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International Brotherhood of Teamsters and AFL-CIO's Transportation Trades Department (TTD) May 28 filed a joint submission with National Mediation Board (NMB), requesting that the board dismiss United Transportation Union's application to create a combined train and engine-service operating craft at Kansas City Southern.
Teamsters officials believe the union has direct interest in the issue because it represents railroad and airline employees throughout the United States.
In the filing, Teamsters and TTD officials state that engineers and conductors represent functionally distinct employee classes at KCS, and that the two groups don't share sufficient interest to justify a single craft.
Officials believe that BLE members' rejection of a UTU merger helps prove that the two groups don't share a community of interest.
"Jilted by its rejection, UTU would now have the board abrogate the
century-old division among the operating crafts on Class Is, a division that has been upheld by NMB for nearly 70 years, and do so despite no legal or factual basis for the assertion that a consolidated craft or class of train and engine-service employees exists on the properties of KCS or, for that matter, any Class I," the filing states, according to a BLE-prepared statement.
Officials also state that the issue is disrupting KCS' operations.