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

FRA FRA: Human Factors Final Rule 2008 Tentative National Railroad Agreement Documents Synopsis of Tentative National Rail Agreement Tentative National Agreement Agreed Upon Questions & Answers Map of Current Managed Care Defined Areas and "White Spaces" (as referenced in the agreement) Partial Prescription Drug Formulary of Most Frequently Prescribed Medications (as referenced in the agreement)  GCs unanimous in support (03/27/08) Better plan, lower costs (03/21/08) Danger of 'no' vote (03/07/08) So where's my contract? (02/19/08) 'Whys' of national rail agreement (02/13/08)   National negotiators speak out (02/05/08) We busted the pattern! (01/29/08) Tentative agreement! (01/24/08) NCCC Section 6 notices (11/01/04) UTU Section 6 notices (11/01/04) 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

Weather Forecast 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.