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TCU's Scardelletti responds to Amtrak attack (The following letter was written by Transportation Communications Union President Robert Scardelletti in response to an attack by Amtrak's board of directors and senior managers on loyal Amtrak employees.) Mr. David Laney, Chairman
Amtrak Board of Directors
National Railroad Passenger Corporation
60 Massachusetts Avenue, NE
Washington, DC 20002
Dear Mr. Laney:
It has come to my attention that Amtrak has engaged the services of McIntosh & Associates to study the operation of the Reservation Sales Offices and to report on how work currently performed by TCU-represented reservation agents might be contracted out.
The reservation agents whose jobs you are targeting for elimination are among the most professional and productive workers that one could find anywhere, and the calls which they handle generate millions in revenue for Amtrak. Yet, I am not at all surprised to learn that you have drawn targets on their backs. It has become increasingly clear to me that the Amtrak Board of Directors and senior managers are enamored with the idea of destroying as many unionized jobs as you possibly can.
Amtrak’s Strategic Reform Initiatives report released last year, and the more recent fiscal year 2007 Grant and Legislative Request, represent a virtual declaration of war on the pensions, wages and job security of Amtrak’s unionized workers.
You have asked Congress to take new employees out of the railroad retirement system that is healthy and well-funded. You also propose that Congress amend other laws so as to ensure that private firms have access to tracks and are able to bid against Amtrak to operate intercity trains. You even call for Amtrak to turn over its equipment to competing, successful bidders. In doing so, you are clearly not acting as directors and managers of Amtrak but as partisan proselytizers of an ideology of privatization favored by the Bush Administration. You intend to advance that ideology at the expense of Amtrak’s workers.
In a similar vein, you have asked Congress to amend the Railway Labor Act to allow labor contracts to expire so that Amtrak could impose work rule changes or wage cuts on employees without regard to the collective bargaining process. You claim that this radical departure from long-standing labor law would ensure an equitable framework for labor relations among Amtrak and its competitors. That rationale is absurd and disingenuous.
Airlines, commuter rail and freight rail are governed by the very same rules from which you desire exemption.
The truth is that you cannot abide balanced collective bargaining. You seek a new legislated advantage over your employees and their unions while you continue to refuse to engage in fair bargaining. It is outrageous that most Amtrak workers, including TCU-represented Carmen and Supervisors, have gone six years without a general wage increase. Thousands of unionized jobs were eliminated during that same period, and the remaining employees have been required to do more work with less help.
I am certain that Amtrak’s hard-working front line employees will find it totally reprehensible, as I did, to learn that Amtrak executives were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses at the very same time that the company forced unionized employees to sacrifice so much.
I am also certain that they feel, as I do, that you have absolutely no regard for Amtrak employees or their families.
It has always been difficult to negotiate wage agreements with Amtrak due to its inadequate and unstable federal funding. However, funding levels are no longer the most significant obstacle to fair wages, secure pensions and decent working conditions for Amtrak employees. The biggest obstacles today are the Amtrak Board of Directors and its senior managers.
Your attacks on employees have not stopped with proposed legislative changes or intransigence at the bargaining table. You have used all sorts of arguments and distortions to lay blame on Amtrak employees, while trying to provide cover for the Bush Administration’s utter hostility toward federally-funded rail passenger service. The Amtrak testimonies to Congress last Fall that compared On-Board Service workers to fast-food restaurant employees was one of the most pathetic hatchet jobs I have ever seen.
Amtrak management and the Amtrak Inspector General refused to tell the truth about On-Board workers’ long hours, extremely difficult working conditions, lack of daily or weekly overtime pay, and their mandatory training in emergency evacuation, security and passenger safety matters.
Through distortions and half-truths, Amtrak sought to blame the wages of On-Board workers for Amtrak’s food service deficit and to pave the way for contracting out that service.
More recently, you have created new management positions to perform work that TCU ARASA Supervisors used to perform even though Amtrak had previously promised that would never happen. These new management jobs are costing Amtrak more than the TCU-represented Supervisor positions which had been eliminated.
You are scuttling hundreds of On-Board Service positions while downgrading food service on the trains. You and Acting President David Hughes have announced your desires to contract out mechanical, car cleaning, ticket office, and other work; and now, management has taken a step to try to replace reservation sales agents.
I do not believe for one second that you are acting in the interests of Amtrak’s customers or that you are advancing Amtrak’s historic mission to provide the best possible intercity rail passenger service for America. You and other Board members were appointed by President Bush who has repeatedly tried to kill Amtrak and who proposed zero funding for fiscal year 2006 so as to accomplish exactly that.
When Amtrak’s former CEO spoke out last year against the Board’s attempts to lay the ground work for dismantling Amtrak, you fired him. The current Members of the Board have been acting more like Amtrak gravediggers than as directors of Amtrak or guardians of America’s rail passenger service.
TCU represents more than 8,500 employees at Amtrak who perform work as Carmen, Clerical and Station workers, Reservation Agents, Supervisors and On-Board Service workers. Most of our members are protected against the contracting out of their jobs, and it would be a grave mistake for Amtrak to breach those protections.
If you and the other Members of the Board and top managers truly wanted Amtrak to succeed, you would be rewarding employees for the service they have provided to Amtrak passengers under incredibly difficult and often demoralizing conditions.
Our members have made countless sacrifices to keep Amtrak going in the face of severe budget restrictions, threatened bankruptcy and the dismantling of the national system, all the while earning less than their counterparts who work for commuter rail service agencies and freight railroads.
Our members have routinely helped to mobilize voters to ask Congress to appropriate the monies needed to maintain or increase Amtrak service. And TCU itself has expended considerable resources to press Congress to provide Amtrak with sufficient funding for operations and long term capital investment.
TCU members have been working on board, repairing cars, selling tickets, hoisting baggage, directing trains, supervising road gangs and more, long before you or the other Board Members were appointed to carry out the White House agenda. TCU will do everything in its power to ensure that our members continue to do that work long into the future.
Very truly yours,
Robert A. Scardelletti
International President
cc: Norman Mineta, Board Member
Floyd Hall, Board Member
May 26, 2006
-------------------- Matt Marderosian Director Of Save Our Trains Michigan www.saveourtrainsmichigan
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While I do not like the idea of contracting out management functions to "consultants," and I do believe that mechanical operations functions are best left in the hands of well-compensated contractual labor, there is something to be said of eliminating auxiliary services from Amtrak's payroll. David Gunn even noted this, saying that electricians, engineers, and other railroad employees are undercompensated relative to foodservice workers, cleaners, and others. I think all onboard train staff should be unionized. The fact that these employees work on sophisticated, moving equipment puts a premium on skilled, experienced staff, and the protection of union contracts, railroad retirement pensions, and othe other benefits of unionization apply. When equipment is not a concern, and the company is simply considering office jobs, I cannot see a similar necessity for unionization. Sure, it would be great to have well-compensated employees throughout the company, with pensions, union bargaining power, and other benefits. But Amtrak's cost structure cannot support a fully unionized labor force. Companies like Aramark, Sodexho, and others can provide janitorial, food preparation, and hospitality services at a significantly lower cost than Amtrak can alone. It is unfortunate that this may have to happen, but to save passenger rail service, so be it....
Posts: 17 | From: Baltimore, MD | Registered: Oct 2005
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