Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 18, 1991 TAG: 9104180366
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES BUSINESS WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Workers dismiss rail carriers' complaints that union workers are overpaid andthat some are not needed to run modern trains.
"We'd just like to make ends meet a little better," said Sherman Deane, an electrician with Local 813 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. "Your head's at the top of the water, more or less."
"I'm taking home less money than I was three years ago," said John Bailey, a sheet-metal worker. "Just like your taxes have gone up, ours have, too."
The litany issuing from the picket lines around Roanoke is familiar: Wages aren't keeping pace with inflation; rising health-care costs are being shunted to the workers; Norfolk Southern executives are paid too much and supervisors talk openly about their bonuses while workers go without raises.
"The biggest problem is medical [costs], wages and all. It messes with us," said Prunty, a sheet-metal worker from Rocky Mount who belongs to Local 52 of the Sheet Metal Workers International Association. "It messes [with the men in] Transportation. It's really trying to break the union."
Wednesday night, the House voted to put a quick end to the strike. The Senate was expected to follow suit immediately and put a bill on President Bush's desk that would establish a new emergency board to resolve disputes and impose a contract settlement on the two sides in 65 days.
By a 400-5 vote, the House approved a bill giving unions what one lawmaker called a "second chance" at challenging an earlier presidential emergency board's recommendations.
The administration and the nation's major freight railroads had asked Congress to impose the board's recommendations intact, but Democrats balked after union leaders complained it would lead to more than 20,000 job losses.
Eleven unions representing 235,000 workers are involved in the nationwide dispute, the first since 1982. 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.
"We heard on the radio about a 100-day cooling off period," said Prunty. "We done cooled off for three years."
Union and Norfolk Southern officials in Roanoke said late Wednesday that the first day of a nationwide strike against the country's major freight carriers was unmarred by violence or verbal harassment. "It's been very calm," said Don Piedmont, a spokesman for the railroad. "I've heard of no problems or even tension."
But an official with the United Transportation Union accused Norfolk Southern supervisors of trying to call strikers into work, despite the walkout. "We've had people that have been hassled all day long," said L.P. King Jr., general chairman of the UTU's conductors' committee.
"They're trying to intimidate the hell out of our guys by getting them to break the picket lines," he said. "They backed off this afternoon."
Rail lines through downtown Roanoke were eerily quiet Wednesday, though two trains apparently "called out" before the 7 a.m. strike lumbered through about 8:45 a.m. before being tied down by their union crews. Some union members accused Norfolk Southern of running its trains during the strike.
"They said they was going to shut down, right?" Harve Burdette, a brakeman with the UTU, 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 during 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," Piedmont said. "I don't know what that train was."
At Shaffers Crossing, Prunty and others said they had not seen any trains moving after the two that made their way through Roanoke Wednesday morning.
Picket lines were quiet, sometimes jovial, as members walked the four-hour shifts assigned them by their strike committee captains. Still, the apparent good nature belied a rising tension among the union ranks, Prunty said.
"People are getting tired. In the last week or so, I've seen more tension than in the whole time I've been here." He joined the railroad 13 years - and two strikes - ago.
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," said Bert Jones, a member of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen and a 36-year railroad veteran. "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."
Roanoke-area union leaders have called for a "Railworkers Solidarity March" today at 3:30 p.m. beginning at the East End Shops gate on East Campbell Avenue and ending at the Carpenter's Hall on Wells Avenue. Union leaders plan to brief members on negotiations in Washington.
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. Union members have worked more than three years without a new contract and have not had a raise since Jan. 1, 1988.
Over at the East End Shops, four strikers basked in the warm April afternoon sun, picket signs hanging from their necks. "All in all, it's really quiet," said Alan Powers, an engineer with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. "I don't look for things to get nasty unless it's stretched out for a long period of time.
"It takes a few days before people start getting angry and they realize it's hitting their pocketbooks," he said.
Officials say it probably won't get to that point.
In Washington, lawmakers and members of the Bush administration met behind closed doors to consider proposals to end the walkout while an emergency review board considered contract disputes between the freight carriers and their unions.
Rep. Rick Boucher, who represents Virginia's coal-producing counties, said before the House vote that he was confident the House would pass a bill by today that would order the rail employees back to work.
"Virginia's coal economy will be idled as long as the railroads are not running," Boucher said during a break between committee meetings in Washington. "A rail strike of any length would have a significant adverse effect on the coal economy."
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.
The Bush administration had asked Congress to immediately impose the board's recommended settlement, a position backed by major freight carriers. "My personal opinion is that it is a pretty good plan," Transportation Secretary Samuel Skinner said. "But I'm willing to listen. I've not drawn a line in the sand."
Rep. Dennis Eckart, D-Ohio, responded: "Efforts to force the PEB [presidential emergency board] recommendations down everyone's throat ain't going nowhere. Everybody's going to have to show some flexibility."
"It's a little hard for me to see how a new board is going to do anything but put off the inevitable," said Michael Walsh, chairman of the Union Pacific and the Association of American Railroads.
Still, union leaders in Roanoke said an extended cooling-off period and appointment of a new board "is exactly what we want." They hope the recommendations from a new, probably expanded panel would better preserve the unions' existing health benefits and work rules.
by CNB