(The following story by Virginia Baldwin Gilbert appeared in the January 10 issue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.)
ST. LOUIS — Members of the United Transportation Union have the right to operate remote-controlled locomotives in U.S. rail yards, an arbitrator ruled late Friday.
The UTU, which represents switchmen, and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers both had claimed rights to the job of moving locomotives using computerized remote-control technology.
The National Carriers Conference, which represents the six largest U.S. railroads, negotiated an agreement with the UTU in 2001, but the engineers union said its members had exclusive rights to drive locomotives, regardless of the method.
Gil Vernon, the arbitrator, sided with the UTU and the railroads. In a decision announced in Atlanta, he said the remote-control operator “is not supplanting the engineer. It is the computer.”
Vernon characterized the onboard computer and remote-control device as “essentially ‘set it and forget it’ technology.”
The engineers union has sought to refute that argument, which first was advanced nearly 10 years ago in a similar dispute in Canada.
Representatives of the engineers union were unavailable for comment Friday. The union has begun tallying accidents and unsafe conditions that it blames on the use of remote-control devices in the hands, the union believes, of less-qualified non-engineers.
Byron A. Boyd Jr., international president of the UTU, said Friday that Vernon’s decision “only confirms what we have been saying for some time: The work of the operating employees has been changing and will continue to change because of advancements in technology.”
Boyd offered an olive branch to the engineers union: “UTU did not seek to negotiate on remote control separately and UTU did not ask for this arbitration. … Unifying the operating employees into one union is so basic and is so needed.”
The UTU is the largest union of U.S. rail workers, representing about 45,000 active railroad employees among a union of 120,000 members, including workers at airports and other modes of transportation.
The engineers union represents about 25,000 railroad employees; it has no workers in other industries.Merger talks between the two unions broke off, and the engineers union is talking with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Norfolk Southern Railway Co. is the only railroad using the remote-control technology in the St. Louis area. Union Pacific Railroad Co. says it plans to introduce it.