(The following article by Jonathan Shikes was posted on the Press-Enterprise website on November 30.)
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Picketing train stations and walking off the job are some of the tactics the Amtrak employees union could apply to keep the passenger railway from sending its call-center jobs to an outside firm, a union official told employees Wednesday.
“If they proceed with this, we will go to war, not just here in Riverside but everywhere,” said Ron Kloos, a representative of Transportation Communications International Union, which represents nearly 600 workers in Riverside.
An Amtrak spokeswoman didn’t return a call seeking comment.
Kloos held two meetings Wednesday at a Pizza Factory restaurant in Riverside to answer questions from nervous, angry and confused employees.
He and union Assistant General Chairman Jack Dinsdale were also there to “quiet rumors” about Amtrak’s plans to outsource some of these call-center jobs.
Earlier this year, the government-subsidized railway told employees and elected officials it wanted to save money by hiring an outside vendor to handle the reservations and sales jobs now handled by call centers in Riverside and Philadelphia.
President Bush and Republican lawmakers have been critical of Amtrak, saying they would like to cut its funding or make it operate as a private entity.
No full-time agents would lose their jobs, Amtrak promised, but 190 part-time employees were given until Feb. 1 to go full time or quit. Full-time workers would be replaced by the outside firm only if they left on their own or retired.
But in an early-November interview, Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black said the railway hadn’t yet hired an outside vendor despite the Feb. 1 deadline for employees.
“Amtrak has been asked in a bipartisan way to be more efficient and economically sound,” he said. “This initiative is along those lines.”
The uncertainty has made it hard to prepare for the future, said Leslie Armenta, a seven-year, part-time Amtrak employee from Beaumont.
“I love my job,” said Armenta, who attended the meeting. “I’m not angry. They told us from the beginning we needed to be able to handle change. I just can’t plan.”
But Kloos said the union has been negotiating to keep those jobs inside Amtrak. Talks haven’t gone far, but a settlement could still be reached, he said.
The Transportation Communications International Union, based in Rockville, Md., has 46,000 members, most employed in the railroad industry.
The results of the November election could also help union employees, since the Democratic Party, which is typically friendlier to organized labor and to Amtrak, will take control of both houses of Congress in January, Kloos added.
In the meantime, he said the union plans to make outsourcing as difficult as possible for Amtrak and warned workers to prepare for a fight.
“We don’t want it to be simple or profitable for them,” he said.