Over 80,000 BNSF rail workers may strike for first time since 1991. Here's what's at stake
GALESBURG — Over 80,000 rail workers could strike this Friday if the unions representing them do not soon come to an agreement with a conference of the nation's freight railroad companies.
Rail workers for BNSF, one of the over 30 railroad carriers involved and Knox County’s largest employer with 999 full-time employees, said their compensation, insurance premium and “quality of life” working conditions, which they say were exacerbated by working through the pandemic, are just some of the concerns standing between them and a new contract.
If the effort to broker a new contract does not succeed before midnight on Thursday, Sept. 15, then a strike of magnitude not seen since 1991 could trigger the swift intervention of Congress to prevent the economic fallout from the country’s rail supply chain ground to a halt.
Freight strike at 12:01 a.m. Friday if final 2 unions don't reach agreement
The previous contract through which the nation’s 12 rail labor unions worked with railroad carriers — including all of the nation’s class 1 freight railroads — expired at the end of 2019 and the two parties have been negotiating since January 2020.
A Presidential Emergency Board — created by President Joe Biden through executive order in July — published a 119-page document in August that reviewed the arguments put forward by the railroad carriers and rail labor unions before issuing a variety of contract policy recommendations.
Though the National Carriers’ Conference Committee announced Sunday, Sept. 11, that a majority of the rail worker unions have reached a tentative agreement with the railroad carriers, two craft unions — the Brotherhood Of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers — Transportation Division (SMART-TD) — have not yet agreed to the terms of a new contract.
A “cooling off” period of the negotiations will expire at midnight on Thursday, Sept. 15 and if the two remaining unions do not agree to the terms of a new contract by 12:01 a.m. on Friday, then 100% of the country’s organized rail workforce is expected to strike.
Ben Wilemon, external corporate communications manager for BNSF, said in an email that the carrier will begin to “manage and secure the shipments of hazardous and security-sensitive materials” in preparation for the possible work stoppage.
“While these preparations are necessary, it does not mean that a work stoppage is inevitable,” Wilemon wrote. “BNSF and the other railroads continue to work with the remaining unions to reach voluntary agreements based on the PEB’s (Presidential Emergency Board's) recommendations to avoid interruption to rail service.”
More:'Car business is just in his blood': Jesse 'J' Perez sets pace for selling cars
Carriers, labor disagree on amount of wage increase, insurance
The 12 rail labor unions involved in the national negotiations for a new contract represent a range of types of rail workers, from maintenance-of-way to train yard and engineers. A new contract will contain policies specific to each craft’s field of work.
But what will impact all rail unions in uniform, regardless of their craft, is the degree to which their wages will increase and whether or not their health insurance premium will remain capped.
The Presidential Emergency Board recommended a 24% increase in rail workers’ wages over the next five years and an additional $1,000 to be awarded to each rail worker each year over the next five years. The recommendation comes higher than the 17% wage increase the railroad carriers offered and lower than the 31% wage increase the unions were looking for.
Jeremy Hodges, a locomotive engineer from Galesburg who has worked for BNSF for 15 years and is a legislative representative for the SMART Local 195 union, said the Presidential Emergency Board recommended increase is something “nobody can shake your head at.”
But Hodges also said the increase is really only “catching up” with the rise of cost of living expenses and that rail workers saw no wage increase in accordance with those jumps during the previous seven years — not during their previous five-year contract or the two years after which the rail workers have been working without a formal contract.
Unions want insurance cap of $228 per month to hold
In accordance with their previous contract, rail workers pay no more than $228.89 a month for their employee health insurance. Hodges, as well as all the rail labor unions, would like to see no change to that health insurance cap in their new contract.
But the railroad carriers are arguing rail workers should pay a premium of 15% of their coverage moving forward without the fixed contribution cap of $229.89. The Presidential Emergency Board did not side with other changes the railroad carriers wanted to make to employee health insurance plans, the Presidential Emergency Board did recommend removing the $229.89 cap.
Nick Allen, a BNSF maintenance-of-way rail worker of seven years who lives in Elmwood, said he is concerned that the removal of the $229.89 cap would allow the sum of which he will be covering 15% to increase each year, effectively neutralizing what increase in wages he expects to take home.
“If we lose that cap on health care, we'll never get that back,” Allen said. “You'll never see healthcare costs go down.”
BNSF attendance policy 2022
After 20 years without change to its attendance policy, BNSF put into effect a new attendance policy Feb. 1 known as “Hi-Viz.” The way the system works is that certain rail workers begin with 30 points, and each time they do not come into work, a certain amount of points are deducted.
Missing a single high volume weekend, a holiday or even answering a phone late could remove up to half of a worker’s points said Jordan Boone, a BNSF certified conductor of 18 years from Monmouth. Boone said the new system effectively requires rail workers to be available 95% of the time, whereas the previous attendance policy required workers to be available 75% of the time.
If a worker loses all 30 points, they receive 15 more. If a worker loses those 15, they receive 20 days at home, no-pay. Run out of 15 again, and a worker is fired. The only way workers can earn points back is if they work 14 days in a row or through a three-day weekend but BNSF has capped the amount of points a worker can store at 37.
Union worker says new points system cuts further into family time
Boone, who is also a legislative representative for SMART Local 455 and an alternate legislative director for the Illinois State Board, said his daughter has joined a cross country team in the time since BNSF’s Hi-Viz policy was instated, but he has yet to have been able to see her run, something he said he would have been able to do under the previous system.
