Working on the Railroad, Every Livelong Day

CSX, the third-largest railroad in the U.S., released a new attendance policy last month that trumps various union contracts. The vague and unsafe blanket policy says workers are not allowed to mark off sick for more than two days in a rolling 30-day period, regardless of work schedule or job.

Railroaders work many different work hours. Some have scheduled off time and some have none, working on call all the time. A federal rail safety bill enacted in 2008 was supposed to address these issues, but it made some rest issues worse.

Under the new law, if a railroader works six days, he is supposed to get two off, but he can never count on getting them. For example, if an engineer drives a train on a Monday starting at 11 p.m. and gets off Tuesday at 10 a.m., management will keep him in a hotel and call a train for a 1 a.m. start Wednesday, so that Tuesday does not count as a work day.

CSX workers responded to the new attendance policy with various ideas and protests. The lack of information about what the union was doing caused unease. Some from my division in Louisville, Kentucky, wanted to withhold union dues. I told them that the problems of communication and organizing we face here locally can be magnified a hundredfold on the national level. It took the General Chairman’s office more than a week to share its letter of protest to CSX with the rank and file.

SUPPORT LABOR NOTES

BECOME A MONTHLY DONOR

Give $10 a month or more and get our "Fight the Boss, Build the Union" T-shirt.

Instead of withholding dues, I urged members to hold an informational picket of CSX’s Family Day September 11. We called on CSX to cancel its unsafe and anti-family attendance policy and sit down with the unions to work out something in line with existing labor agreements.

I got no support, or even a response, from BLET officials for this legal, off-property picket, despite begging and despite the intervention of my BLET Kentucky legislative rep. A vice president passed the buck and our general chairman told the rep the union could not “officially” support the action on paper.

The picket was small, but it was a start.