Washington, DC
Because of the hazardous nature and uniqueness of work in the rail industry, Congress amended the Railroad Retirement Act of 1946 to provide occupational disability protection for career industry workers who may become sick or injured.
Section 2(a)(2) of the Railroad Retirement Act provides that the Railroad Retirement Board "with the cooperation of employers and employees" shall secure the establishment of standards for determining the conditions that would disable industry workers for various railroad occupations. The Act further provides that "the Board, employers, and employees shall cooperate" in the promotion of uniform standards.
The rail unions have been working in good faith since 1979 to develop the disability standards that the law requires and in fact supported the standards developed by the Board's technical staff in 1988. Unfortunately, the American Association of Railroads (AAR) refused to agree to these standards thus preventing an agreement from being implemented.
The AAR has instead hired an outside contractor to develop a set of standards designed to their specifications. These standards purposely create a costly and time-consuming process by which sick and disabled employees are evaluated for disability.
The Management Member of the Board has convinced the Chairman to set an arbitrary deadline for the joint task force that was formed to conduct the legally-required review of disability standards. This is a blatant attempt by rail management to circumvent their good-faith agreement to work with rail labor towards developing a complete and uniform set of standards.
The Board has indicated that it is ready to impose the AAR standards that were designed to make it more difficult for sick and injured rail workers to qualify for a disability pension.
The railroad industry's termination of the ongoing negotiations and its attempt to unilaterally impose the AAR standards is a direct attack on rail workers. It amounts to a raid on the pension system that they depend on. This action is unfair, corrupts the negotiating process and is contrary to a long-standing law. This threat to the health and welfare of rail workers cannot and will not go unchallenged.
The AFL-CIO supports the political and economic efforts of the labor organizations that represent rail workers to persuade the rail industry and the Railroad Retirement Board that the unilateral course of action they are pursuing is unfair, unwise and illegal.
The AFL-CIO will support the members of our rail affiliates as they work to protect the health and welfare of rail workers and to end this misguided effort to undermine occupational disability standards and the railroad retirement system.