the window when the carriers rewarded them with an agreement to
represent employees using remote control. It’s all about representation
rights and administration of the agreement, not about safety. In nearly
every remote control accident, UTU has agreed with the carriers that the
accidents were caused by operator error and were not the fault of the
technology or the fault of the carriers, who are forcing two people –- and
in some cases one -- to do the work of three.
The following statement by UTU General Chairperson John Hancock supporting a
BLE-UTU merger was posted on the UTU’s website on September 7, 2001.
“The issue that is most important in this merger is the use of remote
control on locomotives. This technology is in use in Canada and every other
country, and it works. What the carriers want to do it pit one organization
against the other to see who is going to work the remote control for the
lowest amount of money. That will put a lot of railroad workers on the
street.”
In a further display of UTU hypocrisy regarding remote control, one needs
look no further than Mr. James Brunkenhoefer, UTU’s National Legisltive
Director, who made the following statement during the FRA’s public hearings
on remote control in Appleton, Wisc., on December 4 and 5, 1996:
“Only by being a party to a pointless death and disaster will the FRA and
rail carriers be forced to rethink this insanity. We are urging them to
rethink now, before the inevitable happens,” said the UTU.” — Railway Age,
February 1997
Further, at the Federal Railroad Administration’s Technical Conference
regarding remote control locomotives on July 19, 2000, the UTU pledged to
stand side-by-side with BLE to see that remote control operations were
implemented in the safest manner possible, and agreed to limit the use of
remote control to those operations currently existing.
Apparently, UTU forgot its promise to stand beside BLE when it signed the
remote control letter of intent with the nation’s railroads, without BLE’s
knowledge or consent.
UTU did not make “every attempt” to include the BLE in the remote control
agreement, as Boyd professes. The letter was signed while the BLE was in
convention and on the very day I was elected president. It seems as though
they extended one hand in friendship while the other plunged a knife into
our backs.
Third, Boyd boasts about the “75 percent favorable vote” on the UTU’s latest
national contract. While this may be true, a close look reveals a common UTU
strategy to distort the facts. It may be true that the contract passed by a
“75 percent favorable vote,” but in reality, only 30 percent of active UTU
members participated in the ratification process (close to 18,000 votes). In
other words, roughly 70 percent of UTU members did not think highly enough
of the contract to even vote.
Fourth, I take exception to the way Boyd, again, falsely portrayed the BLE’s
Montana Rail Link agreement on remote control
Boyd and other leaders of the UTU have devoted a great deal of time to
spreading false information about the BLE’s MRL agreement. They have
resorted to telling outright lies by stating that the MRL agreement has no
protections for ground crew employees.
The fact of the matter is that the MRL agreement protects all workers -–
ground service personnel included -– who were employed on the effective date
of the agreement.
The MRL’s attrition-based agreement will protect employees for the next 30
years while the UTU-negotiated agreement with the Class 1 railroads protects
workers for a six-year period.
For further evidence, I’ll quote BLE General Chairman Dennis Pierce, whose
June 10, 2003, letter provided an extensive explanation of the MRL remote
control agreement:
“(T)he MRL agreement includes "attrition" based protection that protects all
who were employed on the effective date of the agreement. Those truly
protected employees cannot be furloughed so long as they can hold the third
position on a remote assignment. To date, there have been no crew size
reductions due to this attrition-based model, and many of the employees
protected by the MRL agreement will carry this protection for nearly 30
years. In fact, the youngest protected person employed by MRL on the date of
the agreement was 25 years old at the time. He is protected and can work the
third position on a regularly assigned remote job, rather than being
furloughed, for a total of 35 years. Conversely, UTU not only agreed to a
model that immediately eliminated one third of the positions in yard
service, it agreed to protective benefits in the form of guaranteed extra
board slots protecting all extra service, one for each remote assignment,
for a six year period. Six years will come and go while attrition-based
protection on MRL will be there for the involved employees until the end of
their railroad career. Again, it is no real mental challenge to see which
model best protected the work rights and best interests of the involved
employees.
“A true comparison of the compensation related to remote control also shows
which model best protected the financial interests of the involved
employees. As information, the pre existing crew consist minimum on MRL was
a two man minimum, engineer and switch foreman. Although MRL historically
assigned a switchman as a third crew member, the agreement did not require
it. BLE’s remote agreement changed these minimums, expanding the required
crew size to three, two engineers and a switch foreman, the third position
to eventually be reduced through the attrition model described above. The
day this service was implemented on MRL, two of the three crew members were
given a raise in pay; the switch foreman increased to engineer rate and the
switchman increased to switch foreman rate. Conversely on BNSF, UTU assisted
the Carrier in eliminating the highest paid position on the crew on day one
and went to two man crews immediately. Eliminating the engineer’s position
not only capped the involved employees at switch foreman and switchman’s
rates, it also resulted in the cancellation of many Locomotive Engineer
Training Programs on BNSF. Under the MRL model, positions in the Locomotive
Engineer Training Program have increased in the past two years. In fact, the
employees on MRL are currently voting on a new proposal that will afford
them guaranteed access to engineer training when they have worked for
approximately one year. It is clear that BLE’s model provides promotion as
well as the increases in compensation that have historically accompanied
promotion.”
This is the body of the
announcement ...
