Chicago
AFL-CIO Executive Council statement
The labor movement’s success in advancing the interests of working families depends on the unity of the affiliated unions of the AFL-CIO. Historically, the rail unions of the AFL-CIO have supported one another in the halls of Congress and state capitols and at the bargaining table. This solidarity has produced more than a century of good jobs, workers’ rights, a strong railroad retirement system and health care benefits that have protected generations of railroad employees and their families.
With this as a backdrop, solidarity in rail labor is at risk. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) is embarking on a bargaining strategy with the nation’s major rail carriers that is threatening the future of tens of thousands of train service employees who are members of the United Transportation Union (UTU), an AFL-CIO affiliate. Specifically, the BLET, in recent agreements with certain major railroads, is pursuing bargaining provisions that would undermine and destroy the crew size provisions and other key contractual protections embodied in the collective bargaining agreements of the UTU. Worse of all, the BLET agreements have failed to achieve any protections such as buyouts, continuation of health care, retirement credits or other benefits for the workers whose jobs their agreements would eliminate.
At the same time, the BLET has continued an intensive campaign to raid the membership of the UTU by offering reduced and, in some instances, free dues with hopes of enticing UTU members to join the BLET. Unions should not shop “cheap” dues as a marketing tool to raid the membership of other unions and the AFL-CIO calls on the BLET to stop this practice.
Were it an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, the BLET’s actions to date would very possibly violate the longstanding constitutional no-raiding policies of the AFL-CIO. But more importantly, the house of labor would not tolerate this conduct as it divides the labor movement, feeds into the political and bargaining agenda of Corporate America, and ultimately harms the men and women unions are elected to represent and protect.
The AFL-CIO, therefore, pledges its full support to the UTU and condemns the anti-UTU actions of the BLET as contrary to the principles on which the labor movement was founded. Specifically, the AFL-CIO calls on the BLET to stop pursuing collective bargaining agreements that would eliminate UTU members’ jobs and to end the practice of raiding the UTU membership through a reduced or free dues program. Furthermore, the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department, which is highly critical of the BLET’s actions, will bring the issue before its Executive Committee at the organization’s next meeting, in September.
The AFL-CIO stands ready to support the UTU in the defense of its membership.