Provocative contribution to the discussion from a trusted brother. He describes the past and ongoing sellout and urges that we act quickly to take measures to protect UTU from raiding and prepare for the next round of job losses by getting younger members qualified as locomotive engineers. We also need to unite UTU in some way with BLET and other rail labor.
Roger,
It has been made clear to me via good source that the UTU's intention all along has been to collaborate with the carriers on RCO to gain favor of representative property votes and take over the BLE. What the RR's want to prove by hook or crook is that RCO develops a long and favorable safety record. Then, once all engines in the near future are equipped with PTC devices and alerters to stop the train if the engineer fails to act, the road conductor will be up for grabs. With this technology in the pipeline the only way to salvage conductor jobs would be to promote them all to engineers and have two engineers in the cab on long runs.
The railroads intend to operate eventually with one man only in the yard and on the road. This will reduce current manpower by 60%. The goal of the carrier to eliminate jobs has been advanced by the UTU in order to get the RR's to support their representation vote. The UTU intended all along to give up the jobs as long as they could depend on engineer dues and continuos bribes from the DLC. So the goal of the UTU was income, period, not representation. This is the case that needs to be in court.
No doubt the DLC scandal exposed has thrown sand in the gears of the enterprise machine and so have the Teamsters. However, I do not see the BLE/Teamsters advocating engineer/co-engineer Lake Erie type plans, so they may be in the RR's pocket and attempting the same charade the UTU was up to. Clearly it will be absolutely necessary to remove all the bad apples and obviously "shame on you" Paul Thompson will make every effort to do the opposite. It seems the corruption in the UTU has and will continue to benefit only the RR's because nobody has a plan to salvage what's left of our conductor and engineer positions. we will need to redirect the organization and we need to do it quickly!
I think we need to stop the raiding by reentering the AFL/CIO and make every effort to get all conductors under 55 engine qualified and promote two man minimum legislation. We would all need to be in the same union and How this will be possible now I do not know but once accomplished an hourly long term agreement might be our best defense.
Your thoughts on a solution to the corner misrepresentation has put us in would be appreciated. Copy to Agent X as he has proven to be an astute thinker as well.
Thanks
10:21:41 AM 
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