WASHINGTON — Rail unions are again seeking to declare an impasse in negotaitions with U.S. railroads, a move which could eventually lead to intervention by President Joe Biden and Congress.
Bloomberg reports that three days of meetings between the two sides with the National Mediation Board will conclude today, with labor unions renewing a request for a declaration of impasse first raised in January [see “Unions declare impasse …,” Trains News Wire, Jan. 20, 2022].
“We met 14 times and we’re getting nowhere,” Dennis Pierce, national president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, told Bloomberg in a May 20 interview. “And it wasn’t until two years into the round that they finally decided they would make a proposal on wages.”
Negotiations for a new contract began in 2020; railroads’ desire to enact one-person crews is a major point of contention.
Negotiations are a complicated process governed by the Railway Labor Act.
If an impasse is declared, the next step would be for mediators to offer arbitration; if one side rejects arbitration, which Pierce told Bloomberg the unions would do, Biden could form a Presidental Emergency Board after a 30-day cooling off period; that group would make recommendations to resolve the dispute. If the board’s recommendations are rejected by either side, the House and Senate would have to pass legislation to settle the matter. Failure to pass legislation would allow unions to strike.
— Updated at 5:05 p.m. to clarify date of Dennis Pierce interview with Bloomberg.
They’ve met 14 times in about 2 years, it seems to say.
How many times has this process happened? They’ve been negotiating 4 year rail labor contracts pretty much continuously for decades, maybe centuries? Once a contact is agreed upon it isn’t very long before they start on the next contract.
It’s too bad there isn’t someone with actual experience on this subject to shed light.
They only met 14 times in HOW MANY YEARS?
They’ve only met 14 times…insufficient grounds for declaring an impasse. Come back when you’ve met a 100 times, then an impasse can be declared. This is not sarcasm, I’m actually being serious, because after meeting so many times, one side or the other would start getting sick of meeting and start really negotiating…at least in theory, depends on the intelligence level of those attending the negotiations(and right now, neither side appears to have super intelligent people at those sessions).
Do you actually know, first hand, about anything?
It isn’t really about the number of meetings. It’s about the quality of those meetings, the details, the substance. Merely suggesting they keep meeting so many times that they wear themselves out and give up on their priorities and submit to compromise, from what, fatigue? Really? In all of the world, in all of business, in each and every coming together of people with differences, fatigue has been proven to be the best tool of progress? Are you ill?
The last thing the USA needs right now is a rail strike later this year. I wonder if one-man crews end up the final sticking point.