A cooling-off period starts today and runs for the next 30 days for 11 national rail unions and the most of the largest U.S. freight railroads, after the National Mediation Board released those labor groups from its oversight of long-running contract talks.
The action affects most rail workers except for train conductors or others in the United Transportation Union, the single largest rail union, which struck its own deal months ago with the National Carriers' Conference Committee. UTU members recently ratified that contract.
But locomotive engineers, track maintenance crews and many other rail crafts such as signal operators, boilermakers and sheet metal continued to negotiate through the NMB-mediated talks until the board's action this week.
The NCCC represents about 30 railroads, including most of the Class I majors and some regional lines that together haul over 90 percent of U.S. rail freight.
Now, President Obama would be expected to step in to avert a potential economy-crippling strike or lockout before the 30-day period ends, by creating a Presidential Emergency Board. That would set up a panel to make its own contract recommendations for the two sides.
An emergency board would also have specific additional deadlines that could put off a potential labor action until early December, or past the autumn intermodal peak season and fall harvest shipment period.
In the past, the first large rail labor agreement to be negotiated often became the pattern for the rest of the industry, but this time the 11 unions resisted following the UTU's example for their own contracts.
A. Kenneth Gradia, NCCC chairman, said the rail negotiators were "extremely disappointed by the board's decision to end mediation." Railroads were willing to accept binding arbitration offered by the agency, he said, but unions declined. Now, Gradia expects Obama to appoint an emergency board before Oct. 7.
But W. Dan Pickett, who chairs the Rail Labor Bargaining Coalition that represents six of the unions, including the large ones for train engineers and track workers, said the railroads' insistence on using the UTU deal to shape other contracts "is designed to frustrate multi-union, multi-employer bargaining."
Pickett said that approach by the carriers either "imposes the UTU's unique interests on the rest of rail labor" or "seeks to restore a bygone era in which a strong, unified industry bargained separately with individual unions to the detriment of employee interests."