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"It's Not Enough That We Do Our Best;
Sometimes We Have To Do What Is Required"
 
        

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FRA

FRA: Human Factors Final Rule

2008 Tentative National Railroad Agreement Documents

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Business schools teach business -- accounting, finance, marketing, corporate governance -- and mostly from a corporate point of view. While courses in labor/management relations are offered, they too often teach anti-union tactics and ignore the impact of labor unions on shaping public policy.

What a surprise that at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business -- one of the most prestigious and certainly among the most conservative -- five students of Professor Tanya Menon chose to study how a politically active labor union influences laws and regulations controlling corporate conduct in the workplace.

The students validated that by..... more

Our tentative agreement

Brothers and Sisters:

Meetings are underway across the country to explain our tentative national rail agreement and provide members the opportunity to ask questions. Check with your local officers, general chairperson or state legislative director if you have not been notified of a meeting near you.

A listing of meetings also is provided on the home page at www.utu.org.


A voting package will be mailed by mid-May to members eligible to vote on the national agreement. A notice will be posted at www.utu.org when the packages -- with voting instructions, the complete agreement, and questions and answers -- are mailed. Voting will be via telephone and conducted by the American Arbitration Association.


In the meantime, information on the agreement is available on the UTU Web page, at www.utu.org, under a special link, "Railroad Contract Negotiations Update."


Our tentative agreement improves on the pattern settlement, and general committees of adjustment still will be able to gain additional improvements on local issues.


Does the tentative national agreement provide everything we want? No. But the bottom line is that we can’t do better than we have achieved with this national agreement -- but we could do worse.

Those of us who suffered through PEB 219 in 1991 recall what happened when we struck the railroads and Congress imposed the PEB recommendations.

Even though the House of Representatives was controlled by Democrats, Congress ended the strike within hours. The legislation forced on us the PEB 219 recommendations, which resulted in two-person crews and elimination of the fireman-helper. 

The recommendations of PEB 219 were the final nail in the coffin eliminating brakemen and firemen-helpers -- the nails and coffin provided by the carriers and the hammer by the first President Bush in selecting the members of PEB 219.


If we reject this agreement, we can expect that the improvements we gained over the pattern settlement would be dead-on-arrival at a Bush-appointed PEB.


That would mean we would lose the ability to keep the entry-rate issue on the table and correct it through arbitration, lose the higher meal allowance, lose the COLA, and lose a provision unique to our agreement that returns to us any health-care insurance-premium savings should Congress enact public-funding of health-care.


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SMART TRO extended into May

AKRON, Ohio -- Federal District Court Judge John R. Adams issued an order Feb. 5 extending until at least early May the temporary restraining order (TRO) against implementation of a merger by the UTU with the Sheet Metal Workers International Association to create the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers Union (SMART).

The judge’s order said the TRO "is hereby extended, with the consent of the parties, from February 13, 2008, until ten days after the court rules on the pending motion to intervene."

The judge ordered that a hearing be held in his courtroom April 25 "regarding the motion of Paul Thompson et al. to intervene as party defendants herein." Others joining Thompson as party to that motion -- seeking immediate implementation of the merger -- are UTU International officers James Brunkenhoefer, Roy Boling, Tony Iannone, J.R. Cumby, John Babler, John Fitzgerald and Vic Baffoni.

Judge Adams previously ruled that UTU members had not been provided a SMART constitution (giving them sufficient information on which to make an informed decision) when they voted last year to approve the merger.

The federal court action was initiated by a group of UTU members, who successfully complained to the court that UTU members should have been provided -- prior to the vote -- with a copy of the SMART constitution into which the UTU constitution was to be inserted intact. The complaint was filed following allegations that UTU members were not made aware of conflicts between the two constitutions.

As previously reported, some 140 UTU general committee, state legislative and International officers overwhelmingly demonstrated their support Jan. 30 for a cooperative process to resolve differences over the stalled merger.

The UTU officers urged that UTU International President Mike Futhey and SMWIA General President Mike Sullivan follow the federal court’s order -- as well as recommendation of UTU counsel -- that the two (Futhey and Sullivan) settle upon the text of a SMART constitution.

When that task, which may require arbitration of conflicts, is completed, the UTU membership would be provided a copy, and then asked to vote on ratifying the new constitution.

Futhey said, following that meeting of UTU officers in New Orleans, that, "It is my feeling that the memberships of both the UTU and the SMWIA are best served by having a proper constitution prepared and presented to members for a vote."