(The following story by Ted Nesi appeared on the Sun Chronicle website on January 14.)
ATTLEBORO, Mass. — Beleaguered commuters are bracing for a logistical nightmare if 10,000 railroad workers go out on strike Jan. 30, shutting down the busy Providence-to-Boston MBTA line that runs through Attleboro and Mansfield.
But officials on both sides of the dispute are now saying a strike may be avoided.
The labor dispute pits the railroad workers, who have been without a contract for eight years, against Amtrak, the perennially cash-strapped passenger rail company owned by the federal government.
Amtrak operates the train tracks that run from Providence to Boston, so a strike against Amtrak also would shut down local commuter rail service, even though neither the MBTA nor the private company that manages the commuter rail are directly involved.
But a spokesman for the Teamsters Rail union, Donald Griffin, told The Sun Chronicle that Amtrak and all nine unions are set to sit down at the bargaining table starting on Wednesday. The talks could lead to an agreement, or at least a delay before a strike begins.
Congress also could intervene to prevent a strike. Last month, Congressional Democrats reversed a cut by President Bush in the subsidy Amtrak gets from the federal government.
A spokesman for Amtrak, Cliff Black, told The Associated Press: “There is some sense of optimism that we’ll come to an agreement and avoid a strike.”
Black added, “Neither side appears to be interested in a shutdown of any portion of the railroad.”
Griffin agreed. “A strike is the last thing that we want to engage in,” he said.
It’s also the last thing most commuters want to see, although in interviews at the end of the work week Friday many said they were sympathetic toward the workers despite dreading the prospect of a walkout.
Echoing many of her fellow commuters, Sonja Thomas said a train strike would cause chaos since it would force the Providence line’s 17,000 daily riders to find other ways of getting to Boston.
Thomas, who has taken the train from South Attleboro five days a week for 11 years, said the people in her office already are discussing alternative plans, including car-pooling or working from home.
Still, Thomas said, “There’s only so much you can do.” It would take her an hour and a half to drive into Boston, as opposed to 50 minutes on the train, she said.
Barbara Tappan, another Attleboro resident on the 6:10 p.m. train out of Boston on Friday, said the commuter rail’s performance was already “really bad,” with late trains and long delays, and a strike would only make things worse.
Emarie Pope said her husband had joked about MBTA service being so bad that even if there is a strike, “How would we know the difference?”
Sitting in South Station, Pope said, “It really annoys me that we don’t have a better transit system.” Officials shouldn’t let things get to the point where train service might stop, she said.
Many commuters also said they wanted to know more about the issues behind the possible strike, which would be the first in Amtrak’s 36-year history.
There are two major sticking points between Amtrak and the unions.
The first dispute is over how much back pay the railroad workers should receive for the eight years it took to negotiate a new contract. Since 1999, their wages have stayed the same except for small cost-of-living adjustments. But Amtrak says it cannot afford to give the workers back pay stretching back to 2000.
The second dispute is over whether Amtrak can institute new work rules that the unions say are sweeping and unnecessary.
The strike threat comes less than two weeks after a committee appointed by President Bush to look at the dispute released a report that criticized Amtrak, and largely supported the unions.
Under federal law, the workers were not allowed to go on strike before the report was released.
The president’s committee described the eight-year wait for an agreement as “inordinately long,” and said “the evidence paints a fairly clear picture that places much greater responsibility on Amtrak for the failure to ink a deal.”
On the major issues in dispute, the report called the unions’ wage proposal “reasonable, fair and equitable,” and said “available evidence regarding Amtrak’s financial situation failed to show (it) was not affordable.”
To assist Amtrak, the committee recommended the workers receive their back pay in installments.
The report also rejected Amtrak’s proposed work rules, saying, “The record simply failed to establish the need for such work rules in their proposed form.”
Not surprisingly, Griffin said the unions are ready to reach a deal with Amtrak based on the presidential committee’s recommendations.
“We have done everything we can that any reasonable representative of working people can do to reach an agreement, so if there isn’t one on Jan. 30, and there is a strike, it’s on Amtrak, not on us,” Griffin said.