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Surface Transportation Board June 21 announced that an arbitration case has been settled privately between Norfolk Southern Corp. and Transportation Communications International Union (TCU).
The case involved employee eligibility for compensation from job displacements resulting from a railroad merger.
TCU wanted STB to determine whether employees, whose job was relocated due to a merger, could accept a lower-paying job at their pre-merger work location and receive compensation for lost income — even if those workers could maintain their pre-merger pay by relocating.
TCU-represented crew dispatching workers were moved to a central location due to the Norfolk & Western Railway Co./Southern Railway Co. merger that created NS. Under pre-merger collective agreements, the workers had the right to accept lower-paying jobs at their existing locations; the TCU workers asserted those rights and then applied for "displacement allowances" to compensate for the lower pay.
STB became involved when TCU appealed an arbitrator's decision that NS wasn't required to pay the allowances.
The board March 21 granted NS' and TCU's motion to hold a proceeding in abeyance pending a negotiated settlement, which the parties recently reached. STB approved NS' and TCU's joint request to vacate the arbitration decision, dismiss a petition to review that decision and discontinue the board's proceeding.