A week ago railroad labor peace seemed to be at hand. After an all-night bargaining session in which Labor Secretary Marty Walsh leaned on the parties to make concessions, a tentative agreement was announced around dawn, less than 24 hours before unions under federal railroad labor law were free to strike and their employers were free to lock them out.
Leaders of unions representing locomotive engineers and conductors touted the gains they achieved in modifying work rule pertaining to attendance policies, a 24 percent compounded wage increase over the life of the five-year contract, and heading off railroad management’s determination – for now at least – to restructure the jobs of conductors.
But those tentative agreements came with an important caveat. They are subject to ratification by union members.
Even before the last three unions agreed to a tentative contract, members of one union had rejected the tentative pact their leaders had negotiated earlier and members of two other unions had approved their tentative agreements.
The ratification process won’t be completed among remaining unions for another couple of weeks.
But there is a realistic prospect that the nation could be back to where it was last week with a strike and/or lockout looming again.
Some union workers have taken to social media to blast the agreements, saying they don’t go far enough.
It remains unclear if that is the view of a majority of union rail workers or merely griping by a loud minority.
In a commentary posted Wednesday on the website of Railway Age, Frank Wilner suggested that even if the rank and file union members vote to reject the agreements reached between their unions and the National Carriers Conference Committee, which represents railroad management, there is precedent for union leadership “overriding” the contract rejections.
Wilner, who has written extensively about railroad labor issues for Railway Age and published a book about the federal Railway Labor Act, said there are two scenarios in which that could happen.
Union leaders could cite clauses in the union’s constitution for imposing the contract despite the vote of the rank and file to reject it, or union leadership could reach an agreement with railroad management to submit the contract issue to binding arbitration.
Wilner cited two instances in which union leaders did those things. One instance involved the then-named United Transportation Union in 1996 and the Teamsters in 2018.
You can read Wilner’s column at https://www.railwayage.com/freight/class-i/might-union-chiefs-override-member-vote/
Pay particular attention to the political calculus that might drive union leaders to ignore the will of their members if they vote to reject the tentative agreements.
Even if railroad workers vote to ratify the tentative agreements, that doesn’t mean the restlessness in the ranks that has boiled over in recent months will go away despite the gains that union leaders said they made regarding work rules.
Trains magazine write Bill Stephens offered a thoughtful analysis of the turbulent times that might lie ahead in the wake of the current round of tentative contract agreements.
One scenario he offered is that some workers might stay in their jobs long enough to collect their back pay and then leave.
If large numbers of workers do that, it would set back the efforts of Class 1 railroads to recruit enough workers to alleviate the crew shortages they’ve been experiencing of late and which they claim is the root cause of their service issues.
You can read Stephen’s column at https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/rail-strike-averted-for-now-but-the-industrys-not-out-of-the-woods-yet-analysis/
The analysis ends with the observation that the railroad industry needs stability and less uncertainty. “The best way to go about it would be for labor and management to iron out their differences,” Stephens wrote.
Few would disagree with that. Retiring CSX CEO James Foote suggested as much in remarks made a few months ago.
Yet what if some differences between labor and management are irreconcilable?
Labor-management conflict is inevitable in every workplace because the self-interests of the two don’t always align.
Some of what railroad workers seem to want railroad management is never going to agree to give them.
Managers believe it is their place to set workplace rules. They call it management prerogative. Management might be willing to negotiate on some of those rules, but not all of them.
It is noteworthy that the tentative agreements may have eased some of the rules regarding attendance policies, but the pacts left untouched management’s right to set those policies, including policies that penalize workers for unauthorized absences.
In the meantime, everyone is waiting to see how the union members vote on ratification.
I would expect union leaders to lean hard on them to vote “yes.”
And if they don’t? A strike or lockout is not out of the question. How will it end? Probably not the way that many workers think that it will or hope that it will.
Tags: labor agreements, Labor contracts, labor disputes, labor union executives, Railroad labor unions, railroad strikes
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