WASHINGTON — Union Pacific wants to address sick leave for its unionized employees and provide certainty regarding scheduled days off, CEO Lance Fritz told the Surface Transportation Board on Tuesday.
STB Member Robert Primus asked Fritz if he would be in favor of adding sick leave, something that rail labor is seeking through congressional action after failing to get paid sick days at the negotiating table in the latest round of contract negotiations.
Primus suggested that the costs of providing paid sick time would be outweighed by service benefits.
“We definitely want to address sick leave and certainty in time off in terms of scheduling … There’s a host of ways we can get there,” Fritz replied. “There’s economics that are available to make that happen. And we are committed to making that happen this coming year.”
UP also wants to reach agreements with labor about providing more workers with predictable schedules, Fritz says, as part of an effort to improve quality of life for workers and the railroad’s ability to recruit and retain operating employees.
UP and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen are currently running a pilot program in Kansas that aims to make engineer schedules more predictable.
The STB has no regulatory authority over employment levels at railroads. But the agency does have the ability to regulate service, which is related to staffing at railroads.
Primus asked Richard Edelman, a lawyer representing several rail unions including the SMART-TD union, what the current mood was among rank-and-file union members given the protracted contract negotiations that ended with Congress imposing Presidential Emergency Board recommendations on four unions that rejected tentative agreements with the railroads.
“I don’t think there’s any way of overstating the fury of the workforce at the way they have been treated in the last [few] years. I don’t think you can even calculate the fury over the lack of personal time, the lack of sick time, the furloughs of their coworkers,” he replied.
As a result, he says it’s likely that experienced railroad employees will quit once they pocket back pay and one-time bonus payments they will receive soon as part of the new national contract.
Fritz and Edelman spoke at the STB’s hearing on UP’s increased use of embargoes to reduce congestion.
“I don’t think there’s any way of overstating the fury of the workforce at the way they have been treated in the last [few] years. I don’t think you can even calculate the fury over the lack of personal time, the lack of sick time, the furloughs of their coworkers,” he replied.
So now Fritz’s gets this warm and fuzzy feeling to give them sick leave. What a pathetic piece of $#!t. He goes home every day, works great hours and gets paid millions and can probably take off at a moment’s notice.
If they’re so determined to get this done, why did they stonewall and drag the negotiations out for 3 years, and then insist that no changes be made to the Presidential Board recommendations? They could have saved a lot of time, effort, and the zero morale that currently exists if they had negotiated in good faith from the start.
Or have they just realized that a large part of their workforce intends to quit once they get their back pay and are now trying to make nice? If this tactic fails, all that BS the railroads have been spewing about getting their staffing and service quality levels back up to pre-PSR levels will go out the window. This is too little, too late.
Believe it or not the rumor I’ve heard in the yard office was all the class 1sbut the big orange were ready to sign off on this sort of stuff but the railroader of the year this year had a fit and said a big hell no and stonewalled the majority of the negotiations. Now that’s just rumor but I’m inclined to believe some of it knowing what I know and the ins and out of the outfit I work for. I’m predicting soon enough she’ll be retiring after 3 decades of dedicated service after the dust settles.
You can only be sick on Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday
I’m all for paid sick days but like Mr Wayman says the devils in the details. What will happen when you run out of sick days? Every rail knows the only way the railroad can’t deny your layoff is to lay off sick, so if you run out of those then try to take a day off will they deny on account of already exhausted sick time!!!!???? Wanna bet!!! The next option at least on the rr I work at is personal, and everyone I work with knows how that goes……….. deny deny deny account man power till the cows come home. Now don’t get me wrong we need some sort of sick leave but there needs to be safeguards built into it that benefits us so we can take a day off to just have a day off once in awhile to recoup and rest or otherwise. We will be having voluntary rest cycles coming hopefully as they’re in the next contract but those are still open to negotiation and are way up in the air still as of yet. The thing about the railroads is they’re sneaky and will throw out press releases and statements about stuff like this, yet when it gets down to the nitty gritty ultimately the program set into place doesn’t benefit the workforce one iota. Ask me how I know…… I’ve dealt with it for 2.5 decades. The only recourse is to get the unions involved but when the railroads management teams ask what we would favor it gets shot down in a second as to expensive or something along those lines and we get no input ultimately only something once again shoved down our throats that we otherwise wouldn’t want that looks good for the railroads on some headline but basically sucks for the ones it affects the most( us trainmen and enginemen)…..
As they say in the State of Misery, “Show me.”
As is said, “THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS” but it sounds encouraging.