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SMART-TD Q&As are out.

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So is it GO Time yet? If it goes down let us know how we can support you all. Imitation crab meat and Vienna sausages will help you all out I'm sure. So you don't starve.

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So far Mow and Signal have voted no. Should be a strike on November 19th.  It may actually happen since the election will be over and the Unions won’t have to worry about hurting their democrat masters.

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Rail Labor Update: A FUBAR Lurks

It’s amazing that this guy has so little understanding of the operating crafts. We don’t care so much about paid sick leave, our younger and unscheduled guys just want some time off, PERIOD.

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Wasn’t sick leave negotiated away in a prior round in favor or personal days?

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Not that I am aware of. At one time we got our birthday off as a holiday. Then we negotiated that away for the day after Thanksgiving. Now with this agreement we are back to getting our birthday as a PL day that they have to let us use.

Traditionally, we would just take unpaid leave when sick. But the newer attendance policies are discouraging even that. And with allocations for vacation and personal leave days cut to the bone, about the only way to get immediate time off at all is to call in sick.

It’s damn sociopathic how railroad executives are expecting their junior and unscheduled operating employees to live..

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Interesting how BNSF is suddenly trying to show appreciation to its operating employees by offering them a free Carhartt jacket.

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Interesting how BNSF is suddenly trying to show appreciation to its operating employees by offering them a free Carhartt jacket.

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Interesting how BNSF is suddenly trying to show appreciation to its operating employees by offering them a free Carhartt jacket.

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Am I wrong yet? That the union folds at the last moment and no strike? You guys are really dragging this out.

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Well if union leaders are to be believed, apparently both Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi have told union leadership that there will be no strike allowed.

The gamble is if we can get anything more by letting it fall to Congress.

Then what to do if mass attrition continues.

At BNSF, it’s totally fucking awesome that they can offer a $20,000 bonus to new hires who are lucky if they know enough to not kill themselves, $8,000 a month bonuses/per diem to temporary transfers who don’t know the territory and $20,000 bonuses to old broke down guys to delay retirement for a year but somehow can’t do jack-fucking-shit for the guys in the middle who do all of the heavy lifting.

No matter how this agreement gets implemented, and we know it will in more or less its current form, it doesn’t solve the systemic quality of life and morale problems. It will just keep spiraling downward. I’m genuinely curious to see how many people take the back pay and bonus money and leave.

Quoted: genuinely curious to see how many people take the back pay and bonus money and leave.

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I'm not voting no because I expect to get better. I'm voting no because I don't consider it a fair contract.

The unions need to stop agreeing to things that don't benefit everyone, at one time I wouldn't have cared. But it's counter productive the membership as a whole to have sign on bonuses and bonuses to keep old heads here.

Tokens like jackets, which used to be common for awards like safety aren't going to change anything. It'll be a long time before anyone believes they're going to change the way they treat their employees.

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At BNSF, it’s totally fucking awesome that they can offer a $20,000 bonus to new hires who are lucky if they know enough to not kill themselves,

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Sounds like nobody's getting 20 grand. they'll just transfer you over a hundred miles away

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Sounds like a giant "Fuck you" to the rail guys.

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There were 11,000 ordered in 72 hours. LOL

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It doesn’t work like that.

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I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that a furlough pauses the time if the hold down. Work for a couple of years, get furloughed for a year, you still have a year left on hold down once called back to work.

Be pretty difficult for the company to defend denial of bonus because the employee was just trying to keep working. He would probably have to return to his primary location as his seniority allowed, though.

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How does it work?   If a new employee ends up in a furlough status during the bonus qualification period due to a downturn in traffic affecting that 'headquartered location' are they still going to get that money?  

If their is no available work for their senority at the HQ'd location due to no fault of their own and their forced to 'chase their senority' beyond 100mi does that kill that 20k carrot?

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Well if union leaders are to be believed, apparently both Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi have told union leadership that there will be no strike allowed.

The gamble is if we can get anything more by letting it fall to Congress.

Then what to do if mass attrition continues.

At BNSF, it’s totally fucking awesome that they can offer a $20,000 bonus to new hires who are lucky if they know enough to not kill themselves, $8,000 a month bonuses/per diem to temporary transfers who don’t know the territory and $20,000 bonuses to old broke down guys to delay retirement for a year but somehow can’t do jack-fucking-shit for the guys in the middle who do all of the heavy lifting.

No matter how this agreement gets implemented, and we know it will in more or less its current form, it doesn’t solve the systemic quality of life and morale problems. It will just keep spiraling downward. I’m genuinely curious to see how many people take the back pay and bonus money and leave.

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BMWE did not extend beyond Nov 19th. Interdasting update.

T-minus….

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With the amount of BLET emails being sent out to the members, I think the BLET “leadership” is worried that Pierce won’t get re-elected.  All these BLET officers keep emailing the members, saying how they fully support Pierce etc. They wouldn’t be doing this if they thought Pierce was sure to win again.

I voted for Hall.

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You made a good choice,  I know Eddie personally and the man is a problem solving machine.

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Checking in on the engineers, conductors, hostlers, and foamers. Any updates? Are you getting the fear mongering from union leadership that you better take it or else?

More than half of freight rail workers will vote on proposed contracts next week amid a highly organized effort by some of their colleagues to urge a “no” vote.

It’s the biggest test yet of the Biden administration’s push to avert an economically crippling rail strike after it helped a dozen unions broker a compromise with freight carriers in September. A rebel group, Railroad Workers United, is stoking opposition among members who believe the compromise green-lit by union leaders doesn’t go far enough to address working conditions that have led to severe attrition at the nation’s largest carriers.

So far, seven smaller unions have voted to approve their tentative agreements, while three have voted against — one as recently as Monday.

If unions don’t get members on board by the end of an industry-wide cooling-off period Dec. 9, just one could spark a strike that capsizes the nation’s supply chain — stripping store shelves, starving livestock and compromising drinking water. At that point, Congress could be forced to step in and extend the cooling-off period, during which workers are barred from walking off the job — or impose the employer-championed recommendations of a presidentially appointed emergency board.

The presidents of the industry’s two largest unions — Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers-Transportation Division and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen — are criss-crossing the U.S. to buoy support for the proposed contracts before their members’ votes are tallied Monday. They say they’ve gotten them the best deal possible.

“My message is, ‘Guys, we went all the way to the championship. We never backed down,’” SMART-TD President Jeremy Ferguson said from his car recently on the way to yet another event in Boone, Iowa.

But the RWU’s message is resonating with burnt-out freight rail employees frustrated by what they consider employers’ punitive attendance policies, among other things, and critical of the compromises accepted by their union presidents.

RWU is “just trying to get the unions to put the full interest of the membership ahead of everything else,” said one railroad worker, who is not associated with RWU and spoke anonymously to avoid retaliation from their employer. “I can definitely see interest in their message grow significantly.”

One union official called the situation “out of control.”

As it stands, union officials are unsure of which way the rank-and-file will vote.

“It’s on a razor’s edge,” Ferguson said. “It’s going to be tight.”

Workers’ decision to strike could cause Congress to step in and lengthen the cooling-off period — or impose the employer-endorsed recommendations of a presidentially appointed emergency board.

“We’re gonna get what [workers] ratify, or we’re gonna go back and forth to Congress — and God knows what’s going to come out of this,” Ferguson said.