The official Section 6 Notices containing the demands have been drafted broadly to open the door for negotiations on a wide range of important issues such as compensation, pensions, health care, safety, job security and work rules.

While improvement in retirement pensions has always been a goal of the BMWE, a rank-and-file cry for early retirement has risen dramatically in the last two years, as was demonstrated strongly in the bargaining priority survey.

Given six important choices, the BMWE clearly chose improved retirement benefits as number one in the survey. Forty-seven percent ranked it number one and another 23% listed it as number two. Forty-six percent said they would be willing to get less in wage and/or benefit increases in order to be able to retire early and another 25% were willing to pay higher taxes to do so. Job security, the second choice, was ranked number one by 30% of the members completing the survey.

The BMWE will be bargaining with the mega rail corporations which have been created since the last round in 1995 -- BNSF, UPSP, CSX plus over 40% of the former Conrail, NS plus nearly 60% of the former Conrail, CN/IC -- as well as Amtrak and the Soo Line. The IC has already settled their contract, but other parts of the CN corporation -- Grand Trunk Western, DT&I and DTSL -- are also within the general time frame of this round.

The SPC, which has been working hard to prepare for this round of bargaining almost since the end of the last round, believes it has prepared Section 6 Notices which reflect a fair basis for agreement. Although a major, if not the major, characteristic of the railroads' strategy has been delay, it is hoped they will be reasonable in their bargaining postures this time.

It is also hoped that the BMWE will be able to reach agreement with the railroads quickly and without Presidential Emergency Boards and the inevitable political struggles that PEBs create. But we have not forgotten the Schmiege letter -- a C&NW CEO who wrote that the railroads' mightiest weapon was the use of delaying tactics -- and the manner in which the railroads fought the last agreement after it was signed; forcing us to the Courts and to arbitration just to keep the travel allowance and the seven-day meal allowance which they agreed to.

We have also seen the railroads use Linda Morgan and the Surface Transportation Board to change the bargaining agreement. This includes cutting the wages of our members working for NS who used to work for Conrail, greatly expanding districts where our members have to travel, forcing massive intermingling of seniority districts, weakening our job protections and increasing the contracting out of our work throughout the United States.

In addition, the railroads will undoubtedly attempt to argue that their ability to pay has been cut as a result of the mergers. They will probably argue that in the long run these mergers will keep the railroad industry competitive but for the next several years times will be tough as they integrate the railroads they merged with or swallowed and pay off the debt they incurred merging and gobbling.

And there is still an anti-union political climate, which there has been since the anti-labor Reagan and Bush Administrations placed pro-company, anti-union personnel in the federal judiciary and in the key positions in agencies which have primary jurisdiction over rail labor -- the National Mediation Board, the Surface Transportation Board, the Federal Railroad Administration and the Department of Transportation.

But as President Mac A. Fleming says in his column this month, "a united BMWE, working closely with the other rail crafts and the AFL-CIO, will prevail in any battle we take on." To be united at the high level required, every member must be committed to doing what he or she can to gain a fair agreement.