Will the UTU prevail in 2001?

Frank N. Wilner

The United Transportation Union intends to pursue a winner-take-all representation election for Train & Engine Service workers this spring on a so-far unnamed Class I railroad. It is part of the UTU strategy to achieve a single industry-wide contract for all Class I employees working under the same locomotive cab roof. UTU President Charlie Little says he prefers a voluntary merger as the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the UTU tentatively agreed to in 1999. But after a BLE rank-and-file uprising forced a cancellation of wedding plans, the UTU pursued an involuntary craft consolidation.

Yes, the National Mediation Board last month affirmed an arbitration award denying the UTU a representation election for all T&ES employees on the Union Pacific. And yes, the arbitration award was a victory for the BLE. Yet Little is optimistic that if NMB members themselves vote on his next petition for a representation election, the UTU will prevail before the NMB and certainly in the election as UTU members vastly outnumber those of the BLE.

With rail union employment more than halved in recent years, the UTU says it is a waste of scarce resources for it and the BLE separately to pursue wage and benefits negotiations and to file and pursue grievances. Craft lines have been pretty much blurred anyway, says Little. Conductors and brakemen hired since 1985 must accept promotion to engineer or be washed out of T&ES. Engineers also must flow back to conductor and brakeman when demand for engineers ebbs. It now is common that BLE and UTU members are covered under each other's contracts at some point in their careers.

Politics may have had much to do with the appointment by the NMB of the three-member arbitration panel last year after BLE President Clarence Monin was ousted in a recall election, merger negotiations were terminated, and AFL-CIO officials were unable to broker a peace between the BLE and UTU.

Arbitrators Richard Bloch, Richard Kasher, and Arnold Zack ruled that the record presented them was "insufficient" to end a century of craft and seniority separation on UP and permit a winner-take-all representation election. The NMB affirmed that decision without comment last month, even though on the same day Jacobsen and Duggan concluded in a lengthy decision that modern practices had blurred historic craft distinctions on the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis as they had on the Tex-Mex and Florida East Coast. The TRRA decision in favor of the UTU and a representation election validated what the UTU had told the arbitration panel.

NMB Democrat Ernest Dubester, whose third term expires in July and who will depart in favor of a Republican, dissented in the TRRA case, saying it was improper to "deviate from the historical patterns of representation in the railroad industry. Mandatory progression into the engineer position . . . does not indicate that engineers no longer have separate and distinct core duties." His reasoning followed that of the arbitration panel.

It was not lost on anyone involved in the case, however, that Dubester, who joined the NMB from the AFL-CIO, might be returning in July and that the UTU disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO last year after being sanctioned for raiding the BLE's membership. A merger between the BLE and the UTU should not be decided by the NMB based upon a representation election, said Dubester.

The primary function distinguishing engineers from trainmen, said Dubester, "is that engineers operate locomotive units using train handling skills that assure ontime/on-plan movement, fuel efficiency, rule compliance, derailment prevention, and safety." BLE President Ed Dubroski said that is why engineers require a federal certification.

Yet Little said he was "very encouraged" by the Jacobsen and Duggan votes in the TRRA case "because the same kind of evidence in the same format that won the TRRA case can be presented in a new UP case" that likely will be heard by Jacobsen and Duggan. UTU Assistant President Byron Boyd said the UTU "has not ruled out any Class I property" for filing of the next representation election petition.

As for a BLE-UTU merger, "it is far from dead," said Boyd. "When one cuts through the rhetoric, it is the right thing to do for the right reasons because a single union for all operating employees means the membership is best served." Dubroski, who must stand for re-election later this year, says the issue is not affiliation, but choice of affiliation. The BLE continues to look at other merger partners, but a serious paramour has not emerged.