Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 19, 1991 TAG: 9104190257
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES BUSINESS WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The congressional bill appoints a new presidential emergency board (PEB) and imposes a settlement within 65 days if management and labor fail to do so. The legislation appears to recognize union concerns that the original compromise would prove "totally devastating" to some 235,000 rail workers.
Maybe.
Roanoke-area union leaders, heady with Congress' speedy action Wednesday, proclaimed a "major victory" over the nation's major freight carriers, including the Virginia-based Norfolk Southern Corp. and CSX Transportation Inc.
"At halftime, it's unions 1, management nothing," said L.P. King Jr., general chairman for the conductors' committee of the United Transportation Union. "If all [Congress] wanted was a quick settlement, they could have done it" by rubber-stamping the recommendations of the original presidential emergency board, which is regarded by many labor leaders as the handmaiden of a hostile White House.
Instead, a House committee chairman from Michigan took less than a day to ram through Congress - and across the president's desk - a bill that used the hated PEB 219 as "a template" to resolve the outstanding disputes. The new board must presume the original proposals to be valid, the bill says, and anyone seeking revisions "shall bear the burden of persuasion."
So whether the eight unions that orchestrated the 18-hour, 39-minute shutdown of the nation's freight railroads scored a "major victory" remains very much open to interpretation - and collective bargaining.
"Both sides, in the end, will probably have to give up something," said a Democratic congressional staffer who asked not to be named. "Maybe you've created enough uncertainty here so the parties themselves may have to find a settlement. The game's not over."
Rather than engineering a coup for rail labor, as some Roanoke-based union leaders suggest, Congress may have forged an environment in which labor and management will feel forced to bargain.
Carriers can no longer bank on Washington imposing PEB 219 unadorned if labor can convince the new board that some of the old proposals are unfair. And the unions got their second shot. After 65 days, it's law.
Workers need not worry about going another three years without a contract or a raise. But health insurance cost-sharing is imminent, union officials concede privately, and some changes in work rules are likely.
"I wouldn't argue if they say they won the first half," said Daniel Lang, a spokesman for the American Association of Railroads. "They don't know what the final score will be, and neither do we."
Union negotiators will face a new three-person panel with only two new appointees - a third will come from the original board. Union leaders in Roanoke concede that the second chance also amounts to a gamble that could lead to the disappearance of thousands of rail jobs, should union negotiators fail to make the case against PEB 219.
"Sure it's a gamble," said King of the UTU. "It's been a gamble since 1988 when we opened negotiations."
No doubt the temptation is strong for some union leaders to see a ringing endorsement for organized labor in Congress' speedy - and lopsided - action Wednesday. Some union leaders in Roanoke said so. If anything, however, the action underscored the importance of railroads to an interdependent economy.
The Bush administration sided with rail carriers behind PEB 219, with Transportation Secretary Samuel Skinner calling it "a pretty good plan." But when picket signs went up at 7 a.m. Wednesday and one-third of the nation's freight traffic came to a halt - threatening to deepen the recession - the administration abandoned its support.
What some union leaders in Roanoke counted a victory, others considered a defeat. "We got no more than what the railroads wanted," said John LaManca, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, Division of the Transportation-Communications International Union. "The victory is the union didn't get [PEB 219] put in right now."
The Roanoke Valley's labor movement, however, wrested a clear victory from the strike and preparations for it, several union leaders said. "This is the first strike I've seen where all the crafts were together," said LaManca, a railroad veteran of 45 years.
"I think it's the best thing that could ever happen to us," the UTU's King said. "It made [workers] realize they are union, they are represented. We had people turn out we hadn't seen in years."
by CNB