(The following appeared on the Railway Age website on January 2.)
NEW YORK — The United Transportation Union most likely won’t become SMART after all as its new leadership has announced that the planned UTU-Sheet Metal Workers International Association merger—originally scheduled to occur Jan. 1 to create the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers—was “a shotgun wedding.”
In a Jan. 1 letter to UTU membership, newly elected International President Mike Futhey stated, “Regardless of what was said or done in previous months, the fact is—as validated by a federal court—that members did not have sufficient information to make an informed decision. In fact, it was revealed that some of the representations made to the membership were incorrect or distorted.”
Futhey’s declaration came only a few days after a federal district court in Akron, Ohio, temporarily halted the planned merger after complainants argued that, among other issues, the UTU membership, which ratified the SMART merger in early August, had not been provided sufficient information. The court has scheduled a second hearing for Jan. 4 to consider whether to lift the temporary injunction and permit the merger to proceed, or make the injunction permanent. Now it appears that hearing won’t be necessary.
“Shotgun weddings make for good movie comedy, but have no place in the real world of union mergers,” Futhey said. “As Dear Abby has always counseled, ‘If a marriage is right for the right reasons, and is one that can and will endure, the marriage can wait until next week, next month or next year.’ It is time for the UTU membership to determine if we want and need a merger. Any merger proposed should be governed by conditions acceptable and beneficial to our members, as well as to the other union and its members.”
In shooting down the shotgun wedding, Futhey said the appropriate way to conduct a merger is “to hold old-fashioned shoot-outs that bring the principals of all potential partners to various locations and allow the membership to question them. A union merger should not be negotiated in secret and sprung on the membership with a ballot attached.”
On Jan. 20, the UTU is scheduled to resume long-stalled national contract negotiations with the National Carriers Conference Committee, which represents Class I railroads. The UTU is the only rail labor union out of about a dozen that has not settled with the carriers.