BLET, CN/WC Reach Tentative Agreement

(Photo by Cory Rusch, BLET Division 659; Courtesy of BLET)

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) has reached a tentative agreement for 600 engineers at CN/Wisconsin Central (WC), which the union said “provides significant quality of life improvements and comes after several months of negotiations.”

CN/WC members will vote on the tentative agreement—reached in late March—over the next 30 days, BLET reported in the April 4 edition of its weekly email newsletter. CN acquired WC in 2001.

According to the union, highlights of the agreement include:

• “Improvements to the traditional seniority system.
• “Engineers would no longer be forced to locations more than 100 miles away to protect their engineer seniority.
• “All extra board positions would become a standard five days on and two days off, with a 9.2 basic day biweekly guarantee, bid by seniority.
• “Increased pay for extra board engineers to time and one half (over and above guarantee payments) for working on their rest days.
• “Improved calling orders at Away From Home Terminals to reduce overall time away from home for all engineers.
• “All engineers would have the ability to achieve a maximum of 13 personal leave days (PLD) per year, whereas approximately half of the members are now capped at five days.”

“This was a joint effort between CN and our General Committee of Adjustment to attract, retain and offer a better overall quality of life to CN/WC locomotive engineers,” said BLET CN/WC General Chairman Eric Hau, who thanked CN for “following through on its commitment to negotiate with BLET on these quality of life improvements for locomotive engineers, especially outside of the Section 6 process,” according to the union.

In related news, BLET last month reported ratifying new contracts with Genesee & Wyoming subsidiaries Utah Railway, Missouri & Northern Arkansas Railroad and Berkshire & Eastern Railroad.