Home / Frequently Asked Questions
Labor Relations Under the Railway Labor Act
The 1926 Railway Labor Act (RLA) governs collective bargaining between railroads and rail labor organizations. The RLA was designed to avoid disruptions to rail transportation due to labor disputes. Under the act, bargaining agreements remain in force indefinitely until the parties agree to change them. Without a fixed deadline, negotiators work through a step-by-step process, including compulsory mediation, designed to encourage negotiated settlements. Neither side can engage in “self help” – a labor strike or unilateral imposition of management terms – until these steps have been exhausted.
Parties exchange bargaining proposals through the service of a “Section 6 Notice,” so named for the section of the RLA in which it is defined. Most railroads bargain on a multi-employer basis through the National Carriers’ Conference Committee (NCCC), the bargaining arm of the National Railway Labor Conference (NRLC). (For a chart that depicts the Railway Labor Act process, click here.)
The NMB controls the schedule of talks and timing of release from mediation, without any time limits. The goal of the NMB is to assist the parties in reaching agreement without resorting to self-help. If the NMB is unable to help the parties come to an agreement, it will offer binding arbitration, which either side may reject. If arbitration is rejected, a 30-day “cooling off” period must be maintained. During this period or thereafter, the NMB may determine that the dispute threatens interstate commerce. It then will notify the President, who has the option of appointing a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) to investigate the dispute and recommend solutions. If the President does not recommend a PEB, the parties are free to engage in self-help after the cooling off period expires. In the past, PEBs have almost always been appointed in national disputes that have not been resolved through negotiations or mediation. In some national rail bargaining rounds, such as the last one covering the 2000-2004 period, no PEB’s have been required by the parties to reach final agreements.
The PEB has 30 days from the date of its appointment to investigate the dispute and report its findings. The PEB’s recommendations are not binding, although they often lead to settlements. There is a final 30-day cooling off period after the Board reports to give the parties more time to reach agreement before self-help is permitted.
The railroads do not believe a strike will occur as a result of the current national bargaining. Virtually all past national rail negotiations have resulted in settlements without service interruptions. In the past 30 years, only six days have been lost to rail strikes over nationally handled disputes. On those rare occasions where disruptions to rail service growing out of a national labor dispute are imminent or have occurred, Congress has stepped in to prevent or terminate a rail strike.
Overview of National Negotiations
The railroads seek reforms to existing health care arrangements that will bring the costs and benefit designs of those plans more into line with comparable plans in place in other mainstream American businesses, which includes a greater level of employee participation in the cost of health care.
For example, rail union employees pay only a small portion of their health care benefits as compared with workers in other industries. In 2006, the railroads will pay an average of $12,134 per employee for family medical, dental and vision coverage or about 89 percent of the total cost, while employees will pay an average of $1,487. In contrast, American workers on average contributed $2,713 in 2005 toward the cost of family heath care premiums, while their employers paid 75 percent of the total cost.
The railroads expect that the agreements reached this round will provide employees with continued wage progress that will keep them among the highest-paid U.S. industrial workers. Unlike many other industries, the railroads are not seeking concessionary wage settlements in this bargaining round. Rail employees' compensation is higher, on average, than the compensation paid in industries that employ 91 percent of all U.S. workers. The railroads are also willing to explore profit-sharing ideas with the rail unions.
Some labor agreements negotiated in past years require that certain types of work be performed by the railroad, work that is not central to the running of the railroad or serving its customers, and could be better performed by companies other than the railroad itself. The railroads are seeking greater flexibility with respect to contracting out non-core activities.
Major U.S. railroads are developing train control technology that will significantly improve safety and service of freight operations. Several railroads have launched or will soon implement pilot projects employing this new technology. One carrier, which has had a lengthy and successful pilot, has filed an application with the FRA to approve deployment of the technology in regular train service. The technology will help prevent train collisions and improve productivity. Most important, it will reduce accidents caused by human error, the most common cause of train accidents.
New train control technology will meet all of the safety requirements of the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration, and will have at least three principal features:
Remote control for locomotives, or RCL, was developed in part to reduce accidents and injuries in rail yards. RCL involves use of a small control device that transmits signals to a microprocessor on board a locomotive, allowing an employee on the ground to operate and control its movement at a safe distance.
Yes, it is proven and safe. RCL systems are used on several smaller U.S. freight railroads and at many industrial rail operations, and are extensively used on the two major Canadian freight railroads. The largest U.S. freight railroads, or Class I’s, began using RCL in some yards in 2002, after first reaching agreement with the United Transportation Union (UTU) on implementing this technology. In May 2004, the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) found that “the deployment of remote control locomotives in and around rail yards has resulted in significant safety benefits.”
Rail is the safest way to move the nation’s freight over land. Since 1980, American railroads have reduced train accident rates by 65 percent and their rate of employee injuries by 79 percent. Railroads have lower employee injury rates than other modes of transportation and most other major industry groups. And, from 1980 to 2004, grade crossing accidents fell 71 percent. The industry continually invests in new technology and develops new procedures to improve its already-strong record of safety.
The system used to record and report critical data such as employee injuries and train accidents was designed to take into account that numbers of employees or rail traffic levels can fluctuate up or down. The U.S. Federal Railroad Administration reports these statistics as rates rather than as raw numbers. By applying a formula that computes the rate of injuries per 200,000 man hours worked or per 100 full-time employee equivalents, the FRA data can be compared year-over-year on the same basis without regard to the actual number of rail employees who worked that day, or month, or year. Using the FRA's injury rate model per 100 full-time employees, the rate of employee injuries (including occupational illnesses, fatalities and all types of injuries) has fallen 79 percent since the passage of the Staggers Act in 1980. Since 1990, with the introduction of new technology and continued emphasis on safety and training, the employee injury rate has fallen by 79 percent. In fact, railroads today have lower employee injury rates than other modes of transportation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses the same rate basis as the FRA, illness and injury per 100 full-time employees. The BLS reported that in 2004, the rail employee injury rate is lower than that of the trucking, barge, urban transit and airline industries. This same approach - a rate based on 1 million train miles of operation - applies in FRA reporting of train accidents. The train accident rate has been reduced by 65 percent since 1980 and 16 percent since 1990.
More than 30 railroads, including all the nation’s major freight railroads (Class I carriers), are currently in national bargaining with 13 rail unions.
Thirteen labor unions are participating in the current round of national bargaining.
129,000 Class I rail employees—more than 90 percent of all union-represented rail workers—are covered by the current round of national bargaining.
Railroad Fact
Railroad Facts Temporarily Unavailable.