UTU News Digest - Tuesday, December 8, 1998

UTU Daily News Digest

Information of interest to operating railroad and transportation employees

Tuesday, December 8, 1998

UTU member given Heroism Award by Transportation Secretary

WASHINGTON – UTU member (Local 206) and Norfolk Southern Railroad Conductor Robert Mohr was presented the U.S. Transportation Department’s Award for Heroism yesterday by Secretary Rodney E. Slater for saving the life of a 19 month-old baby girl in Lafayette, Ind.

During the ceremony, Secretary Slater also presented a Certificate of Commendation to Rodney Lindley, a Norfolk Southern locomotive engineer and BLE member on the same train, for the role he played in enabling Mohr to save the child's life.

"Safety is President Clinton's highest transportation priority and Robert Mohr took that priority personally to heart," Secretary Slater said. "President Clinton and I salute him for unselfishly risking his life to save the life of another person."

On May 12, 1998, Mohr and Lindley were operating a 96-car Norfolk Southern freight train on a 172-mile run from Decatur, Ill., to Peru, Ind. While in Lafayette, Ind., at 2 p.m. that afternoon, they spotted what turned out to be a 19-month-old baby girl, Emily Marshall, who had wandered away from her mother onto the railroad tracks not far from her home.

Lindley sounded his horn repeatedly and applied the train's emergency brakes, slowing it, a potentially dangerous action, which could have led to derailment. Mohr left the locomotive cab, ran to the front of the engine, and positioned himself behind the train's plow. While the train was a mere 40 yards away, the 19-month old Emily rolled off the track but not enough to avoid being hit by the oncoming train.

While holding onto a handrail at the front of the locomotive, Mohr extended his right leg and used his foot to push the baby out of harm's way. He then jumped from the moving train to shelter the baby from further harm. Mohr risked serious injury and death to himself in doing so.

"Conductor Mohr and Locomotive Engineer Lindley have dramatically affected the lives of Emily and her family. I applaud their extraordinary acts of heroism, and I emphasize that railroad rights-of-way are very dangerous," said Federal Railroad Administrator Jolene Molitoris.

The Award for Heroism recognizes acts of heroism in transportation by persons who are not employed by the department.

Oregonian: Union Pacific gains ground and improves

PORTLAND -- A year after a disastrous meltdown that cost about $1 billion in lost business, Union Pacific Railroad appears to be back on track, the Portland Oregonian reported.

As the Christmas shipping season comes to a close, the nation's largest railroad, with 35,000 miles of track, is credited with making significant improvements to help keep holiday merchandise flowing freely through ports and over rail lines to retailers' stores and warehouses.

Since last year's debacle, Union Pacific has hired more than 6,000 new workers, spent more than $600 million on additional locomotives and is in the midst of a $366 million track expansion on the Nebraska plains, where about 40 percent of the railroad's cargo is funneled.

The railroad also is in the process of decentralizing its management, giving more authority to regional managers to route trains and control quality of service.

"Railroading is fun again," said Jeff Verhaal, vice president of UP's Western region. "We still got some challenges, and we're nowhere where we want to be yet, but with the people we've got and the excitement, there's a lot of potential."

No one was having fun this time last year. Computer glitches, equipment shortages and labor problems resulting from UP's 1996 billion merger with Southern Pacific created a national transportation crisis. Farmers were unable to get crops to market, petrochemical plants along the Gulf Coast were unable to ship products, and tons of Christmas merchandise were stranded on the docks in the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the nation's busiest harbors.

In the West, a wide range of shippers, from wood products companies to general merchandise distributors, fumed as transit times to critical markets such as Chicago and Los Angeles doubled, even tripled. Unable to move shipments through logjams in California and the Midwest, Union Pacific was giving business away to competitors.

"We really got the railroad clogged up everywhere because it's a great big network," said Dick Davidson, Union Pacific chairman and chief executive officer.

Davidson estimated UP's loss at $1 billion. The cost to the U.S. economy was as much as $4 billion, according to some estimates.

During this year's shipping season, cargo flowed easily through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, thanks largely to UP's improvements and the ports' hiring of additional longshore workers.

"In general, everything is working fine," said Julia Nagano, spokeswoman for the Port of Los Angeles. "The holiday rush went on with record amounts of cargo here and in Long Beach, and they did not experience the problems they had last year."

Not everyone is pleased, however. The railroad still is resolving claims from customers who lost money because of last year's problems, though the bulk of the litigation has been resolved.

