Nine Canadian National/Wisconsin Central (CN/WC) divisions that comprise the GCA voted unanimously April 24 that in favor of a new quality of life agreement that covers roughly 600 locomotive engineers.
General Chairman Eric Hau said the goal was “to attract, retain, and offer a better overall quality of life to CN/WC locomotive engineers.” Now that the quality of life agreement has been ratified, the union will begin working with CN to make sure that there is a smooth rollout of the changes, Hau said.
Some highlights of the new agreement include:
• Improvements to the traditional seniority system;
• Engineers will no longer be forced to locations more than 100 miles away to protect their engineer seniority;
• All extra board positions will become a standard 5 days on and 2 days off, with a 9.2 basic day biweekly guarantee, bid by seniority; and
• Increased pay for extra board engineers to time and one half (over and above guarantee payments) for working on their rest days.
Locomotive photo courtesy of Cory Rusch, BLET Division 659