Nearly 100% of Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen members have voted in support of a nationwide strike, which BLET National President Dennis R. Pierce is calling “a showing of solidarity and unity.”
The heated rhetoric surrounding the impasse that national rail labor contract negotiations appears to have reached—and the threat of a strike leading to an economy-crippling rail network shutdown—shows little signs of cooling down.
It is more than two years since the rail industry’s 12 labor unions and management (representing most Class I railroads and some smaller ones) commenced bargaining to amend contracts defining wages, benefits and work rules.
Preparations are under way for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) to poll members, who the union stresses “have been without a contract raise for nearly three years,” to authorize
It may be the “snooker” of this century, and there’s not much railroads can do about it so long as Democrats control both chambers of Congress.
The National Mediation Board (NMB) on June 14 set in motion a ticking time bomb toward an economy-jolting national railroad shutdown within 90 days, its two Democratic members agreeing with rail labor—and over the remonstrance of carriers and the NMB’s lone Republican—that a voluntary agreement to amend unionized rail worker wages, benefits and work rules is not within reach.
The rail unions bargaining as part of the Coordinated Bargaining Coalition* (CBC) and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way/SMART Mechanical Coalition are still calling on the National Mediation Board (NMB) to “put forth a proffer of arbitration,” following the third week of compulsory joint NMB-mediated negotiations with the National Carriers’ Conference Committee (NCCC).
As the Surface Transportation Board (STB), Federal Maritime Commission and Department of Transportation struggle to ease a problematic supply chain crisis, pressure is mounting on the National Mediation Board (NMB) to prevent a nationwide railroad work stoppage by guiding rail labor and management to a voluntarily negotiated agreement to amend union-member wages, benefits and work rules.
The National Mediation Board (NMB) has agreed to give the nation’s 12 railroad labor unions, representing some 125,000 unionized rail workers, an opportunity May 24-26 to demonstrate their commitment to a voluntarily negotiated settlement with most of the nation’s railroads over changes in wages, benefits and work rules.
The National Mediation Board (NMB) has refused a request from the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers Mechanical Division (SMART-MD) and Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division/IBT (BMWED) to be relieved from mediation with the National Carriers Conference Committee (NCCC).