Two weeks after Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) No. 250 issued its recommendations on the stalled contract negotiations between 12 rail labor unions and the carriers, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers announced on Sept. 1 that it has reached a tentative agreement with the National Carriers’ Conference Committee (NCCC), which represents most U.S. Class I freight railroads in national collective bargaining.
Two weeks after Presidential Emergency Board 250 issued its recommendations on the stalled contract negotiations between 12 rail labor unions and the carriers, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) Rail Division has reached a tentative agreement with the National Carriers’ Conference Committee (NCCC), which represents most U.S. Class I freight railroads in national collective bargaining.
The recommendations of Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) 250 regarding wages, benefits and work rules are “a vast improvement over the carriers’ previous proposals,” SMART Transportation Division President Jeremy R. Ferguson said in an Aug. 18 statement, but they “do not go far enough to provide our members with the quality of life that they have earned, and that both they and their families deserve.”
With release Aug. 16 of non-binding Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) recommendations for voluntary settlement of a 31-month simmering labor-management dispute over amending national wage, benefits and work rules contracts on most Class I and many smaller freight railroads, the question is, “What next?”
Razors cut two ways, as is evident among Wall Street analysts who encourage share-price haircuts for railroads not lowering operating ratios, but themselves fear from railroads a different sort of trimming—loss of access to senior officers and financial data should these analysts have the audacity to suggest the likelihood of a nationwide rail shutdown.
It is more than two years since the rail industry’s 12 labor unions and management (representing most Class I railroads and some smaller ones) commenced bargaining to amend contracts defining wages, benefits and work rules.
The National Mediation Board (NMB) on June 14 set in motion a ticking time bomb toward an economy-jolting national railroad shutdown within 90 days, its two Democratic members agreeing with rail labor—and over the remonstrance of carriers and the NMB’s lone Republican—that a voluntary agreement to amend unionized rail worker wages, benefits and work rules is not within reach.
The rail unions bargaining as part of the Coordinated Bargaining Coalition* (CBC) and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way/SMART Mechanical Coalition are still calling on the National Mediation Board (NMB) to “put forth a proffer of arbitration,” following the third week of compulsory joint NMB-mediated negotiations with the National Carriers’ Conference Committee (NCCC).
The National Carriers’ Conference Committee (NCCC) on April 22 proposed “to enter interim agreements with all rail labor organizations in national handling providing for advance payments of up to $600 per month, representing amounts that are expected to be due under future national collective bargaining agreements.” While most unions had declined as of April 25, NCCC said it would “hold open the proposal” for their further consideration.
CSX on April 19 reached what it’s calling a “tentative agreement” with the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, Transportation Division (SMART-TD) to provide SMART-TD Trainmen and Yardmasters with “monthly advance payments on future wage adjustments anticipated in settlement of the 2020 round of national bargaining between rail labor and the Class I railroads.” CSX also said it “notified its other labor organization representatives that it intends to reach agreements to provide identical payments to all unionized employees.”