Description : News Release - BMWE Strike on CSXT Prevented by Florida Judge

:

Randy Cook Perry Geller Bill Glisson Tom McCoy Jed Dodd Stuart Hurlburt

231-723-3577 419-734-9811 904-744-6744 540-375-0002 215-569-1285 508-698-6845

(Manistee, MI) (Port Clinton, OH) (Riverview, FL) (Salem, VA) (Philadelphia, PA) (Mansfield, MA)

Federal Judge Nimmons of the U.S. District Court in Jacksonville, Florida, headquarters of CSX Transportation Company, issued a temporary restraining order at approximately 11:00 p.m., on Thursday night, March 9, 2000, preventing the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes from initiating its strike against CSXT planned for 5:00 a.m. Friday morning, March 10. Judge Nimmons, for the purposes of the TRO only, issued a preliminary finding that the issue was a minor dispute and ordered a hearing for March 23. It is hoped that at that longer hearing and after the judge has had sufficient time to review the papers, the BMWE will be able to convince the judge that the contracting out by CSX is a major dispute.

CSX Transportation, Inc. is a major eastern railroad and provides rail transportation and distribution services over a 22,700-route mile network in 23 states, the District of Columbia and two Canadian provinces.

The BMWE is the labor union which represents the men and women of CSXT who construct and maintain the railroad's tracks, bridges and buildings. CSXT employs approximately 6,000 maintenance of way workers.

As a result of the CSXT purchase of 40 percent of Conrail in June 1999, the BMWE and CSXT entered into a new collective bargaining agreement to integrate the newly acquired property into CSXT operations. The agreement was explicitly designed to reserve BMWE work to BMWE members and to eliminate the sub-contracting of most bargaining unit work.

Shortly after signing the agreement with BMWE, CSXT began to regularly sub-contract core bargaining unit work in the form of routine maintenance and regular programmed repairs such as renewals and rehabilitation of tracks, roadbed and structures. CSXT has acted as if the new agreement provision reserving work to the BMWE members does not exist. Despite repeated meetings with the BMWE, CSXT has done nothing to halt their unilateral change of the collective bargaining agreement in effect between BMWE and CSXT. There is no question that the agreement in effect between BMWE and CSXT does not permit the avalanche of sub-contracting done by CSXT.

Randy Cook, General Chairman of the Allied Eastern Federation of the BMWE which has jurisdiction over approximately 70 percent of the striking workers, stated: "It is unfortunate that CSXT began to repudiate this new agreement before the ink was even dry on the paper. Their actions literally threaten the livelihood of our members and their families. Management knows full well that our agreement does not permit the sub-contracting of this work. We have no intention of permitting this management to continue with their illegal activities at the expense of our members. We were forced to a strike situation when all of our appeals to senior management were ignored. They signed an agreement with us last year and we intend to do everything in our power to get them to honor the commitments that they made to us when they signed the deal."

"I am deeply concerned for our members and their families that CSXT's management would demonstrate such disdain for their employees," added Perry Geller, BMWE General Chairman of the Consolidated Rail System Federation, representing a portion of the CSXT workers (former Conrail employees). "Their actions not only harm our members and their families but place the communities at risk. In Ohio, for example, contracting out maintenance of way work is only one of the ways CSXT has shown its disregard for the communities it runs through. Since last Fall, there have been numerous complaints of CSXT blocking crossings -- often for more than three hours. Even Ohio Governor Taft is said to be greatly concerned about reports of school children crawling under standing trains at crossings in order to get to school. CSXT's choice to utilize unqualified contractor forces instead of its highly skilled BMWE forces creates unsafe passage of trains, thereby increasing the risk to the public. We were simply forced to plan to strike due to CSXT's illegal activities."