Western Railroad Discussion > Rejected!!!

The votes are in and tallied….Health & Welfare and Crew Consist Tentative Agreements both “rejected” by trainmen/yardmen on Big Orange.

The brakemen and yard helpers may be on borrowed time…but are safe for now.

The general committees are now attempting to meet with the carrier to determine where negotiations will go.

Hold on…because it’s about to be bumpy!

Sounds like Trip Planner Dash 2 has a seat at the table and isn't welcome.

Out 

Also being told that the Teamsters-BLE union (engineers) is negotiating with the carrier to have the "second man in the cab" as a utility engineer position represented by them instead of a UTU conductor position.

Sadly the unions seem intent on eating each other.  I've seen things in my neighborhood that would support this.  At the craft level we are united, for the most part.

Eng.Shadetree

In LA there were a lot of engineers represented by the UTU-E so a cab was quite often all UTU.
JB

Question from an outsider:

Regardless of whether both people in the cab are part of the same craft, is there any real logic to having them be represented by two different unions?

This is NASCAR in real life, while the leaders fight for postion someone/something sneaks by on the outside
for the win.

Out 

Divide and Conquer is the oldest trick in management's playbook

Posted from Android

Good for them

pennsy3750 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Question from an outsider:
>
> Regardless of whether both people in the cab are
> part of the same craft, is there any real logic to
> having them be represented by two different
> unions?

No.

The UTU and BLET tried to come together several years ago to be just 1 union….but it failed, never materialized. Lots of people would be “for” it…just having 1 union. Maybe someday.

Supposedly 80% of Coastlines members voted and overwhelmingly rejected both TAs. People are finally coming to their senses and not willing to let the company off cheap. 1987 called and wants the company's "were poor" BS to stop.

My thoughts exactly. The Class ones crying poverty at every contract negotiation, then espousing the billions in revenue to prospective stock buyers is so crass and hypocritical it’s incredulous.

The thing is… TE&Y have been cut so much that any fat is gone and it’s been into bone the past 30+ years. It’s affecting operations daily, negatively, but as long as the OR is lower today, who cares about tomorrow.

Regards

Posted from iPhone

And the OR is as far as some investors look. I'm sure that the back of the rail' management's brain is the vision
of Trip Planner Dash 2 and a ride along baby sitter for the computer. Lotsa luck with that, a computer isn't going
to fix the crap maintenance currently in vogue. 

Out 

PTC isn’t the panacea that everyone thought it would be, but the Feds and the Carrier’s are doubling down. The reasons are twofold at least; conjecture on my part.

1.So much money and political hay has been expended that the Rubicon has been crossed on this.
2. The Feds are in line with the Carriers wishes to make TE&Y extinct crafts. No threats of strikes (haha) and the Carriers promise rainbows and Unicorns if they can just get rid of those lazy, shiftless rascals in the operating crafts. The usual boilerplate of how the Carriers will take millions of trucks off the highways and put the nation’s freight back on the rails, exploring innovative ways to reduce congestion on highways, passenger rail services… yada yada yada… ad nauseam.

A pox upon them.

Regards

Posted from iPhone

Drknow Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> PTC isn’t the panacea that everyone thought it
> would be, but the Feds and the Carrier’s are
> doubling down. The reasons are twofold at least;
> conjecture on my part.
>
> 1.So much money and political hay has been
> expended that the Rubicon has been crossed on
> this.
> 2. The Feds are in line with the Carriers wishes
> to make TE&Y extinct crafts. No threats of strikes
> (haha) and the Carriers promise rainbows and
> Unicorns if they can just get rid of those lazy,
> shiftless rascals in the operating crafts. The
> usual boilerplate of how the Carriers will take
> millions of trucks off the highways and put the
> nation’s freight back on the rails, exploring
> innovative ways to reduce congestion on highways,
> passenger rail services… yada yada yada… ad
> nauseam.
>
> A pox upon them.
>
> Regards
>
> Posted from iPhone

Good analysis.

