Hotline #727

The Machinists strike against CSX and the national rail lock-out are now over. Congress passed H.J.R.517 ending the strike at midnight and the President signed it very early this morning. The House vote was 248-140 and the Senate vote was 87-6. By a vote of 18-76, the Senate tabled an amendment by Sen. Paul Wellstone (D.-Minn.) to remove the arbitration sections of the bill. That simply would have pushed off the day of final reckoning to some other point in the summer.

Amtrak expects to reactivate its short-distance trains today, though the Northeast Corridor and Chicago-Milwaukee line were never affected. Start-up of overnight trains is postponed until tomorrow, except for the Capitol Limited and Montrealer, which will run today.

Today's legislation restores all carriers and employees to the conditions in effect on 12:01 am on June 24, just before the strike began. Now begins a 20-day cooling-off period. Also, starting now, negotiating parties have three days to pick a mutually acceptable mediator for each dispute and six days to pick a final arbitrator.

If there is no agreement during the cooling-off period, then the parties have five days to submit a "last best offer." The arbitrator would have seven more days to use those offers to mediate a settlement. If that fails, the arbitrator in three days must choose one of the offers -- labor's or management's. Then the President has three days to veto the selected contract, leading to self-help, though that is not likely. This entire process should be over by about August 3.

The three unions who tentatively settled with Amtrak will go through this process if those contracts are not ratified by membership. The three unions now without an agreement with Amtrak are the Engineers, Maintenance of Way, and Machinists.

The freight railroads were widely criticized for their lock-out decision. On June 24, House Energy and Commerce Transportation Subcommittee Chairman Al Swift (D.-Wash.) said that the railroads, earlier in the week, had come crying to Congress that a union shutdown of the railroads would lead to economic disaster. But on June 24, after the Machinists struck one carrier, CSX, the railroads acted upon a previous contingency plan and shut down in unison. "Instead," Swift said to the railroads," now you [shut everything down]."

Still, CSX is an important railroad and with the threat of a rolling strike, NARP felt it would still have been proper for Congress to act even in the absence of a lock-out.

Neither Congress nor the unions are happy about this law being passed, though Congress felt it was necessary to prevent further damage to a shaky national economy. Many, like DOT Secretary Andrew Card, are calling for an overhaul of the Railway Labor Act of 1926. That law sets up the long, drawn-out process of negotiations that in this case took four years to reach a turning point.

The Amtrak board met June 24. They decided to postpone the elimination of the River Cities to October 1993, to allow time to evaluate connecting traffic with the Sunset Limited extension to Florida.

The Pennsylvania House has a bill, HB2875, that would provide $50 million in bond capital for rail improvements and repairs. If passed, the bill would put the issue to a general vote next year. The bill also includes money for Amtrak improvements. Pennsylvania NARP members should contact their legislators in favor of HB2875.

The Highway Users Federation has begun a campaign to prevent use of flexible ISTEA highway funding for non-highway purposes and has just alerted its members to a decision in Omaha to use flexible money for buses. NARP members should speak out against the actions of the so-called "Coalition for Efficient Transportation," which the Highway Users Federation has set up to fight flexible funding efforts.