WASHINGTON — A group of unions announced today (Tuesday, March 7) that they have filed suit against BNSF Railway over outsourcing of locomotive inspections, maintenance, and repairs, claiming the railroad is cutting its mechanical workforce to boost profits and failing to act in good faith under its existing labor agreements.
The suit by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 19, and SMART-MD (International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers-Mechanical and Engineering Department) was filed Feb. 24 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.
The suit, available here, says BNSF created the need to outsource locomotives to address a maintenance backlog through a “bad-faith course of action,” which it outlines to include the closing of shops; furloughing of employees and failing to recall them in a timely fashion; failure to maintain adequate staffing; a 0% overtime initiative for 2023; and deferral of locomotive inspections and maintenance.
In today’s statement, the unions seek to connect the BNSF move and the Feb. 3 Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, by questioning the safety impact of outsourcing the locomotive work.
“BNSF has been shuttering maintenance shops and delaying basic locomotive inspection and maintenance at the same time it has earned record profits,” IBEW International President Kenneth W. Cooper said. “As we continue to learn of the prolonged and severe impacts coming out of Ohio, it’s important now, more than ever, that inspection and repair of locomotives are performed by the experienced and trained members of the IBEW and other unions.”
SMART General President Joseph Sellers Jr. claimed the railroad had cut its workforce to create a situation where it can “now claim an emergency need to contract out core mechanical work to contractors who qualifications and work standards are unknown. Cutting corners on safety leads to predictably unfortunate results.”
Among details included in the suit is a claim employees were told to mark that they completed certain inspection and maintenance items, even though they had not been performed, to prevent BNSF’s computer system from indicating the locomotives needed to be shopped for additional work.
In response to a query from Trains News Wire, BNSF said in a March 10 that “There is an existing arbitration process in place to handle these types of issues. However, allegations questioning our commitment to our culture of safety are simply inaccurate. Our record speaks for itself. BNSF leads the industry in the lowest number of reportable equipment-related incidents in 2021 and 2022 which reflects our longer-term trend of reducing incident over the past several years.”
— Updated at 10:41 a.m. CST on March 10 with BNSF comment.
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