Hold hands in hopes of a contract. A raise would be nice. Talking to alot of reps in different locations, we need to strike regardless. In the end we always get shafted. The new attendance policy if it goes thru, will definitely suck. Medical is going up, I'm going to say double what we are paying now. No more boot vouchers. Believe me what we get, UP will take something away to make it profitable. The working more with less stands true. Lance's emphasizes on technology and modernization. Truly you can run 1 man crew safely and efficiently. 2 man crew.... one is always sleeping. I'm a frog so I see it all the time when I bring up airslips. Just like us carman can be replaced with low cost contracters and have zero liability. The job is easy to be replaceable. How hard is it to change shoes and pop air. I'm really tired of managers saying if we don't keep our numbers up they're going to shut us down. I'm at the point, shut this location down. All we do is shuffle empty cars back n forth to make the dwell look good. If Fritz only knew..
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Stand together for what? A BS contract that somehow will exclusively benefit the RR's long term? Can you name a single contract that was good for its members? I can't think of one ever! The class 1's have always found ways to alter the business models to offset the contracts so as to not dig into profits. Which in turn meant making working conditions harder for its members. The unions have historically been soft on the railroads when it comes to its members. Why stand with the unions when they can't agree to a contract that WE the members pay them millions of dollars a year to do. Where does that money go? Why has it taken almost 3 years to get this done? The last union I was in, the new contract was ratified religiously on the very same day the old one expired without fail. Why you ask? Well because the company wanted to avoid a strike at all costs so the company would give into the unions demands. No strike ever took place. That union was way way smaller then the RR unions. I've also seen the salaries of the union heads, and most of them are way overpaid for what they're doing right now for its members. So I ask why are we still paying them dues? If the unions want to be tough with the RR's, then us members need to start being tough with the unions. I don't think we should be standing with them for what little they've been doing for us. Take away their dues, and see how fast they negotiate a contract then.
The ch0ke-point, as always, is the upper management and their networked schemes for worker and consumer control. It's a network called a Trust big-time.
and it will win for a while.
The common scare tactics is the only thing that management has to use at this point. The problem with that is that people just don't give a sh-t anymore.