Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 17, 1991 TAG: 9104170661
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES BUSINESS WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Rail lines through downtown Roanoke were eerily quiet, though two trains apparently "called out" before the 7 a.m. strike lumbered through around 8:45 a.m. before being tied down by their union crews. Some union members accused Norfolk Southern Corp. of running its trains during the strike.
"They said they was going to shut down, right?" Harve Burdette, a brakeman with the United Transportation Union, said, pointing in the direction of the tracks. "That was a freight train going out. They have not shut down."
Norfolk Southern - which said last week it would shut down in the strike - denied that non-union supervisors had been operating one of the trains. "Our position is we're not in the transportation business today," said Don Piedmont, a spokesman in Roanoke for the Norfolk-based company. "I don't know what that train was."
Meanwhile, in Washington, Congress and the Bush administration immediately moved toward enacting a 100-day "cooling off" period to end the strike by this weekend and appoint a new emergency board to propose recommendations for a settlement.
Negotiators scheduled no new talks after bargaining talks failed to produce a settlement before midnight Tuesday. That was the expiration of a cooling-off period that had already been extended because of the Persian Gulf War. Union workers have been working without a contract for more than three years and have not had a raise since Jan. 1, 1988.
Eleven unions representing 235,000 workers are involved in the dispute. About 7,800 of Norfolk Southern's 28,697 workers in rail operations live in Virginia, and about 85 percent of them are union members, company officials say. The largest concentration of workers, 3,499, is in the Roanoke Valley.
Transportation Secretary Samuel Skinner told a House subcommittee this morning, meeting an hour after picket lines went up, that there was "a sense of urgency" to end the strike quickly - hopefully "before tomorrow's rush hour."
Union members walking the picket lines in Roanoke predicted the strike would be over soon. It'll last "no more than two or three days, I'd think," said Frank Shinault, a brakeman with UTU Local 629 who manned a picket in front of the 8 1/2 Street entrance to the East End shops. "Three days would be stretching it."
Byron Markham of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Shipbuilders, Blacksmiths, Forgers & Helpers sounded more doubtful. "I don't think you'll see anything before Monday. Originally, we thought Friday. But now gloom and doom has set in."
As non-union employees of the railroad walked past him, joked with the strikers and filed into their jobs in the old Colonial American Bank building on South Jefferson Street, Markham's friendly demeanor changed - if only for a moment.
"A lot of people think it's funny. I fail to see the humor myself," he said. "I got a wife and three kids to take care of. Things I could afford six years ago I can't even look at now. I guarantee you if it stays very long, the animosity will grow."
Picketers in front of the entrance to the East End Shops on East Campbell Avenue sipped donated coffee and chatted with news reporters. "We've only had one heckler shout obscenities at us," Shinault said.
"Yeah, he didn't like the American flags out here," said Ralph Caylor, an engineer with Local 301 of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.
"We're doing just fine," said Bert Jones, a member of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen who's worked more than 36 years for the railroad. "I believe everybody's honoring our strike. We don't have no scabs."
Union members say the strike of 1991 will be marked by the resolve of the rank-and-file, the belief that now is the time to preserve labor's past gains in the face of historic change and consolidation in the rail industry.
"We got to show 'em we mean business," Jones said. "They just keep on taking instead of giving. We want to keep what we got. We don't want 'em to take it away from us."
The labor dispute has been marked by sometimes rancorous disagreement over wages, work rules and the cost of health care. Rail carriers have sought wage concessions from some unions and limited wage increases from others - as well as changes in work rules and more cost-sharing for health care.
"If they'd . . . settled three years ago, we'd all be better off," Wayne Minter, a UTU engineer, said. "I think most everybody would rather have a settlement."
Wade Pedigo, a craneman with Local 813 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, agreed. "Hate to have it. Just as soon go on and work, but if we got to do it, let's do it."
UTU officials said their members are picketing 35 Norfolk Southern sites around Roanoke, including the office buildings on North Jefferson Street, the old passenger station in front of Hotel Roanoke and the former Colonial American Bank building downtown. Each union draws up its own picket schedule, though in many cases strikers will walk "multi-union" picket lines.
IBEW workers also manned picket lines in front of the new Norfolk Southern tower under construction downtown. Minter, the UTU engineer, ran a one-man picket line on the top floor of the Center in the Square parking garage, a place union officials had heard some strikebreakers might use to sneak into work. Minter saw no one.
Larry Davis, a UTU vice president from Philadelphia who arrived late Tuesday to monitor the strike, said: "We're getting good membership response. They are good people. They're . . . career professional railroaders. The people are determined, under the circumstances, to see this thing through."
Union officials in Roanoke have accused the carriers of trying to orchestrate a rail crisis with the intention of forcing a lopsided agreement on the powerful unions. The railroads "are gambling that the Senate and the Congress will give them what they cannot legally get at the bargaining table," said L.P. King Jr., chairman of the UTU's conductors' committee. "They're moving to bust us."
Union officials steadfastly object to the recommendations of a presidential emergency board appointed last year to study the dispute. They say the board's proposals, issued in January, would be "totally devastating" to rail unions. Carriers have criticized the board for not going far enough.
"It's just common sense: Nobody wins in a strike; you never regain what you lost," said J.L. Ensor, a longtime Norfolk Southern engineer who also is local chairman for UTU-E Local 559. "I don't mind being forced back to work. But give us a PEB board that knows what the hell they're doing.
"We've been without a contract for three years," Ensor continued. "What's another six months going to matter" while a new board fashions another compromise that may be more acceptable to labor concerns.
R.A. Bomber, another UTU engineer, agreed. "If we don't do something now and win something now, these younger boys are going to have it a whole lot worse than we do."
by CNB