On March 21 the BMWE and most of the other
rail unions reached an agreement with the Class I carriers (except for
Canadian National) that ends the process of the forced "cram
down" of collective bargaining agreements.
The agreement covers maintenance of way employees on Burlington
Northern Santa Fe, CSX, Kansas City Southern, Norfolk Southern and
Union Pacific railroad companies.
The parties agreed to replace the existing process with one that
allows the involved employees to pick the agreement that will apply in
a consolidation or coordination. The agreement also permits an
arbitration to fashion terms and conditions, in excess of statutory
employee protective conditions, to cushion harm to employees flowing
from the transaction.
"This agreement fixes a major problem we had with the
implementation of mergers approved by the Surface Transportation
Board," said BMWE President Mac A. Fleming. "The onerous
process of cram down should now be dead and buried. And now that the
carriers have stepped up to the plate and agreed to fix the cram down
problem, we can support a ‘clean’ reauthorization of the STB
through legislation that will enact the parties’ agreement into
law."
This agreement, which will be proposed as legislation amending the Interstate
Commerce Act, ends the practice of carriers using New York Dock
procedures to break collective bargaining agreements.
From now on, the union will choose the collective bargaining
agreement applicable to a "major transaction" subject to
STB-imposed protective conditions.
The carriers will also give deference to seniority integration
plans developed by the union. In fact, a carrier’s grounds for
objecting to a seniority integration plan are limited and require the
carrier to prove that its objection has merit.
The carriers also agreed that under no circumstances will a New
York Dock transaction be used to create a single system-wide
collective bargaining agreement or impose system gangs not otherwise
permitted under existing agreements.
"This agreement ends cram down," said President Fleming.
"Finally, after receiving the incessant pressure of the BMWE, the
AFL-CIO, especially Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka, the AFL-CIO
Transportation Trades Department and its affiliated rail labor unions
and our friends in Congress, the carriers stepped forward and fixed
this problem. My only regret is that we could not obtain this
agreement earlier so that earlier mergers would have been far less
disruptive to the lives of our brothers and sisters." |