(The following story by Stacie Hamel appeared on the Omaha World-Herald website on January 5.)
OMAHA, Neb. — A coalition formed by seven railroad unions to coordinate contract negotiations isn’t unprecedented, though the number of participating unions is larger than in the past, said a national group that handles railroad labor relations.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters announced in a statement Monday that the seven member unions will not sign off individually on tentative agreements with rail carriers until all coalition members concur.
Joanna Moorhead, spokeswoman for the not-for-profit National Railway Labor Conference, said it isn’t unusual for bargaining units to work together. The conference represents the interests of freight railway management in labor negotiations.
“It is larger than in the past,” she said, “but we’ve worked with the unions in a coalition certainly in the past. We’ve done it for some time.”
There are 13 standard rail unions. Although some are part of larger organizations, each signs labor agreements separately, Moorhead said.
Management of the nation’s biggest freight railroads – such as the largest, Omaha-based Union Pacific – bargain as a multiemployer group, Moorhead said, with agreements covering more than 90 percent of freight rail employees being handled on a national basis.
“Negotiations are just at the beginning,” she said. “We’re looking forward to the bargaining table.”
According to the Teamsters statement, it has been about 20 years since as many as seven unions negotiated as a group.
The coalition unions represent nearly 85,000 rail employees who work as locomotive engineers, trainmen, signalmen, firemen, oilers, metal workers, boilermakers and train dispatchers and on maintenance of way crews.
“Even though these unions work in a variety of crafts, they are united in their demands for job security, better wages and safer working conditions,” said John Murphy, a Teamster International vice president and a representative of the Teamsters Rail Conference, which encompasses the former Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees.
A united front at the bargaining table will help combat “rail management’s divide-and-conquer bargaining strategy,” the Teamsters statement said.
Freddie N. Simpson, president of the Teamsters maintenance of way employees division, said: “It would be unfortunate for any rail union leader to not be a part of this coalition. This coalition will prevent the carriers from whipsawing unions, large and small alike, and will strengthen all of rail labor at negotiations.”
One union not on the coalition’s member list is the United Transportation Union, which calls itself the largest railroad operating union in North America, representing 66,000 rail employees plus 60,000 members who either are retired or work in the bus industry.
A spokesman said the UTU’s constitution and bylaws do not allow it to join a coalition for national negotiation purposes, but the union wouldn’t have joined even if that weren’t the case.
Frank Wilner of the UTU said handing negotiating authority – by way of a power of attorney – over to a group that includes its competing union, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, would put at risk job protections the UTU has won.