CLEVELAND, October 15 -- The United Transportation Union’s latest attack against the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen regarding seniority maintenance fees is a smokescreen created to draw attention away from its imminent plan to implement seniority maintenance fees on the national level, BLET National President Don Hahs charged today. On October 15, the UTU issued a news release claiming that the BLET is implementing seniority maintenance fees for trainmen on the Conrail Shared Assets Areas and the Kansas City Southern. What is missing from the UTU release, according to President Hahs, is the fact that the UTU was the first union to implement these fees at Conrail and KCS. “The only reason the BLET has seniority maintenance fees is because the UTU implemented them first,” President Hahs said. The UTU pioneered the concept of seniority maintenance fees years ago, requiring engineers to pay dues to the UTU in order to maintain their seniority as trainmen. BLET challenged UTU’s seniority maintenance all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. “The BLET is adamantly opposed to the concept of seniority maintenance fees, and we only implemented such programs after the UTU did so,” Hahs said. “We would never even have dreamed of such a concept had the UTU not done so.” To make matters worse, the BLET has learned that UTU leaders and the nation’s railroads will soon enter into a seniority maintenance fee program on the national level, forcing all engineers and trainmen who join BLET to pay dues or a fee to UTU as well as BLET in order to “maintain” their trainman seniority. He said the UTU “smokescreen” news release of October 15 attempts to use BLET as a scapegoat, claiming UTU is implementing its nationwide seniority maintenance fee program to retaliate against BLET. “The article posted on the UTU website is meant to set the stage for the announcement of the UTU’s most recent agreement on a nationwide seniority maintenance provision,” President Hahs said. “I challenge UTU President Paul Thompson to do what’s right for BLET and UTU members and refrain from beginning its nationwide seniority maintenance fee program.“It is unconscionable that UTU would make an agreement forcing post-’85 workers to take promotion to engineer on the one hand, and then force them to pay double dues on the other hand.”
Friday, October 15, 2004bentley@ble.org
Friday, October 15, 2004bentley@ble.org
