GALESBURG, Ill. — Railroad workers held rallies in a dozen states Tuesday, including local workers in Galesburg, to continue their fight for quality of life issues that weren't addressed in the new contract agreement.
It comes around two weeks after Congress and President Joe Biden passed legislation that enforces the tentative contract agreement that was reached between the class one rail carriers and a dozen unions in September. It averted a strike that was predicted to cost the economy $2 billion a day.
Four of the 12 unions had voted to reject the contract, saying it didn't go far enough to address quality of life issues, such as paid sick days.
Eight of the other unions, including one of the largest representing engineers, approved the five-year deal, which included 24% raises over the life of the contract, retroactive to 2020.
Ahead of Biden's signing, House Democrats had narrowly passed a measure to add seven paid sick leave days to the tentative agreement, but it failed to pass in the Senate.
Bob Guy, the Illinois State Legislative Director for SMART-TD, called the government's decision to intervene disappointing.
"It takes the legs right out of our bargaining power," Guy said. "If there's not even the threat of a strike, why would the railroads want to sit down with you anymore and bargain over sick days? Sick days was always part of our items that we wanted to bargain over."
Tuesday's rally, he said, was about looking ahead.
"It's on to the next fight," Guy said. "Obviously what the tentative agreement included will be what our workers, our members work under, but we're not forgetting what was not part of that. And that's what the fight will remain is to gain meaningful work-life balance improvements for our members."
Union members at the rally also called for a culture change within the class-one rail carriers to help address these issues. Guy said the industry is losing workers, but the unions want to help the industry grow.
"Until the culture changes on the class one railroad specifically regarding culture, quality of life, work-life balance issues with attendance policies, precision schedule railroading, things aren't going to get better," he said. "Let's help the industry grow once again. And we do that by providing railroad workers with sick days and quality of life improvements that help America."
Another fight railroaders are looking ahead to involves a mandate for two-person crews. Unions say the freight carriers want to cut train crews down to one person, something they say is a safety concern.
"The only reason they want to do that is for profits, it's not safety reasoning. And we know, as workers, that not only is it safe for us to have two in the cab, it's safe for the public as well," said Wes Ekstedt, who helps run fightfortwopersoncrews.com. "If a train breaks down, for instance, one person has to stay in the cab to run the locomotive, the other one has to go back to fix the problem. If they eliminate one person, you could be waiting hours, even longer, because someone will have to drive there to fix the issue. We could be blocking crossings, emergency vehicles, all kinds of things, for a way longer period of time."
The new contract doesn't address two-person crews, which Jordan Boone, the alternate Illinois State Director for the SMART-TD Legislative Board and a legislative representative for SMART-TD Local 445, said they were okay with because they're working with the Federal Railroad Administration on mandating it.
Boone said more than 12,000 people have filled out comments online in support of two-person crews.
The FRA will hold a hearing Wednesday, Dec. 14 about the safety aspects of freight crew sizes. A public comment period on a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the Rule of 2 ends Dec. 21.
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