The UTU and BLE say the carriers are pushing for one person crews on some trains.While this will happen in the not to distant future the operating unions need to form a combined front. The unions should merge before the railroads really push the issue. From now on all engineers would double as conductors and have one pay scale or “road” pay scale. Sometimes it seems the reason they dont merge is because the union officials dont want to lose their jobs.As a former rail employee in 2 unions i think there is strength in numbers so have one operating union to protect the members. The only other option is to wait and see if we get a democratic controlled house or a democratic president in 08. Just a thought.
The BLE has been absorbed by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters so I doubt that the UTU would want to fold into the same outfit. The corruption factor is a major issue. If the BLE was still a separate union, I’m not sure that a merger of the two would be allowed under the Railway Labor Act, which dictates that railroad labor be organized by craft.
Once the BLE ran away and hid in the Teamsters, the chance for merger with the UTU when pffft!
Now, the carriers will get to pit one against each other to see who gets to be the “one man” in the “one man” crew…just like RCO (the UTU “won” that one)
Seems to be a case of stubborn stupidity with the UTU and BLE. There aren’t enough train service jobs left (compared to 30 years ago) for one half-decent union. But, two weak ones, that seems to be OK?
There’s got to be something here I don’t get or don’t see.
The UTU and BLE tried to merge several years ago. The UTU voted yes but many BLE divisions particularly in the south and south east voted no and so the merger did not happen. The two operating unions then spent the next years beating each other up. Finally, they have both agreed not to sell each other out on the single person crew option offerred by the railroads. I am sure the carriers are not done trying to drive a wedge between the unions on this and other issues. After the election today we will likely see a push by the carriers to impose their terms on the employees rather than by sincere negotiations under the Railway Labor Act.
This is an issue which is old news, has been talked about on several posts in the past and lets just wait to see what takes place, then we’ll have something new on this to discuss.
The only good news on this matter is that the Democrats are back in power, this is very significant to rail labor in general. Hopefully this will bring an end (for now) of carriers demanding single person traincrews, as well as preventing the demise of Amtrak…
Yes I can guarantee it’ll be placed on the back burner for awhile!
the ble didnt go run and hide the teamsters wanted to merge and with the utu trying to hostile take over the best thing to do was merge with the teamsters. there was no way the ble was going to bow down to the utu. one union being the utu wasnt going to happen but if the utu people want 1 union so bad why did they not let the ble be in charge?
the other point being is the utu is trying everything they can because they have nothing . in the contract they signed in which all employees will be engineers . on the east side the conductors union is utu but the ble hold the engineers contract. no need to belong to the utu. the remote issue was offered to the ble we didnt want it, the utu grabed it up. shot themselves in their foot again. and again the utu showed just what they think of thier people the new hires get 80% step rate of pay again. a few got 100% then they went back to the step rate again. the few die hard utu men think that union cant do wrong when infact they seem to be steeling regularly from thier members . one rail union not going to happen .
The UTU has agreements that a conductor will be on all road trains with a forman and helper on all switch jobs and have not seen or heard of an engineer cut back refuse to use these agreements for work. This is not a bad thing and the carriers who signed this are having a hard time trying to bust their signatures. The sad part is when we start to union bash the carriers lease out rail road left and right. In reality we have lost almost 100% more jobs due to lease and we are saying remotes did it or the UTU? Railroads represented by BLE only were the first to bring remotes on the property like the MRL. As equipment advances workers will still have to walk a train for millions of reasons, even for the public, so why not keep what we have for now and opportunity for the future. Qualified people paid a good wage that stay are the key instead of high turnover in this field with every thing that can go wrong and knowing how to navigate through the many yards and main lines a railroader has to know.
UTU has now merged with the Sheet Metal Workers International (SMWIA) so don’t hold your breath for any BLE and UTU merger activity.
LC
Not yet, LC–it has to be submitted to a vote (and I haven’t gotten my ballot yet). I just hope the new acronym–SMART–won’t be among the “famous last words”.
I think the main thing I dont like about the UTU is that when I worked for the TPW in East Peoria, IL we were told to turn in time slips for all past money that we were owed. The money was owed to the people who had prior railroad experience. The TPW kept us at training pay until our probation period was over. The contract says that after the ground school or if you have prior railroad experience you will get paid fullwages. So far I have never seen any of that money.
Its really frustrating when you get to your new Job only to find out that when you come off of your probationary period you will only get 80% of the daily rate of pay. If I screw up, then I get 100% fired and have to pay 100% union dues.
The June 2007 UTU News Letter page 10 states the following;
“The entry-rates proposal would boost newhire pay to 90 percent of parity following completion of the probationary period, and hike that pay to 100 percent of parity upon completion of one year’s service. The new hires also would receive, as a bonus following their first year, the 10 percent of parity not paid them during their first year of employment.”
Then you try to find out that your health care is going up to $160 a month. I would like to see a financial statement from our union to see where our dues are going and how the money is being investmented for our members.