Rail union execs announce bargaining coalition's members

Leaders of 10 rail unions announced late last week that their organizations will participate in coordinated bargaining in the round of national negotiations with freight railroads that began Nov. 1.

The unions comprising the Coordinated Bargaining Coalition are the American Train Dispatchers Association; Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen/Teamsters Rail Conference; Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen; International Association of Machinists; International Brotherhood of Boilermakers; National Conference of Firemen & Oilers/SEIU; International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; Transport Workers Union of America; Transportation Communications Union; and Transportation Division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers.

In a joint statement, the coalition's leaders described the new round of national bargaining as the "most critical" in a generation.

"Our coalition is founded on two key values that we all share. One is that we understand the importance of each union's autonomy to pursue membership-specific goals within a framework of broad solidarity to defend and improve the wages, benefits and working conditions of our members," the coalition's leaders stated. "The other is that we will spare no effort to defeat the attack by the railroads on the very foundation of our members' economic security."

Jointly, the coalition's unions represent more than 105,000 railroad workers covered by the various organizations' national agreements, and comprise over 80 percent of the workforce that will be affected by the new round of negotiations.

Last week, the National Railway Labor Conference announced that negotiations were beginning between its members, which include the nation's largest freight railroads, and 12 labor unions representing nearly 125,000 rail employees.