WHY CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN PRESIDENCIES MEAN
UNFAIR RESULTS FOR RAILROAD WORKERS IN COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
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Many of you remember the national rail strikes of 1991 and 1992 and
the agreement the National Mediation Board, President George Bush and
Congress imposed on us against our will. But many of you may not know
or remember what led Rail Labor to strike and how we ended up having
the recommendations of Presidential Emergency Board 219 imposed on us.
As we decide whether to ratify or reject the new tentative agreement,
it might be helpful to look back at where we've been.
The 1980s were a bad time for railroad workers in general and BMWE
members in particular. A new-style Conservative Republican, Ronald
Reagan, had been elected President of the United States and the
Staggers Act deregulating the railroad industry was passed early in
the decade.
The railroads used the Staggers Act to massively cut jobs
throughout the industry, shamelessly shedding thousands upon thousands
of miles of track, creating short lines that were thinly disguised
creations of the big roads at that time. Railroads would have a dummy
operation purchase pieces of the large railroad and use a provision of
the Staggers Act to avoid their responsibility to pay New York Dock
benefits to railroad workers who lost their jobs as a result of having
the portions of the railroad they worked on sold to these new short
lines.
While this was going on, the practice of cramdown also was taking
place at ever increasing speed. The railroads would use other
provisions of the Interstate Commerce Act to merge railroads and abrogate
collective bargaining agreements of many of the workers, placing them
under the collective bargaining agreement most disadvantageous to the
employees and favorable to the railroads. These provisions of
the ICC Act were never used in the past to support cramdown but the
Reagan-appointed ICC simply changed the old precedent.
The Staggers Act and the ICC Act it amended were implemented by agencies appointed by Ronald
Reagan including the Interstate Commerce Commission, the
predecessor agency to the Surface Transportation Board. The Reagan ICC
created the practice of cramdown, reversing a half century of
precedent in which collective bargaining agreements were preserved
when railroads merged.
The Staggers Act was Congress' attempt to modernize the U.S.
railroad industry, which was still reeling from the major changes that
occurred in the transportation industry.
In the 1920s and 1930s when the Railway Labor Act was passed,
railroads moved 80% to 85% of all intercity freight. The Interstate
Highway System was not created until the 1950s and jets were not
propelling airliners and air freight carriers until the 1960s. The
growth of these two modes of transportation led to a massive decline
in the amount of intercity freight the railroads moved and added to
the difficulty of operating a railroad profitably. The other major
reason railroads also had severe problems operating at a profit was
the fact it is an immensely capital intensive industry. While the
highways and superhighways are owned by federal and state governments
as are the airports and air traffic control systems, railroads must
pay for every mile of track they lay and pay property taxes on every
mile of track they own as well as for train dispatching.
In the 1920s rail labor backed a movement to put much of the
industry under government control in the same manner the trucking and
air infrastructures were, but the railroad industry successfully
fought against this, as they wanted to retain ownership of the system.
So as we entered the 1980s, we saw a deteriorated railroad
infrastructure in an industry that was economically deteriorated. This
was the background for the Staggers Act, which was designed to make
the industry competitive, but not to devastate railroad workers.
But Ronald Reagan and his successor George Bush changed that. They
politicized the process by appointing ideologues to the ICC and the
National Mediation Board and forever changed the decision making
processes involved in collective bargaining from a fair one to one in
which the railroads pretty much got what they wanted.
As a result of these right wing Republican policies, the railroads
went to war against their employees. Unit labor costs declined
massively as the railroads "downsized" and productivity
soared. Huge numbers of railroad workers lost their jobs. The National
Mediation Board became a conscious tool of the railroads and we saw
the introduction of "lump sum" contracts and wage increases
that did not go back to the day the moratorium expired and on many
railroads did not even meet inflation.
All this was the result of the conscious decisions of the National
Mediation Board to refuse to "proffer arbitration" when a
deadlock was reached, in effect forcing unions to take inferior
agreements or wait forever for any kind of wage increase at all.
Additionally, Reagan and Bush appointed judges who reinterpreted
the Railway Labor Act, making it nearly impossible to strike when the
railroads unilaterally abrogated collective bargaining agreements and
the right wing drift of these Administrations was reflected in the
recommendations of Presidential Emergency Boards. Even in those
instances when there was a proffer of arbitration in the railroad
industry, Congress would intervene to end strikes on the basis of the
political recommendations of these Presidential Emergency Boards.
