Freight-Rail Unions Are Not Victims

A fter the membership of SMART-TD, the largest freight-rail union in the country, rejected the labor deal that the Biden administration brokered, the SMART-TD president is now acting like a victim for the press.

Politico reports:

The president of the largest freight rail union is skeptical he’ll be able to reach a new agreement with carriers in time to prevent an economically devastating strike — and predicts Congress will likely soon step in.

“I’m hopeful, but I doubt it’s really in the cards,” SMART Transportation Division President Jeremy Ferguson said in an interview Monday night. “I’ve got a lot of issues that are outstanding; that are reasons why our guys voted it down.”

Ferguson acts as though he’s a powerless bystander in this process. He’s the president of a union that in September refused to make a tentative agreement based on the independent recommendations of the Biden-appointed presidential emergency board (PEB). Nine of the twelve unions covered by national bargaining made agreements based on it, but it wasn’t good enough for Ferguson and SMART-TD.

That refusal, along with the refusal of the BLET (the second-largest union) spurred the 20 hours of negotiations brokered by Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh that culminated in the White House Rose Garden celebration of a deal and headlines everywhere of “Rail Strike Averted” back in September. Unlike SMART-TD, though, BLET membership voted to approve the deal their president held out for.

“Something’s gotta happen by then [12:01 a.m. on December 9], otherwise we’ll all walk,” Ferguson said.

That’s a different tone than his stated position from earlier this week. In the statement announcing the results of the ratification vote on Monday, Ferguson said, “This can all be settled through negotiations and without a strike.”

Back to Politico:

Ferguson predicts lawmakers will exercise their ability to step in before then — though it remains unclear whether they will impose the recommendations of a presidentially appointed emergency board as employers want; impose the unions’ respective tentative agreements like some officials have advocated; or simply extend the cooling-off period to give negotiators more time. Unions and Democrats have urged repeatedly against congressional intervention in hopes of maintaining as much leverage as possible.

“It’s such a short time frame,” Ferguson said. “I think we’re going to see Congress panic and step in here at some point next week, unfortunately.”

Lawmakers absolutely should step in to prevent a strike if it comes to that. It has been anything but a “short time frame” — the negotiations for this labor contract began in November 2019. If three years is not enough time for the parties to make a deal, then Congress is well within its rights under the Railway Labor Act to make one for them.

As I wrote in a long piece last month, it has been unions and Democrats that have moved the goalposts time and again over the past three years. Here’s the condensed version of the timeline:

• Negotiations began in November 2019.
• After delays due to the pandemic and little progress toward a resolution, parties entered mediation through the National Mediation Board, an independent federal agency, earlier this year.
• On June 17, after a historically brief two months of work, the NMB released the parties from mediation. The unions requested the early release, and the two Democrats on the three-member NMB granted their wish. The sole Republican voted to keep parties in mediation, which has no time limit and means that striking would remain illegal.
• The release began a 30-day cooling-off period. No deal emerged, and President Biden appointed the three-member PEB on July 18 to offer independent recommendations. Biden’s appointees were experienced arbitrators who had all served on past PEBs and were seen as fair and neutral by both sides.
• The PEB issued a thorough, 124-page report containing nonbinding recommendations on every sticking point on August 17. Even though it rejected the carriers’ proposal for reforming health benefits and suggested a wage increase seven percentage points larger than carriers wanted, the carriers said they would make agreements with each union based on the report’s recommendations. They kept their word, and nine of twelve unions made tentative agreements based on the PEB report.
• The three holdout unions, of which SMART-TD was one, sent the country to the precipice of a strike in mid September. Senators Roger Wicker (R., Miss.) and Richard Burr (R., N.C.) co-sponsored a resolution to avert a strike by adopting the PEB recommendations for the new labor contract. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) blocked it, saying, “Rail workers have a right to strike.”
• The failure of the legislative solution led to the negotiations that culminated in the Rose Garden celebration of a Walsh-brokered deal on September 15. That deal included concessions from carriers on the issue of sick leave that went beyond what the PEB recommended. Carriers then said they would make agreements with each union based on that deal. Again, they kept their word, and eight of the twelve unions voted to ratify deals based on it.
• Now, the Walsh-brokered deal isn’t good enough for four unions, including SMART-TD, whose leadership was part of the team that negotiated it.

Ferguson told Politico, “Carriers haven’t been willing to move with the other three unions.” Carriers have moved plenty over the last three years in response to union demands, independent recommendations from experienced arbitrators, and interventions by the Biden administration. They have essentially said they are finished moving, and it’s hard to blame them.

SMART-TD and the other three holdouts should join the eight unions that ratified deals based on the agreement that Biden celebrated. If they don’t, and Congress doesn’t intervene in time, they’ll be responsible for a rail strike of which the American economy will be the victim.