Three smaller unions have reached a tentative agreement to avoid a strike, but two larger unions are still skeptical.
Three smaller unions have reached a tentative agreement to avoid a strike, but two larger unions are still skeptical.
T hree of the smaller unions involved in the ongoing freight-rail labor dispute have made a tentative agreement with carriers to avoid a strike. But two of the largest unions are still hesitant to accept independent recommendations.
Since January 2020, carriers and unions have been negotiating a new labor agreement. The agreement will last five years, starting at the beginning of 2020 and running through the end of 2024.
In July, Joe Biden appointed a presidential emergency board (PEB) to provide independent recommendations to help resolve the dispute, which is a power at his disposal under the Railway Labor Act. The PEB’s report was released earlier this month.
The PEB recommended a 24 percent wage increase over the life of the agreement; carriers had proposed 17 percent and unions had proposed 31.3 percent. Since over two years of the period under negotiation have already passed, workers would get those years’ increases immediately, which would be $11,000 on average if the 24 percent increase is accepted. The PEB recommended against carriers’ proposed reforms of health benefits, largely affirming the status quo, which includes some of the most generous health benefits of any industry in the country.
The PEB’s recommendations are not binding, but past PEB reports have set the framework for the actual agreement that is struck. The parties are in a cooling-off period until September 16. After that, strikes and lockouts become legal.
The carriers were not completely satisfied with the PEB’s recommendations, but they nonetheless endorsed the report as an acceptable framework to move forward. That puts the ball in labor’s court to avoid a strike.
There are twelve unions covered by the agreement. They combine to negotiate as one party for the labor agreement, but they do remain independent organizations with different leaderships and memberships.
Three of the smaller unions, the Transportation Communications Union, the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, have reached tentative agreements to accept the PEB’s recommended 24 percent wage increase. Those three unions combined cover 11 percent of freight-rail workers.
The TCU pitched it as a win, saying that, “Employees will receive the highest General Wage Increases ever achieved through National Bargaining” and noting that the agreement also says that if any other union negotiates a better agreement, these three unions will also get the additional value from it. The carriers were also happy with the agreement.
Two of the largest unions, SMART-TD and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (which is part of the Teamsters), have been sounding a different tone. After a few days of meeting with carriers, they released a joint statement on August 27 saying that they have not yet reached an agreement. The statement notes that “the cooling-off period countdown clock to 12:01 a.m. (eastern time) on September 16th approaches” and ends by saying that “we are prepared and willing to exercise every legal option available to us.”
BLET president Dennis Pierce is running for reelection this year. The union’s convention where candidates will be nominated for national offices will take place in the second week of October, well after the cooling-off period will have concluded. Pierce especially has incentive to look tough for his members, which could partly explain the more confrontational approach.
The day before the joint statement, SMART-TD posted on its website the second-quarter financials for the carriers, most of which still show large profits. It has been the unions’ argument that the large profits from carriers should correspond with larger wage increases, but the PEB already took those profits into account when it gave its recommended wage increase.
On the other hand, SMART-TD and the BLET have been trying to dispel misinformation among its membership that made the PEB report out to be more anti-union than it actually is. The materials the unions are distributing accurately state what the PEB report recommended and portray them as positive for union members.
The BMWED, another Teamsters-affiliated union, is currently counting strike ballots, with no results announced yet. The American Train Dispatchers Association, one of the smaller unions, has already voted to authorize a strike. Authorizing a strike does not mean a strike will actually occur, but it means one is already approved should the cooling-off period end without an agreement.
It remains up to unions to avoid an economy-crippling freight-rail strike. The carriers’ response to the three smaller unions’ tentative agreement proved that the carriers meant what they said after the PEB report was released. They want this years-long dispute to be over, and they believe the independent recommendations from the PEB are sufficient to achieve that goal. Whether the remaining nine unions will agree with that remains to be seen.