Skip to main content

Railroad Workers Industrial Union 520

All workers engaged in long distance railway freight and passenger transportation and telecommunication. All workers in locomotive, car, and repair shops. All workers in and around passenger and freight terminals.

Rail craft unions to fight bosses?

Submitted by x344543 on Wed, 04/19/2006 - 10:51am

By Ron Kaminkow, iu 520 - Industrial Worker, April 2006. 

Faced with rail freight carriers' demands for one-man crews, the leadership of the United Transportation Union and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen issued a public statement in February proclaiming solidarity with one another, and calling off - for the moment at least - their long-standing feud.

The unions have pledged to stop raiding, stop maligning, and stop threatening each other, and agreed not to sign agreements surrendering each other's jobs. The National Carriers Conference Committee, which represents the U.S.'s big freight railroads, complains that this violates bargaining ground rules under which the two unions had agreed not to share information with each other or to coordinate their bargaining.