advertisement

---

Last week, Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) 242 released its recommendations to settle a long-standing dispute between Amtrak and eight labor unions, while two union coalitions set a deadline to prompt a resolution by month’s end.

Formed Dec. 1, the PEB members recommended the parties adopt a wage and health-care package agreed to in April 2007 by the unions and freight-rail industry.

“The freight agreements have served over the years as the historical pattern referenced for establishment of wages, benefits and working conditions at Amtrak,” the PEB said.

The recommended settlement calls for a 35.2 percent wage increase retroactive from Jan. 1, 2000, to Dec. 31, 2009, according to a joint statement released by the Passenger Rail Labor Bargaining Coalition and Amtrak Shopcraft Coalition. The PEB recommends employees receive retroactive pay to compensate for the eight years they’ve worked without a wage increase. To lessen the back-pay burden on Amtrak, PEB members suggest that retroactive wages be paid out in two installments of 40 percent and 60 percent one year apart.

The board also recommended the parties don’t adopt Amtrak’s proposed work rule changes. No other rail agreements contained the type of language Amtrak was seeking, the PEB determined. The proposed changes were not the subjects of intensive bargaining by the parties, Amtrak had not shown a compelling operational need for any of the changes it sought and the adoption of the railroad’s proposals likely would foreclose voluntary agreement and cause “significant instability” within the workforce, according to the union coalitions.

The unions are ready to resume negotiations with the national intercity passenger railroad, the coalitions said. If the parties do not reach an agreement by 12:01 a.m. on Jan. 30, the unions plan to strike. However, there is a possibility that Congress could intervene, the coalitions said.

The Amtrak Shopcraft Coalition comprises the International Brotherhood of Machinists, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Transportation Communications Union and the Transport Workers Union. The Passenger Rail Labor Bargaining Coalition comprises the American Train Dispatchers Association, Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes, Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen and National Conference of Firemen & Oilers.