One of the problems with any corporate or industry initiative is that it takes cojones to buck that belief and do something different.  PSR is the received wisdom, and today's implementation is the way to do it. "Everybody knows that"

Until the whole mess comes crashing down into a burning pile.  I'm thinking specifically of the technology industry deciding that relaince on Chinese and Kazakh rare earths was a good idea.  Or relying on Taiwan foundries for a large % of semiconductors was a good idea.  Or deciding to close vocational education schools and make college a default choice for education, etc.

Would customers pay more for reliable service which gets a shipment to the factory floor on the day it is expected? UPS has been able to make that work for some of its business. So has JB Hunt, etc.  Would railroads get turned inside out if forced to make that happen? Probably

Drknow Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> PTC isn’t the panacea that everyone thought it
> would be, but the Feds and the Carrier’s are
> doubling down. The reasons are twofold at least;
> conjecture on my part.

It is interesting to see Congress mandate something that would prevent collisions and overspeed derailments and have FRA turn it into the system that was eventually required.

Funny thing that this is the third (and finally successful) federal government try at making the railroad industry spend big bucks on technological safety systems, but when a DC-7 and a Connie found each other the hard way over the Grand Canyon in 1956, the coffers opened to rapidly developing a highest possible tech air traffic control system.



> 2. The Feds are in line with the Carriers wishes
> to make TE&Y extinct crafts. No threats of strikes
> (haha) and the Carriers promise rainbows and
> Unicorns if they can just get rid of those lazy,
> shiftless rascals in the operating crafts.


. . . which is another, let's say interesting situation.

The story goes way back to the Pacific Railroad Acts. Congress bought (and conquered) a lot of land that was commercially useless without transportation - railroads. They didn't want to spend the money themselves, so they baited folks with free land to be used for railroad development. That's the part of the story everybody hears about. However, the land was commercially worthless without a railroad, so the folks building the railroad had to ago find money.

When the survivors of that fiasco became rich and powerful, the industry was put under punitive regulations. That wasn't enough, though.

The federal government has been actively competing against the railroad industry for a bit over 100 years.Canals, highways, air transportation, yup, the government has poured money in and encouraged it. I have found documentation that the federal government has subsidized barges for well over 150 years specifically to take traffic away from railroads. The St. Lawrence Seaway ultimately led to the collapse of Penn Central. The numbered US highway system did significant damage.

The Interstate Highway was the final blow. Eisenhower's 1919 road trip is often brought up as the excuse, but even with the pathetic rail service of 1919, loading up the stuff on a train would have crossed the country in less than half the time. The fiasco just happened to be useful for promoting a highway program. Funny thing.

Finally realizing that they blew it, they then turned the industry to do whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted, to whomever it wanted.

The paradox - after over a century of considering rail transportation an unimportant niche, every time the employees have had enough of being treated like dogs (well ,. . . not actually, you can be arrested for treating a dog like that), the NATIONAL SECURITY flag is raised. All the sudden the niche industry that gets to turn down business, screw customers and the public at large is too important to be inconvenienced by a mere 'labor dispute.'


> The
> usual boilerplate of how the Carriers will take
> millions of trucks off the highways and put the
> nation’s freight back on the rails, exploring
> innovative ways to reduce congestion on highways,
> passenger rail services… yada yada yada… ad
> nauseam.

That is not going to happen until infrastructure and service are separated. 125ish years ago, the federal government was bent out of shape over railroad monopolies, then created them. The government was concerned about continuing rail service, especially competitive rail service, at any cost, then allowed the whole thing to be scrapped down into regional monopolies.

I work with a lot of promoters of rail electrification. Same story there as from the industry. The industry doesn't want electrification. The electrification folks chant: electrifying the national rail network will be so efficient that it will take trucks off the road. They get chagrined when I tell them it won't change a thing except that railroads will do what they are doing now but with electric trains that the public paid for.




>
> A pox upon them.


. . . and their Wall Street handlers and their government enablers.

TAW

 

Thanx, Tom.

My sentiments exactly.

Regards

Posted from iPhone