I do not agree at all that a raise is a raise no matter how small and working with the same contract in place is a totally bogus statement to make! Amtrak will NEVER make money, (so they cannot be measured against the airlines that do make money when one excludes the all the support that system gets), yet the employees are still required to give back in the form of no new contracts. Amtrak employees will always look to their freight brothers and sisters with envy regarding their paychecks, they are in the SAME unions so why do they get paid so much less? That is where I was going with my previous statement regarding one union at Amtrak. UTU, TCU, etc, can only do so much for Amtrak employees because they lack real bargaining power!
First, try explaining to someone who has not gotten any increase in salary, how even a COLA of $200 or $400, $1,200 or whatever isn't a raise. I'm not debating whether it is a fair raise, or a deserved raise. But the definition of a raise is an increase in salary, not withstanding the amount. I have a client where 20 front line employees are still making the same gross salary that they were making 3 years ago when they got their last raise, a 2% raise at that and they had gone 4 years prior to that small raise. And in the meantime, their medical insurance has gone up, so they are now taking home less money than they were three years ago. They would be more than happy to see the COLA raises that Amtrak workers have gotten.
Second, airlines don't make money. If you take all the money made and lost over the history of comercial aviation, you'll find that they barely break even. And they wouldn't even do that, but for some help given to them over the years by the Fed.
True, the CN strike was not sanctioned by the union leadership but I would seriously bet that the UTU would not have sanctioned it anyway and the guys south of the border would have continued working regardless because there are different labor laws in Canada. For all intents and purposes US rail workers cannot really strike, (thanks to Reagan- I do believe), if they did so the carriers would simply get an injuction and force the employees back to work or suffer being released/fired. The Fed would back this move and force a 'cooling off period' which would result in an arbitrator becomming involved in negotiations. Traditionally the arbitrators have sided with the carriers so the unions never want that move but this is all elementary.
Whether the strike would have been sanctioned or not isn't the point. Each member of that union in Canada swore to uphold the rules and bylaws of the union, that is the point. They never even gave the President of the union the chance to make a decison one way or the other. If you aren't going to bother to at least try to follow the rules, then there is no point in having a union. Sorry!
If they had filed the measly two pages of paperwork with headquarters, only to have it rejected by headquarters, then I might have more sympathy for their illegal strike. But they didn't bother to do that! And then they turned around and had the nerve to criticize headquarters for not supporting them.
Amtrak employees are not and cannot get the same benefits that their brothers and sisters are getting on other lines so why should they keep the same representation. Amtrak employees may not be paying for health insurance now but they will be- the rest of the UTU is! When Amtrak is figuring out how much to ask for from Congress each year it has to build in a plan as to how its going to pay for the raises it has been getting away with not paying. The alternative- bye bye ACs. Trust me when it comes down to it, the local UTU guys will eventually take this offer to get the remaining members the raises they have been dying for. This is what you guys are failing to see: less pay= less service, plain and simple. It doesn't matter what YOU might think is right and fair. It MATTERS what the employees running the trains think is right and fair. All the letter writing in the world won't help the service until the EMPLOYEES feel they are being treated fairly. Again what is the industy standard for say Metra? NJT? MBTA? Metro North? Cal Trans? If I'm not mistaking all of these conductors get paid more than their Amtrak equivalents and they are subsidized every bit as much, (perhaps not in the same way but its there). How do you as a Union local leader go back to your people and address that one? "Its ok guys we'll get that raise someday. Keep smiling and making people's trips pleasureable." Nonsense, good luck with selling that one. PAY ME!
No arguement from me, I'm more than willing to bet that METRA, NJT, MBTA, and so on, are paying their conductors and A/C's more than Amtrak is.
You're also right that it doesn't matter what I think, it only matters what the employees think. But you must also remember that what the employees think is at least in part based upon what the union wants them to think. Remember the union has motivation here too, no new contract means no increase in money for the union.
Even when the union does do the right thing, that doesn't always mean that the employees end up thinking the right thing or do the right thing. A perfect example is right here in NY, where the MTA workers went on strike two years ago. After the strike ended, a contract was agreed upon by the bulk of the local union leadership. However certain local leaders still weren't happy and they managed to persuade enough workers to vote down that offer. After a year of back and forth, arbitration, and such, the employees that blindly followed those leaders, as well as those who followed the moderate leadership, all ended up with a contract that wasn't quite as lucrative as the one they voted down.
So you'll have to forgive me if I think that far too many employee's think only what their union leaders want them to think, and don't necessarily think about what's really best for them. And I also don't think that union leaders always have the best interests of the membership at hand. I'm not suggesting that all do, but there are plenty of examples of leaders that have stolen from their membership, after convincing the membership to do and/or go along with certain things.
And you may be right that Amtrak is building into the request for funding monies each year to allow for pay raises for the employees. But show me one year recently where Amtrak actually got exactly the amount that they asked for, much less more than they asked for, with the exception of the Warrington years where the budget was pure fiction. If you are correct that Amtrak is budgeting for raises, then blame Congress and the White House for no raises, not Amtrak. They are the ones who didn't supply the full amount of Amtrak's budget request.
Finally, not that it is really relevant, but I'd be willing to bet that most of those commuter agencies are more heavily subsidized than Amtrak.
