(The following report appeared on the Congressional Quarterly website on June 5.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Unions that represent Amtrak workers are using the congressional appropriations process as part of a new strategy to gain more leverage at the collective-bargaining table.
The unions typically give unconditional support to the railroad’s management in its perennial fight to overcome drastic budget cuts suggested by the White House. But this year, several transportation unions have scaled back or altogether eliminated their efforts to lobby for more Amtrak money.
The move is designed “to make Congress aware of the inflexibility on the part of Amtrak and the impact that this is having on wages,” said James M. Brunkenhoefer, the lead lobbyist for the United Transportation Union, a major railroad employee union headquartered in Cleveland.
Union officials point out that 10,000 Amtrak employees have not had an updated contract in eight years, and negotiations for 5,000 other workers have stalled for nearly three. Disputes over back pay are a main sticking point, union officials say.
Brunkenhoefer’s organization decided that inaction might send the strongest message as appropriators assemble the fiscal 2008 spending bills.
“We decided to go to lunch,” he said.
The AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department has taken a similar approach and attached a caveat to its support for funding. The group in March approved a formal policy stating that “Congress must stop the cycle of funding Amtrak while failing to demand that Amtrak employees be treated and compensated fairly.”
Transportation Trades Department President Edward Wytkind said union members, who rallied May 17 for wage increases and back pay outside the company’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, have started telling members of Congress “that there has to be a direct link between Amtrak funding and the needs of the employees.”
Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black said the company “is committed to direct, open, across-the-table negotiations that will lead to new agreements and more stability for the thousands of hard-working Amtrak employees.”
Without a new contract, most workers have received an annual 1 percent cost-of-living increase in recent years – a scenario that Amtrak President Alexander Kummant told House appropriators March 28 was causing the railroad to lose certain high-skilled laborers, such as electricians, to other transit agencies that pay more.
Amtrak signalmen, for example, earn on average $21.36 an hour, less than $2 more than the $19.75 average hourly wage they earned eight years ago, according to the AFL-CIO.
Part of the difficulty at the negotiating table, Amtrak officials say, is that they have to talk with 24 different bargaining units.
President Bush has recommended $800 million for Amtrak in fiscal 2008 – $500 million less than lawmakers provided for fiscal 2007 (PL 110-5 ). When Republicans controlled Congress, they often found enough money in the domestic-spending budget to override such requests from the White House. During those years, the unions actively campaigned with Amtrak’s management for the extra funding.
Congress’ new Democratic majority is decidedly more Amtrak-friendly, so the perennial fight for more appropriations is less complicated. That means the unions can spend more time working on labor issues – a topic that is also getting more consideration with Democrats in charge on Capitol Hill.
The Senate’s top Transportation appropriator, Washington Democrat Patty Murray, at a Feb. 28 hearing lambasted the lack of a wage increase for employees and expressed concern about recent cuts in the passenger rail’s workforce.
Murray cited statistics indicating that the railroad has shed almost 6,250 workers in the past six years and said an overhaul of Amtrak’s employee compensation package is “long overdue.”
Murray’s comments enable unions “to put some pressure on the company” to meet unions’ demands, said Wytkind of the AFL-CIO.
Massachusetts’ John W. Olver, the lead Transportation appropriator in the House, has raised concerns about Amtrak wages as well.
Union officials also have met with the staff of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to make the case for wage increases. The panel will hold its first in a series of Amtrak reauthorization hearings June 12.
Chairman James L. Oberstar of Minnesota, the son of a union official who spent his career laboring in iron mines, will most likely be sympathetic to labor’s concerns.
There, too, Wytkind said that unions will press the notion that “any effort to give the company funding has to be done with consideration of the needs of the employees.”