Railroads drop effort to reduce crew size
(The following article by Stacie Hamel was posted on the Omaha World-Herald website on November 18.)
OMAHA, Neb. – Railroads have dropped their effort to negotiate the issue of one-person train crews during the current round of contract bargaining with labor unions.
The National Carriers’ Conference Committee sent a letter to railroad supervisors late this week informing them of the move. The committee handles labor negotiations for 30 railroads, including the Omaha-based Union Pacific.
The letter said debate on “this contentious issue was impeding the progress of negotiations on other important matters.”
The committee wrote that it decided “to remove the obstacle” by telling the United Transportation Union and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, which is associated with the Teamsters, that it would not pursue one-person crews during the current round of bargaining, “thus paving the way to what we hope will be productive negotiations.”
UTU spokesman Frank Wilner said the union wants to get to the negotiating table “tomorrow.”
“We have no grudges with regard to what has happened in the past,” he said. “Our objective is to make every attempt to reach a negotiated settlement.”
Joanna Moorhead, general counsel for the carriers’ committee, said, “Our goal continues to be getting voluntary agreements in this round of bargaining.”
The move marked a change in the tenor of negotiations that union representatives and Wall Street analysts long have said seemed headed for a Presidential Emergency Board when railroad-friendly Republicans controlled Congress.
In April 2005, after railroads asked federal mediators to step into negotiations that had begun only six months before, James Valentine and Michael Manelli of Morgan Stanley wrote that railroads hoped to "reach the last step in the process, namely a Presidential Emergency Board,