Although rail labor fought back, we were defeated at every turn.
The ICC simply gave the railroads the right to create sham short lines
and kept expanding cramdown. Members of the Interstate Commerce
Commission and the National Mediation Board, after serving the
railroads and airlines when they were public servants, took lucrative
jobs within and for the rail and air industries. Even Congressmen,
after drafting legislation to end our strikes, took lucrative
positions with the railroads. The tune was being played by the
conservative Republican political leadership and the full weight of
the government came down on railroad workers like a ton of bricks
in the Courts at the Executive agencies and even in the
Congress of the United States.
The BMWE suffered in the same manner that all of rail labor
suffered and as the Labor Movement as a whole suffered under Reagan
and Bush. And the relentless drive of the railroads went on unabated.
The railroads decided to go after our work rules, attempting to expand
our seniority districts and loosen other work rules. PEB 211, the
Reagan-appointed PEB that resolved the 1984 round of bargaining warned
the BMWE that if we did not make concessions on our work rules, a
future PEB would do so. That PEB recommended small wage increases and
kept the work rules intact.
This was the setting for the 1988 round of bargaining the
bargaining round which culminated in PEB 219, the national rail strike
of 1991, the IAM local strike against CSX resulting from IAM national
bargaining that led to the national lockout of 1992 and the
imposition of the politically inspired, anti-labor recommendations of
PEB 219.
Despite two strikes and court actions, all of rail labor suffered from
imposition of the recommendations of PEB 219, but the BMWE suffered even worse. We
received below inflation wage increases, a restructuring of our health
care plan with an element of cost sharing included and the absolute
savaging of our work rules expanded seniority districts, regional
and system gangs, worksite reporting, alternate work week and starting
time in short massive productivity enhancements for the railroads
at less than inflation costs.
We all watched in shock as the supposedly fair government of the
United States came together for the express purpose of aiding the
railroad industry at labor's expense. In short, the comeback of the
rail industry after the 1980s was almost wholly the result of labor
concessions forced by the policies of the Reagan and Bush
Administrations, the control of the National Mediation Board and the
Interstate Commerce Commission by right wing, anti- labor Republicans
who took positions with the industry after serving them while on those
agencies, the political, anti-labor decisions of Reagan and Bush
appointed judges who ignored the law in order to assist business, and
the anti-labor actions of the Congress of the United States.
The railroad industry demonstrated little competence as management;
they just savaged their work force. In 1980 there were 458,000
organized workers on the Class 1 railroads. By 1994 there were only
about 200,000. And those 200,000 were working for less actual dollars
than they were working for in 1980 under deteriorated work rules.
Although the Democrats and Republicans in Congress united to force
us back to work and impose the recommendations of PEB 219 on us,
generally when the Democrats are in power, more consideration is given
to providing at least a fair hearing by the various agencies. As a
result, despite recalcitrance by one of the members of the Clinton
PEB, BMWE was able to get a fair hearing and a fair contract in the
1995 round of bargaining that led to the recommendations of PEB 229.
Although we did not make up for the devastating results of PEB 219,
we came back some of the way. However, the NMB this time made
personal and political decisions to deny us a proffer of arbitration even though we had bargained to impasse by
June, 2000. We did not want to risk another PEB appointed by a
conservative Republican, especially with the demands the railroads had
on the table to savage our work rules contracting out our
production work and increasing contracting out of maintenance work
reducing away from home expenses placing our maintenance forces
under the same kinds of rules our production gangs are under
weakening our job protection agreement just to name a few.
No, we have been at this point before when Labor talks big,
fights but lacks the clout to win. We believe we know what is going on
and where this is going small wage increases, especially given the
UTU tentative settlement and high health care costs given the meteoric
rise in those costs but also a direct attack on our work rules.
The history is clear and this battle has already been fought. We
remember the lessons of PEB 219 and the climate under which it
happened, and we see the same climate now. Rather than repeat those
errors and have the probability of our members suffering with no other
option offered to them, we chose instead to make a tentative agreement
and save what was gained in the last round of bargaining. If the
members choose to reject that agreement, at least they have chosen to
take the risks associated with going to a Bush-appointed PEB and
negotiating agreements under the Railway Labor Act with a Conservative
Republican as President. Those risks are immense much worse that
what we settled for.
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