From left: BLET National President Mark Wallace held numerous one-on-one conversations with members throughout the week, including this one with Brother Kurt Kopacz of Division 174 (Stevens Point, Wisc.).
BLET National President Mark Wallace, in his state of the union address at the union’s Eastern Regional Meeting last week in Chicago, called the proposed merger of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern “one of the greatest threats facing our members today.”
Addressing the more than 400 members in attendance at an August 25 general session, Wallace reported that BLET and the Teamsters Rail Conference are leading the fight to stop the merger because the union has witnessed what railroad consolidation means for workers and their families. BLET’s leaders are concerned about potential job losses, forced transfers, and a lack of guaranteed protections for the current workforce under the plan presented by Union Pacific. “We intend to fight every step of the way for our members and our industry. We’re fighting it because we believe it’s the right thing to do for our members and the right thing to do for this industry,” Wallace said.
“We’ll tell our members what this merger could mean for their jobs, their agreements, their seniority, their communities, and the future of this industry,” Wallace added. “We’ll talk about what ‘jobs for life’ actually means and what it doesn’t mean. We’ll put the facts in front of them. And we’ll respect them enough to make up their own minds. That’s not fearmongering. That’s representation.”
The BLET and Teamsters Rail Conference are founding members of the Stop the Rail Merger Coalition, which represents a broad cross-section of business, labor, and consumers. Last week, the Coalition wrote a letter to President Trump outlining why it opposes the proposed merger. The letter warns that the merger would reduce railroad competition, raise costs for American farmers, manufacturers and consumers, threaten railroad jobs, and put critical supply chains at risk. Read the full letter here.