CLEVELAND, January 30 — Ten Rail Labor unions, including the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division of the Teamsters Rail Conference, have joined forces with the IBT and other transportation unions to defend railroad workers from legislative provisions that would significantly weaken their legal rights.
Anti-worker legislators in the U.S. Congress are attempting to condition reauthorization for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on changes designed to weaken the Railway Labor Act (RLA), which also governs labor-management relations in the aviation industry. FAA reauthorization has been a political football on Capitol Hill for more than a year, and the agency was temporarily shut down in 2011 when funding ran out.
The proposed changes to the RLA would end the discretion of the National Mediation Board (NMB) in deciding when a representation election will be held, and would increase the “showing of interest” necessary to compel an election for an unrepresented bargaining unit by over 40%. In fact, the proposal would result in a higher threshold to hold a representation election than for a union to prevail in the election. The change also would promote legal challenges by railroads and make it extremely difficult for unions to continue to exist on smaller carriers that are merged with a larger, non-union carrier.
Further, when two unions are on an election ballot today and between them they garner more than a majority of votes, there is a runoff between those two unions. The bill will change that by requiring a runoff between the top 2 vote-getters, including “no union,” even if a majority of the employees vote for representation. For example, if one union gets 40%, the other union 29%, and “no union” 31%, the runoff will be between union #1 and “no union,” thereby giving management two opportunities to defeat unionization of the workforce.
The legislation also would subject the NMB to significant oversight in ways that set the stage for politicization of what is supposed to be an independent federal agency.
In a joint statement released this afternoon, the rail unions said they remain strongly committed to passage of a clean FAA Reauthorization bill, but that aviation safety and security bill is no place to impose unrelated and controversial labor provisions that will ultimately serve to harm both airline and railroad workers. They pointed out that the proposed RLA changes would drastically rewrite a statute that was crafted by labor-management agreement and has not been changed for over 75 years without the agreement of both employer and employee representatives.
“It is not surprising that the shameless, anti-worker ideologues in the Congress chose to take aviation safety hostage in an attempt to rob air and rail workers of their rights, but it is stunning that some of our so-called friends are going along with this,” said BLET National President Dennis R. Pierce. “The War on Workers is now in our front yard, and all BLET members must make careful note of who supports us and who does not, because Election Day is just over 10 months away.”
To view/print/download the Joint Rail Labor Statement:
www.ble-t.org/pr/pdf/FAA_Labor.PDF