other workers went on strike, the Canadian Press reported Wednesday.

Teamsters Canada, which represents the 4,500 workers, said the strike started just after midnight Wednesday after the parties were unable to reach an agreement, Canadian Press said. The union and the railroad company both said talks would continue Wednesday.

Canada's labor minister on Wednesday said the government would introduce legislation to end the strike if necessary, the Associated Press reported.

October 6, 2011: An overwhelming 97 percent majority of BLET members have voted to authorize a strike when a mandatory 30-day cooling off period under the Railway Labor Act comes to an end later this week.

Locomotive engineers would walk off the job at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on October 7, 2011, unless President Obama intervenes and appoints a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB). A PEB would halt any strike or lockout by the parties, and would investigate and issue a report and recommendations concerning the dispute.

As background, the National Mediation Board released the BLET and 10 other Rail Labor unions from mediation with the rail carriers on September 6, creating a 30-day cooling off period, which expires at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on October 7, 2011. At that point self-help is available to the parties, which means the BLET and/or any of the other unions could go on strike.

BLET National President Dennis Pierce said the near unanimous vote in favor of a strike is a clear mandate from BLET members that they are unwilling to accept a concessionary contract and cuts in health care coverage.

“It is unfortunate that, in this time of record industry profits, the carriers insist upon attempting to take advantage of a weakened general economy to further line its corporate pockets at the expense of the railroad workers whose labor generates those profits,” Pierce said. “And it is shameful that the carriers have chosen to specifically target those railroad workers who are most vulnerable — older workers and the sick and injured — to shoulder a disproportionate share of the demanded givebacks.”

President Pierce said the level of voter turnout was higher than any referendum in decades. He thanked the BLET Mobilization Network for helping generate the high level of membership participation. He also thanked the members for their participation and patience throughout the process, especially when high call volume caused phone lines to crash in the early days of the strike authorization vote.

August 10, 2011: The second quarter brought good news again for the US's four major public rail carriers, while Old Dominion again flew high among less-than-truckload carriers in a quarter that all improved their results if not exactly deliver outstanding results in some cases.

As shown in the chart below, all four public rail carriers (Burlington Northern was acquired by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway in 2009) enjoyed strong results, and continued to enjoy relatively strong pricing power. Despite car load growth of just about 3% for three of the four (the smallest of the four, Kansas City Southern, saw volume growth of 7%), revenues were up 13.3-17.9% for all four of them.

Click here to read more.

July 15, 2011: Teamster rail workers are urging fellow unionists in the United Transportation Union (UTU) to reject a substandard contract negotiated by UTU leaders.

“The UTU rank and file should say No to this deal,” reads a leaflet other rail unions are distributing. The leaflet points out that the carriers are making record profits, so it is time to make gains, not give concessions.

The rail carriers want to use the UTU contract as a “pattern” in bargaining with all other rail unions, to drag them down to subpar gains and concessions on health care.

The rail industry is heavily unionized, but divided among several unions. Most work together through the Rail Labor Bargaining Coalition. The UTU broke ranks and signed a deal which is unacceptable to the bulk of rail workers.

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes (BMWE), two of the larger rail unions, are both affiliated with the IBT.

More information about the struggle of rail workers to win a fair contract is available here.

July 14, 2011: An Appeal To Reason - United Transportation Union (UTU) recently released to the public their tentative national agreement with the Class 1 Freight Railroads resolving wages, health care and rules covering the six year period from 2010-2016. The last five years have seen the Freight Railroads post record profits. The new proposal is substantially worse than the one negotiated under President Bush’s National Mediation Board in 2007. When that agreement was concluded, the Freight Railroad’s profits were half of what they are today.

Click here to read more.