The Texas Railroad Commission and the Washington-based Society of the Plastics Industry, which represents 2,000 manufacturers, have asked federal regulators to force Union Pacific to sell some track in Texas to ensure more competition.

In fact, the plastics industry would like to see more competition to UP nationwide, said Maureen Healey, the society's director of transportation policy. "We would clearly be of the mind-set that more rail competition is needed, desperately needed. It is pandemic throughout the entire country," she said.

Davidson acknowledged that Union Pacific still has some unhappy customers on its hands and that service isn't up to par throughout the system.

"In Texas and Louisiana, we're not providing quite as good service as we'd like to," he said. "Not every customer would say 'You are doing better.' They would say we want you to be a hell of a lot better, and I want to take that challenge."

Agriculture Department supports DM&E plans

NEW YORK -- One week before the U.S. Surface Transportation Board (STB) makes a preliminary decision on the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad Corp.'s proposed expansion into Wyoming, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has expressed support for the plan.

The railroad plans a $1.2 billion, 281-mile extension of its existing tracks from its terminal at Wasta, South Dakota, to Gillette, Wyoming. The Brookings, S.D.-based carrier also proposes to rebuild completely its 598-mile mainline from the Wasta terminal to Winona, Minnesota.

"We support DM&E's application because we believe it will increase rail capacity, improve farm income, boost rural economic development, and reduce pressure on the rural road network," the USDA said in its recent filing to the STB.

The USDA said in its opinion that the expansion and renovation could increase income for farmers in DM&E's service area.

"With the ability to ship to three major markets (river, processors, and the Pacific Northwest, the basis price for agricultural producers should rise: some estimates suggest increases as high as 20 cents per bushel for both corn and wheat. If prices for wheat, corn and soybeans increased just 10 cents per bushel, then farm income in the DM&E service region could increase by more than $90 million in a typical crop year,' the USDA's opinion states."

CN chief says he’s sorry about layoffs

TORONTO -- The head of Canadian National Railway Co. says he's "very sorry" that the giant railroad will slash 3,000 jobs in Canada and the United States by the end of 1999.

In a speech yesterday to The Canadian Club of Toronto, CN President and CEO Paul Tellier said, "The human cost of improving productivity is high."

But Tellier says increased productivity is necessary for the railroad to compete. Tellier says his company has improved competitiveness in recent years by running longer trains and updating technology used to monitor shipments. But he says CN's productivity still lags behind U.S. competitors in some areas by 30 percent.

In addition to changes at CN, Tellier is calling for the Canadian government to reduce taxes and deregulate the rail industry. CN plans to spend $2 billion on capital improvements by 2001. The company is also expanding south by merging with the Illinois Central Railroad, a multibillion-dollar deal expected to close soon.

Tellier says efforts to improve competitiveness "have a human impact. I am very sorry that increased productivity means that we do not need as many people on our payroll."

But he says, "We prepared for this (reduction) when we negotiated with our unions to provide severance packages that are among the best in Canadian industry."

CN plans to eliminate 1,600 of its 21,000 workers by the end of this year, and to trim another 1,400 in 1999. Plans for staffing after the IC merger have not been announced.

Hoffa lays out plans for Teamsters

WASHINGTON -- James P. Hoffa promised Monday to revive the finances and fighting spirit of the Teamsters union his father built into a national powerhouse and to seek an end to federal supervision of the union.

But even as a buoyant Hoffa outlined his plan to turn the union around, lingering questions about some of his associates were underscored by charges brought against one of his slate members by a court-appointed board.

Nevertheless, Hoffa said his election to the union presidency should erase the "wild and baseless" allegations his opponents have made.

"No base or petty motive led us to this battle," he told a news conference. "We will be guided by the light of our members' interests and none other. We will advance their cause at the bargaining table, on the picket line and in the halls of Congress."

Hoffa's challenger in the election, Tom Leedham, conceded on Saturday. The Teamsters elections have been run by a federal overseer since the union signed a consent decree to avoid racketeering charges in 1989. Hoffa lost a 1996 bid to unseat incumbent Ron Carey.

But the son of labor legend Jimmy Hoffa got a second chance after Carey's campaign was found to have used embezzled union funds to boost his candidacy, and the results of the contest were set aside. Carey was disqualified and three campaign aides pleaded guilty in federal court.

Carey and Leedham accused Hoffa of fronting for corrupt elements of the union's old guard, the very officers who were stripped of power after the consent decree was signed.

