By Mark L. Wallace
BLET National President and Teamsters Rail Conference President
Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena seems perplexed that unions are fighting for their members. During UP’s October 22 earnings call, he questioned BLET’s opposition to the proposed UP-NS merger. “I have no idea what the BLET is doing,” he said.
I’ll tell you what we’re doing. We are doing exactly what our members elected us to do: protecting their jobs, income and future.
Vena appears offended that what he sees as the “gold standard” looks like fool’s gold to us. He acts like we should be grateful because he came up with a catchy slogan. But a promise against involuntary furlough isn’t enough for our members. We proposed specific language protecting engineer positions, income and work locations. He offered us his “jobs for life” slogan in writing.
His own explanation exposed the problem. He said engineers who cannot hold engineer assignments can return to conductor service. The employee may remain employed while the engineer’s position can disappear. That is why we demand protection for positions.
BLET did not negotiate his pledge. It was his first and only offer. We proposed stronger protections; he would not negotiate them. Other unions sought stronger protections from UP and reached the same conclusion. Seven unions representing more than 70 percent of the unionized workforce at UP and NS now oppose this merger. Their members deserve protections they can enforce.
Maybe Vena should ask himself why those unions joined our coalition. I guess they all wanted to protect trucking too. Or maybe they read the offer, saw the same holes we did and decided their members deserved better.
BLET has spent 163 years fighting for railroad workers. As North America’s oldest labor union, we do not need Jim Vena lecturing us about our commitment to this industry. His trucking argument recycles the same tired attacks used during the fight over our decision to join the Teamsters in 2004, 22 years ago. Since then, railroad management’s business decisions and service failures have pushed customers toward trucking. Meeting the common-carrier obligation to serve those customers is the railroads’ responsibility. Our Teamsters affiliation did not cut capacity or leave customers waiting for their freight. Vena and his cronies are recycling an old smear in a desperate attempt to deflect from the real issue: this merger is bad for railroad workers and bad for the industry. Our responsibility is to protect the people who built their careers here, and we will keep doing it.
On that same earnings call, Vena said he was willing to talk if our requests became reasonable. Protecting our members’ livelihoods is reasonable. Expecting us to endorse a merger without those protections is not.
We will partner when it benefits our members, and we will fight when it doesn’t. We demanded more. He refused.
Our members expect us to fight. And fight we will.