The BLE and BMWE have held secret merger discussions during the past year, BLE sources opposed to such a merger disclosed over the weekend. They also said that discussions have been held with the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen (BRS). The application by the United Transportation Union (UTU) asking the National Mediation Board (NMB) to sanction representation elections on the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) "screwed up the timetable," a high-ranking BLE official disclosed.

Recently, the BMWE and BRS filed a brief with the NMB siding with the BLE in asking that it deny the UTU’s request to hold elections on the UP. In addition, in the recent edition of the BMWE newsletter, its president, Mac Fleming, wrote a full-page column blasting the UTU’s Operating Unity Initiative.

"It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what Mac Fleming is up to," said the high-ranking BLE source opposed to a merger with BMWE. "He sees himself running the combined BLE and BMWE because he has the numbers, and Clarence Monin doesn’t even see it. There are many engineers that don’t want that ever to happen."

Over the weekend, the BLE held a meeting in Las Vegas and paid officers and members $1,000 each to attend it for the sole purpose of stopping the election on the UP. The result of the meeting is that the BLE developed a letter it is asking operating employees to sign and send to the UTU asking that the NMB application be withdrawn.

It took trains an average of 6.8 days to make a round trip between coal mines and destinations, better than the 7.4 days average last week and better than the all-time low of 8.4 days in November.

But overall system train speed fell from 12.7 mph to 12 last week, and the number of train starts and terminations also deteriorated. System train congestion nearly doubled last week.