Burn wrote:Looking forward IMO We need legislation to keep 2 people on a road crew as we have already lost 2 person yard crews, Thanks to the UTU.
This means the BLE Needs to STOP trying to negotiate Engineer only road pools.
It's gonna happen there buddy, dont let engine service go by. I dont know if you know the whole RCL story, but i dont think the BLE is gonna let something like that happen again. They came to us first, we were gonna make it hard on them. I dont know what the switching lead would have looked like, id guess probibly a hoghead with the box and formen on the ground or something like that. Theres some good and some bad with that. The good things i can think of are, insted of two brand new guys out there trying not to get fired or killed there would at least be someone out there still with more experance. That was one of the good things back then, if you were unsure you could always ask your hog. But we were gonna make it hard on them so they turned to the UTU and they jumped right on it. A little belt pack pay (which brings them up to yard hog rate) move everyone up to %100 at that time... while claiming a victory saying they put one to the BLE while making it harder on there own members. There was no UTU vote on that contract, they just did it. Some say it was a pay back for the failed hostile takeover on the Union Pacific???
The technology is already in those new motors. All those blinking lights and black boxes and cable strung all over. The automatic down loaders pulling tapes looking for those perfect runs so they can add them to the Positive Train Control program so in the future the computer in the locomotive will warn the engineer when he's over running the train. When that time comes here from the railroad, looking back at the RCL thing, i dont think we are gonna tell them no and give them a chance to approach the UTU with it. It sucks.... but we already saw what will happen. You'll see those utility jobs kick then big time. We had a safety feed here a while back, the UTU local chairmen was OS to help out. I was chowing down on some pizza while her and MTO's were talking about the end of the UTU crew consist agreement, hog only jobs, PTC, how past contracts are playing right into there hands.... they were
all laughing about it. I was the only other agreement guy in there, made me sick to my stomach thinking how she suckers those new guys into giving her all that money for this and that.
That crew consist agreement is the real scary part, the odd part is the UTU keeps talking unity and craft separation but that will all go away when the last protected guy leaves. By that time all of the hogheads will be trained on the ground, and i dont know if the railroad will be able to then hand a box to every engineer to use if theres any problems along the way or work enroute. The UTU doing away with the firemen and then throwing in that they must pull engineers from train service played right into grouping us all into "Transportation Employees" in the future. Getting us all down to one union will only make it that much easier for them to do away with craft separation. They also said about that same thing while i was sitting there eating my pizza. I wanted you guys to hear that from someone elses mouth, one of your union guys. I loose a little sleep over it when i think about it.... sucks dont it??? Ponder on that stuff awhile and spred it around.
Read threw this:
http://www.utu.org/worksite/PDFs/NCCC_section6.pdf
Yesterday when i read threw it i believe i saw in there some where they wanted the right to make special assignments for certain people but they couldnt take more then 10%. Alot of talk of consolidation which the UTU says is a good thing, its a bummer.... I might say some more here later.