“Under the old policy, we were gone a lot,” Boone said. “You miss football games, you miss ballet recitals, stuff like that. Under this new policy, you're literally not making anything, hardly. And you put that much pressure on your wife or your husband at home who has to step up even more now to get things accomplished, run kids around.”
Hodges, who also works under the Hi-Viz system now, agreed it was a challenge to make it to friend’s birthday parties or cookouts under the previous attendance system. Now, he worries about the toll increasing that pressure will take on relationships with friends and family.
"You get to a certain point after a year or two, where they stop even inviting you because they know you're just not going to make it,” Hodges said. “They don't even think about calling you anymore. That's an impact we had even before Hi-Viz showed up, and now this really sucks, but I think after a year or two of working under these conditions, will they call you to even invite you to Christmas? Are you going to be invited to Thanksgiving?"
Presidential Emergency Board sides with rail carriers on points system
According to the Presidential Emergency Board, freight rail employment has declined by about 30% since 2016 and, according to rail labor unions, rail employment has dropped from approximately 116,700 workers in 2019 to 102,000 at the start of the Presidential Emergency Board’s hearings.
In the eyes of the rail labor unions, the Presidential Emergency Board reports, instead of hiring more employees carriers are opting to impose “attendance policies that had the effect of coercing employees who were too fatigued to work or had other compelling reasons not to report for work to do so anyway.”
In the eyes of the railroad carriers, the Presidential Emergency Board reports, work records do not show “inordinate amounts of overtime being worked on average.”
In its recommendation, the Presidential Emergency Board did not side with the BLET and SMART-TD’s request to change railroad carrier’s attendance policies like BNSF’s Hi-Viz policy.
More:Steak 'N Shake turmoil: Galesburg restaurant's finances, link to violence investigated
Rail carriers reluctant to increase pay for travel expenses
Maintenance-of-way workers like Allen receive travel allowances for away-from-home expenses such as hotel lodging, meals, or the cost of sometimes having to drive great distances to get to different work sites.
Allen said BNSF has previously paid its maintenance-of-way workers an average per-diem of $34, which effectively meant some days rail workers are paying to come into work.
According to the Presidential Emergency Board, official meals and lodging allowances have not been adjusted since 2005 and the number of territories serviced by traveling workers as opposed to headquartered workers has increased “significantly” since 1967, with the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Division union maintaining some workers travel up to 1,000 miles each way to reach work sites determined by carriers.
The railroad carriers have argued against increasing the amount allotted to workers for travel allowances, arguing it will cost the carriers an additional $83 million annually and that previous Presidential Emergency Boards have recommended against increasing the allowances.
But the current PEB has sided with the BMWED workers and recommended they receive the effective Internal Revenue Service standard mileage rate for business travel (58.5 cents per mile) and the standard continental United States daily lodging allowance established by the General Services Administration.
Two-person train crews a factor
Though left out of the formal PEB’s review, Boone and Hodges both said they believed the railroad carriers would swiftly resolve their contract negotiations if the carriers had an agreement they could operate a train with just a one-person crew.
But Boone and Hodges said that allowing trains to be run by one-person instead of two would have significant safety risks, especially since rail workers operating for long hours or through the night can get fatigued and make mistakes.
“We have to remember to tie brakes or they (trains) can roll away and derail in middle of a town with anhydrous ammonia,” Hodges said. “We just can't make mistakes. This stuff is not as forgiving as a lot of other industries and it's not about bumps and bruises, it's life and limb."
Hodges said it is also important that trains have two-person crews so that it is possible to quickly cut train crossings for emergency personnel, like firefighters, to cross. The Presidential Emergency Board reports that in recent years, trains have increased from an average of 7,000 feet to 9,500 feet in length.
As it happens, the Federal Railroad Administration announced a proposal regulation on July 28 that would require a minimum of two train crewmembers for over-the-road railroad operations, according to the U.S Department of Transportation.
Union member: Strike impact would have unmatched magnitude
Galesburg’s BNSF hump-yard is the second largest rail yard for the nation's largest freight carrier. According to BNSF, an average of 1,923 cars are pulled, 1,888 cars are humped, 1,721 arrive and 1,847 cars depart from the yard each day.
Hodges said that BNSF trains haul 135 truckloads of freight at minimum and if one were to drive from Galesburg to the Quad Cities they would not see 135 trucks.
For that reason, Hodges said he believed a strike, one lasting even for a short amount of time, would cause: “The biggest f****** recession you've ever seen.”
“I'm telling you right now this would be global. If the country of America does not move, you know what that does for the stock market? Cripples, and we're talking six hours could last 9-10 months,” Hodges said. ”Let's just say this: We've never seen it and nobody alive has seen the magnitude of that.”
According to NBC news, the last major freight rail strike occurred in April 1991. The strike lasted less than 24 hours as Congress invoked the Railway Labor Act to curb economic fallout.
If the nation’s rail workers go on strike Friday, it is expected Congress will invoke the act again, forcing railway workers to go back to work under temporary, government mandated conditions with the railroad carriers.
Regardless of whether they strike or not, Galesburg’s BNSF railway workers said they have prepared their picket signs and phone trees.
"The rail labor members are ready to send a message to the railroads,” Allen said. “We don't want to strike because we know the consequences on the economy. We don't want to do that, but also, we're not going to be pushed around any longer by the railroads."
This article originally appeared on Galesburg Register-Mail: Railroad strike: BNSF strike may happen; Amtrak, Metra lines affected
