JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — CSX Transportation has reached a tentative agreement with the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers-Transportation Division B&O union to provide trainmen and conductors with paid sick leave benefits.
Pending ratification by SMART-TD B&O members, the agreement will increase the number of CSX operating employees with paid sick leave benefits to more than 10,000, or 60% of the company’s union-represented workforce, the railroad announced today.
“I want to thank the SMART-TD B&O leadership for working with us to reach this important agreement for their members and adding to the progress we’re making together to improve the work experience for front-line employees who create value for our customers,” CEO Joe Hinrichs said in a statement.
The terms of the SMART-TD B&O agreement provide for five days of paid sick leave annually plus an opportunity to convert two days from personal leave to sick leave.
Other unions on CSX that have negotiated paid sick leave for their members include the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW); the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way (BMWED), which represents track workers; the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen (BRC), which represents mechanical employees; the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), which represents railroad machinists; and the National Conference of Firemen and Oilers (NCFO), which represents CSX’s utility workers.
“We are committed to listening to our employees and talking with union leaders about how we can solve issues and further improve relations,” Hinrichs said. “When we’re working together, we’re working better — for our customers and each other.”
Surprising that “B&O” is still used. It may reflect old-time seniority districts still kept in place. On the B&M the seniority districts with their job boards were left frozen as they were ca. 1930 after the abolition of the old WN&P Division in 1927 which gave bumping rights to the “Peepers” as they were called (and hated once the job-cuts of the Depression started taking hold). The bitter memory of this mess made management and labor agree to never change the districts. This explains why the Wheelwright local out of Northampton MA on the Conn River was a New Hampshire job when the NH (ex-Southern) Division got abolished in 1957.) This was the situation Timmy Mellon ran afoul of in 1986 when he tried to change the 1930-era section-men seniority districts and got struck; we wonder if anyone got to explain Ancient History to him. Why pick a fight with the section-men of all people whose contracts were free of the usual featherbedding.?
I still think that decades ago the railroads and the brotherhoods made tacit agreement to NOT introduce short-term sick pay into the contracts in return for good coverage of long-term injury coverage. Right now Media-types are busy making management out to be modern-day Simon Legrees for not having short-term sick time. To have this become a Big Issue only at this late date (2023!) says something. The PR needs of the labor movement and the Democrats at a time when their control is in peril.
B&O. I love reading that in modern days. All of my family railroaders were B&O and I started with B&O way back in the spring of 1972.
So far Hinrichs has been exactly what he said he would be.
About time