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Updated: 5/25/2005; 4:44:42 PM.

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Wednesday, March 23, 2005

The more things change, the more they stay the same
A Brother passes on this priceless letter from the past, found in our state UTU Legislative Rep's filing cabnet. Read it carefully. It deals with some familiar issues - craft v. industrial unionism, union bureaucrats more concerned about preserving their own perks than doing what's right for their members, organizations top-heavy with officers, attacks on progressive members, censorship of discussion, and on and on and on. Brother Hedlund's proposed solution to rails' predicament, the UROC, failed in its mission and is almost forgotten. But its progressive ideas are as timely as ever.

April 17^th, 1953

Mr. Ray Parks

Financial Secretary,

Legislative Representative,

and Delegate of Lodge 814, BLF&E,

Dear Brother Parks:

            The purpose of this letter is to raise some rail union questions before you and other BLF&E men that get a chance to read this letter. There are so many things concerning rail unionism that should be discussed that it is rather difficult to make a selection of the few questions that can properly be treated within the short space of an ordinary letter like this. However, we can raise a few questions.

            You are a delegate to the BLF&E Convention that is scheduled to open in Boston on July 13^th. There will be about one thousand delegates at this convention drawing $32.00 a day. The Convention will cost your small craft organization more than $31,000.00 a day. There has been no convention agenda submitted by the BLF&E Administration. No delegate has any idea what the convention is for or what its program is. If it remains in session 30 days it will cost the BLF&E dues payers over a million dollars. Your last convention stayed in session nearly two months and cost nearly two million dollars. And what did that convention do? It raised the delegates� pay from 16 to 32 dollars a day. It raised Robertson�s salary from fifteen thousand to $22,500.00 a year and elected him to office at 72 years of age in direct violation of a constitutional provision that was just temporarily set aside for the occasion. All other Grand Lodge Officials also got a good boost in salaries. It added 4 more Vice Presidents to the already top-heavy BLF&E pay-roll gang. There are now 14 Vice Presidents. It unseated all duly elected delegates that had any connection with the movement to merge the BLE and the BLF&E. It added another paragraph to the vicious gaglaw, section 9, page 265 of the BLF&E constitution to make the gag of the BLF&E members more complete. That was the answer to the amendment proposed by lodge 814 and 510 to strike that gaglaw from the pages of the BLF&E constitution and to insert in its place a free expression clause. So it cost the BLF&E dues payers nearly two million dollars to raise the Grand Lodge Officers� salaries and give them a better strangle hold on the organization.

            In the BLF&E, like all the rest of the obsolete craft unions on the railroads, the members have nothing to say about the administrative affairs of the organization. The union press is tightly censored against every expression to which the President is opposed. Ritualistic ceremonies are encouraged by the Grand Lodge officers at the opening and closing of local meetings to stultify the minds of the members and create an atmosphere of stifling solemnity in the meeting room. The time at Union Meetings is wasted in long meaningless speeches by the Grand Lodge officers and their agents, sight-seeing, banquets, pinning membership buttons on old members, etc. Anything to keep meetings and conventions from doing anything to improve union structure, policy and leadership. Every progressive proposal of the rank and file, if any, is smothered or suppressed by the bureaucracy in one way or another. It is this strangle hold on union affairs which has enabled the reactionary and overpaid officials in the BLF&E, as well as in the rest of the 21 railroad craft unions, to keep these unions stalled on the dead center for the last fifty years. During this long time the craft union officials have been able to keep these antiquated crafts from taking a single step in a progressive direction, not one.

            It is now Ninty years since the railroad workers first took on organized form. For those Ninty years the craft union officials have had the rail union field to themselves. They have run those unions as if they were the personal property of the officials. And after those Ninty years what do we find? We find the American railroad workers divided, disorganized and their democratic rights suppressed in 22 separate craft unions. The most useless and expensive labor union structure in the world.. Many of those unions are both dual and rival in character and the workers� time and dues money is being wasted in destructive jurisdictional disputes where one union is trying to destroy the other. Progressive rail unionists have tried for years to change and remedy these deplorable conditions in the old crafts but in doing so they met the solid opposition of the craft union bureaucrats who are more interested in hanging on to their privileges than they are in promoting the general welfare of the men. And now to add insult to injury, the craft officials have secured the enactment of a Union Shop Law which, if they can hang that on the men, it will make their dues paying slavery complete. That will be real taxation without representation under the present political set-up in these crafts. Gaglaws, press censorship, controlled conventions, when they are held, obligations and ritualistic mummery in union meetings, and now, compulsory dues payment. That is part of the program of the craft union leadership.

            Now Ray, what do you intend to do about these conditions at the coming convention, or in the craft union, if you intend to remain there? That is something that I, and every progressive rail worker would like to know.

            I and other rail progressives worked for almost a lifetime trying to bring about needed structural and programmatic changes within the frame work of these old crafts, only to face the hostility and oppression at the hands of the craft union dictators. I you intend to do anything in the B.of L. F. & E. outside of collecting dues, many of us would like to know what it is.

            Thousands of rail workers are now lining up in the UROC because they could see no object in remaining in the boss-ridden crafts.

            The craft union was out of date before you and I threw our first scoop of coal in a locomotive firebox. These craft unions with their rituals, gaglaws and dictatorial rule belong in the rubbish heap of history, together with the link and pin coupler and kerosene headlight.

            The UROC movement is already equipped to throw the search light on the conditions in these boss-ridden crafts. The craft officials can�t operate in the dark any longer under the cover of their gaglaws and censored press. It is going to be increasingly tough for these craft union bureaucrats to keep the rails paying dues in these outmoded crafts from now on. They haven't got the field to themselves any more. The UROC, a modern democratic semi-industrial union has entered the rail union field. This new union is going to compel the old crafts to join this move for a modern labor union for the operating men or perish. That is the law of development, Brother Parks, and the craft union leaders can�t escape it in the long run. They can already see the hand writing on the wall.

            What do you intend to do, Brother Parks? We would like to know.

Sincerely yours,

C.R. Hedlund

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Calling All Union Women!
Colonialism, corporate feudalism, and Cheap-Labor Conservative Family Values. These and other crimes against humanity breed oppression which is further justified by cultural and religious crusades, racism, sexism and all other manner of illogical faith-based reasoning. Comes an email from a sister rail who describes what can happen to a woman when, seeking a good job, she is invited to apply for and accepts employment in the rail industry. Anyone desiring to communicate with her can do so through The Usual Suspect.

I'm hoping you might know of some lady rails in your area who have horror
stories like mine about being pregnant while employed in this industry.
I've just been denied light duty (they used to give it out before the
merger with SF), told to just "work as long as I could" by management,
which is NOW since I damn near got myself injured this weekend due to
pregnancy-induced clumsiness and sheer exhaustion. I've already spoken
some women from the BNSF, UP, and Amtrak in Seattle with similar horror
stories, and I think it's time we put this issue out there for all to see.
Hello, corporate greed! A multi-billion dollar company who can't afford to
give a handful of women light duty?! I'm faced with about 4 months of zero
income (did I mention that though I've been working for over a year,
railroad retirement refuses to pay me anything until their fiscal year
starts in July?!), impending homelessness (the state only helps you with
one month's rent, and you're expected to make do on about $400 a month),
and a couple of unions who don't think this is an important enough issue
to garner their attention.

Please have any interested parties contact me! How many decades must women
be in this industry before it's acknowledged that not only do we exist, we
occasionally have babies!

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