BLET's advisory board urges members to ratify NCCC agreement

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen’s (BLET) advisory board recently sent a letter to union members recommending that they ratify the tentative national agreement reached earlier this month with the National Carriers’ Conference Committee. Ratification votes from about 21,000 BLET members are due on Jan. 5.

Board members noted that the proposal includes an additional 1.6 percent in general wage increases over and above the first national agreement reached in the bargaining round, and phases in increased health and welfare co-pays over an 18-month period rather than instituting all of them immediately, according to a press release issued by the BLET.

In addition, the union’s National Wage Committee secured a flexible spending account benefit to help offset any possible increased costs associated with the health and welfare co-pays, as well as a clarification to the Presidential Emergency Board’s (PEB) “ambiguous recommendation” that a 1 percent signing bonus only be paid on an employee’s “straight time” earnings, board members state in their letter.

Members have a “clear choice” between the agreement's enhancements and “a congressional imposition of the bare PEB recommendations in legislation that has already been drafted,” they wrote, urging members to make their decision “based on logic rather than emotion.”