CLEVELAND — The headquarters of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers in downtown Cleveland is steeped in the aura of a glorious past, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
The nation’s oldest stand-alone union occupies the brass and marble mezzanine level of the Standard Building, which housed the engineers’ private bank during the Roaring Twenties.
The gleaming halls hint of the boom years: At the pinnacle of its power the union ran a chain of banks across the country, founded the posh beach haven of Venice, Fla., and controlled businesses valued at more than $1.5 billion in today’s dollars.
A plummeting stock market finished the brotherhood’s days of high finance, but the union kept its rank as the aristocrat of organized labor – independent, highly protected from government interference and with negotiated wages that were among the best for blue-collar workers in the United States.
Today, though, the 58,000-member BLE is pondering the once unthinkable: joining the Teamsters.
A shrinking industry and heat from another rail union looking to consolidate are pushing the BLE into the arms of the 1.4-million-strong Teamsters, best known as the labor union of long-haul truck drivers.
Committees from the engineers and the Teamsters meet next week to begin working out merger details such as dues.
Some time next year, BLE members will vote on whether to drop their independent status for the first time since their founding in 1863.
The deal also must get the stamp of the Teamsters’ 27-member executive board.
The upside for the BLE would be more clout in contract negotiations, public relations and on Capitol Hill.
The downside is apparent in the BLE’s reluctance to speak of a “merger,” preferring the term “affiliation.”
“I want everyone to know it’s not something we have to do,” said BLE International President Don Hahs, a third-generation locomotive engineer from Kingwood, Texas. “We’re doing it because it might be the best for our membership.”
The BLE is a cautious dance partner, fending off two overtures – the BLE calls them attempted raids – by the Lakewood-based United Transportation Union, which represents mainly conductors, brakemen and switchmen.
Hahs believes the UTU would come after the engineers again if it saw an opening. “They would like to figure out how to do it,” he said. The UTU declined to comment.
The UTU and the BLE tried to draw up a merger pact in early 1999. Then-BLE President Clarence Monin said the engineers had to face declining employment rolls and smaller treasuries for bargaining and grievances.
That didn’t sit well with some of the rank and file. The UTU has about 125,000 members, including 65,000 active workers, compared with the BLE’s 58,000, including 38,000 active members.
Monin was kicked out of office in a close recall vote. Talks with the UTU broke off. The UTU asked the National Mediation Board to force employees of Union Pacific Corp. to vote on whether they would be represented by just one union.
Hundreds of angry engineers picketed outside the agency’s Washington offices. “The UTU was courting us on one hand,” Hahs said, “and threatening us on the other.”
The mediation board eventually ruled against the UTU’s “single craft” argument. But it left open the possibility that the two fields could merge after more advances in technology.
In the summer of 2001, new presidents were in control at the unions. They rekindled talks and sent a unification agreement to a vote of both memberships. Conductors voted in favor, but engineers blocked it by a 2-to-1 ratio.
The BLE decided about then that the Teamsters, a huge but decentralized union with many small pieces, could function as a protective umbrella – but not a suffocating one.
“There isn’t anybody in the Teamsters who is going to jump into an engine and take over,” said Peter Rachleff, a labor historian at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.
The Teamsters are expected to have no qualms about a merger that would bring almost 40,000 dues-paying members. Spokesman Rob Black said the international will be strengthened by representing workers across the transportation spectrum.
Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education at Cornell University, said the engineers might be in for a surprise if they underestimate the Teamsters’ power structure, especially its regional offices. The BLE “will come in with a small chair at the end of the table,” she said.
That’s not how Hahs sees it. He envisions a rail industry “conference” underneath the first tier of the international Teamsters that would leave engineers largely untouched.
“We’re going to continue to represent locomotive engineers from the Standard Building in Cleveland, Ohio,” he said. “If we don’t get the autonomy we’ve been told we’ll get, we don’t think the members will buy into it.”