Shaking that image will be one of the first challenges of Hoffa's presidency. On the day he announced that his transition team would begin reviewing the union's financial and personnel records in anticipation of his arrival, the corruption-fighting Independent Review Board raised the possibility that one of his slate members could be expelled from the union for filing false election reports.

Tom O'Donnell, a New York Teamsters leader, had earlier admitted to the election overseer that he paid the salary of a campaign worker who was a convicted felon to the worker's wife rather than admit there was a felon on the Hoffa Campaign payroll.

Still, Hoffa said he intended to establish an internal union ethics watchdog and insisted that after nearly 10 years it was time for the federal government to reconsider its involvement in the union. He said he would begin a "meaningful dialogue" with the Justice Department.

"Is the government going to be here in the year 2050? The year 3000? I don't know, but I think it's something that we should be talking about because of the tremendous burden on our membership," he said, adding that complying with the consent decree had cost the union $80 million to date.

"They've eliminated certain pockets of corruption in the union and I think it's time for us to move on," he said.

Still, Leedham spokesman Steve Trossman said it was "highly unlikely that the government is going to get out of the union so long as Hoffa continues to associate with people who violate the rules and violate the law."

And while Hoffa asserted that the federal government's role in supervising the union's elections was over -- a question that also would have to be taken up with the Justice Department -- the election overseer, Michael Cherkasky, called the vote "the most important government effort to combat organized crime."

"The ability of the rank-and-file members to choose their leaders is a vital component of removing corruption from the Teamsters union," he said.

Hoffa vowed to fight for better contracts for union members and to devote significant resources to organizing new members under the direction of John Murphy, a union leader from Boston and a Hoffa slate member.

With his instant name recognition, Hoffa, a labor lawyer from Detroit, becomes perhaps the best-known labor figure in America, rivaling John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO.

Hoffa said he was looking forward to working with the labor federation, but he also warned other union leaders not to infringe on the Teamsters organizing jurisdiction and noted that AFL-CIO officials were accused of meddling in the 1996 union election on Carey's behalf.

BNSF shakes up operating department

Five senior officers have shifted management responsibilities in a shake-up of Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway's operating department that is intended to upgrade service.

"We plan to restore service on our key corridor between the Midwest and California to levels that meet the expectations of our customers," Matt Rose, BNSF's senior vice president of operations, said in a statement.

The moves, which were communicated to employees last week, include the shift of Rollin Bredenberg, who had been responsible for all operations on the southern portion of the BNSF system to a post in the intermodal-automotive business unit.

Effective Dec. 15, he will become vice president of automotive and intermodal operations to handle what were described by the company as "service issues." Fritz Draper, who has the same title, is being assigned to focus on terminal and equipment business.

Dave Dealy will be replacing Bredenberg as southern region vice president with responsibility for six of BNSF's nine service regions.

Carl Ice, the former chief mechanical officer, will take over the vice president's post in the northern region that has been under the direction of Dealy.

In addition to directing operations in three regions, Ice continues to have responsibility for locomotive distribution and network integration, the company statement said.

Responsibility for the mechanical department will be handed over to Dick Dennison, formerly assistant vice president of mechanical.

The changes also resulted in the shift of reporting relationships for Joe Henderlong, assistant vice president of purchasing and materials. He now will report directly to Mr. Rose.

IC changes marketing, sales chief

CHICAGO -- The Illinois Central Railroad promoted Edward G. Kammerer to vice president of marketing and sales, replacing Donald M. Skelton, who left the company.

Skelton, who had been senior vice president of sales and marketing, had directed the railroad's commercial activities since 1994. Skelton was promoted to senior vice president two years ago.

The move comes as IC prepares for a planned merger with Canadian National Railway Co. that is being reviewed by the Surface Transportation Board. If approved, the merger is scheduled to be completed next summer.

The departure of Skelton is the second major executive change at IC this year. E. Hunter Harrison left the president and chief executive's position to become CN's chief operating officer. John McPherson replaced Mr. Harrison at IC.

Kammerer, who is 56, joined IC as vice president of bulk commodities since 1996. Kammerer came to IC from the chemical industry. He also worked for Southern Pacific Railroad for 10 years.

"Don was instrumental in maintaining IC's title as the most efficient railroad in North America," McPherson said in a statement. "Under Don Skelton, IC's marketing department became one of the best and certainly the most innovative in the railroad industry.

"We're hopeful we can continue to draw upon Don's experience and knowledge."