State relieved as railroad deal reached

CASPER — Wyoming leaders exhaled Thursday after the Biden administration announced a tentative agreement expected to prevent a national railroad shutdown. 
Without a deal, railroad workers may have begun striking over working conditions as soon as 12:01 a.m. Friday. 
Railroads and labor unions proved unable to negotiate a new contract through the process outlined by federal law. 
With neither side budging over changes to a more restrictive time-off policy, and rail workers putting the final touches on their picket signs, federal officials met with representatives from both sides in a last-ditch attempt to fend off a strike that could have cost the U.S. an estimated $2 billion per day. 
In Wyoming, worries mounted as the deadline neared that losing access to rail service would force coal mining to halt and impede the production and transport of several other key resources, including trona, oil and grain. 
“I’m thrilled that they are going to hopefully be able to avert a strike,” Gov. Mark Gordon told the Star-Tribune. “Rail is such an important part of our nation’s economy, and it’s at capacity now. We need to have good workers, and we need to have good conditions. So if they’re able to get through this in a reasonably good way, it’s going to be good for the state and good for the country.” 
In statements emailed to the Star-Tribune on Wednesday, when many in Wyoming still believed a strike was imminent, Sen. John Barrasso called for President Joe Biden to step in and help broker a deal, and Sen. Cynthia Lummis urged Congress to intervene if workers did strike and legislate the pay raise and extra day off recommended by Biden’s Presidential Emergency Board. 
The railroads accepted that proposal, but a pair of unions representing roughly 115,000 rail workers rejected it, citing concerns that the railroads’ time off policy would still detract significantly bonuses. 
The railroads agreed to ease their strict attendance policies to address union concerns about working conditions. 
Railroad workers will now be able to take unpaid days off for doctor’s appointments without being penalized, and they won’t be penalized if they are hospitalized. Previously, workers would lose points under the attendance systems at BNSF and Union Pacific railways, and they could be disciplined if they lost all their points. 
The unions that represent conductors and engineers who drive the trains pressed hard for changes in the attendance rules, and they said the deal sets a precedent that ensures they will be able to negotiate such rules in the future. 
Kelly Pettus, who is married to an engineer in Atlanta, said she wanted more details about the attendance policy. 
Earlier this year, her husband had to leave work when their 2-year-old daughter ended up in the emergency room with the flu. He spent the entire time worrying about the penalty involved in taking a single day off. 
“You can’t just call and say your baby is in the hospital,” Pettus said. 
Hugh Sawyer, an engineer in the Atlanta area, said the pay raise was long overdue and did not completely make up for the regular cost-of-living increases that he lost several years ago. 
“It’s something to build on,” Sawyer said of the deal. 
The president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, Dennis Pierce, predicted that workers will support the deal if they look logically at all the gains, including the fact that the unions again fought off proposals to cut locomotive crews down from two people to one. 
But if workers vote angry, the outcome is harder to predict. 
“I think it is going to dramatically change the way these jobs look,” he said. 
Victor Chen, a sociologist at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies labor, said concerns about working conditions have increasingly become a priority for unions and their workers. 
“At a certain point, good wages just aren’t enough to make up for the toll these sorts of working conditions impose on workers,” Chen said. “The companies need to treat workers like human beings, rather than just inputs in a business process.” 
The railroad unions pointed to workload and attendance rules after the major railroads cut almost one-third of their workforce — some 45,000 jobs — over the past six years. The rail industry has aggressively cut costs everywhere and shifted its operations to rely on fewer, longer trains that use fewer locomotives and fewer employees. 
The unions said the remaining workers, particularly engineers and conductors, were on call 24-7 because of job cuts and could hardly take any time off under the strict attendance rules. 
Unions had an advantage at the bargaining table because of the tight labor market and ongoing service problems on the railroads, Chen said. 
Shippers have complained loudly this year about delays and poor service as railroads struggled to hire quickly enough to handle a surge in demand as the economy emerged from the pandemic. 
Union activism has surged recently, as seen in a 56% increase in petitions for union representation with the National Labor Relations Board so far this fiscal year, including prominent organizing efforts at Starbucks, Amazon and other companies.
 
This story was published on Sept. 16, 2022.