UTU News Digest - Wednesday, September 9, 1998

UTU Daily News Digest

Information of interest to operating railroad and transportation employees
For
Wednesday, September 9, 1998

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White House applies pressure on striking NWA, pilots

MINNEAPOLIS -- Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater and White House deputy counsel Bruce Lindsey flew to the Twin Cities Tuesday to press for a settlement in the 12-day-old pilots strike at Northwest Airlines.

Negotiators for both sides reportedly met face-to-face Tuesday in a mediated session that had a far more serious configuration than meetings held Saturday and Sunday in Chicago, where pilots and company officials remained in separate rooms.

Even before President Clinton's emissaries arrived in the Twin Cities about 5 p.m. aboard a government-owned jet, Northwest's new Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Mickey Foret was at Tuesday's discussions with the Northwest Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA).

Foret, who was absent from the weekend meetings, was accompanied Tuesday by other Northwest executives who also didn't attend the Chicago sessions.

Foret's presence could be important because he knows precisely how much money it would take to settle a contract with the pilots, as well as the implications a settlement would have for the five other union contracts under negotiation at Northwest.

Throughout the day, Northwest and ALPA kept a lid on communications, as they have since the weekend. The talks Tuesday were overseen by mediator Jack Kane and National Mediation Board Chairwoman Maggie Jacobsen.

The negotiations were still going on late Tuesday night. While Slater reportedly returned to Washington, Lindsey remained at the conference center. The two men effectively dodged the assembled press.

Meanwhile, the airline announced another 567 strike-related layoffs, affecting part-time reservations agents in the Twin Cities, Detroit, Tampa, Baltimore, New York City, Seattle and other cities. Northwest has now laid off nearly 30,000 non-striking employees since the carrier's 6,250 pilots struck late Aug. 28 over unsettled compensation and job security issues.

As the strike wears on, other employees will be out more money than the pilots. According to an independent analysis of Department of Transportation statistics, flight attendants and ground workers will have forgone $25.6 million in wages by Friday. Lost wages for pilots by then will total $24.7 million.

Greyhound to make buses wheelchair accessible

NEW YORK --Greyhound Lines Inc. plans to make all of its 4,000 stops nationwide accessible to passengers in wheelchairs by October 1999, The New York Times reported today.

"It's fair to say we're not particularly wheelchair friendly right now," said Craig Lentzsch, chief executive of the Dallas-based bus company.

With two days' notice, Greyhound and its connecting partners would send buses equipped with wheelchair lifts to take disabled passengers to any station, Greyhound officials said. They said they would fulfill the pledge three years before tentative government rules would require such accommodations.

Up to 1,200 disabled riders a month would benefit, Greyhound officials estimated. The plan involves 80 buses, about 4 percent of the company's fleet of 2,100.

Advocates for the disabled, however, said Greyhound would need to equip more than 300 buses with lifts for the plan to work. For years, disabled activists have blocked Greyhound terminals and engaged in other protests to highlight their complaints that the wide-ranging bus network is largely inaccessible to them. Fitting a bus with a wheelchair lift costs about $30,000.

Talks resume in Air Canada strike

MONTREAL -- Six days after launching a national strike, Air Canada pilots sat down with the airline Tuesday to resume contract negotiations.

Neither party made an immediate evaluation of the chances for a quick end to the labor shutdown, which has grounded the travel plans of thousands of Canadians.

Analysts have estimated the strike is costing the airline millions in lost revenue.

Jean-Marc Belanger, chairman of the Air Canada Pilots Association, said the union's team of negotiators was "willing to work around the clock" to get a fair settlement.

Air Canada had no comment on the resumption of negotiations with the 2,100-member union. The pilots are seeking a 12 percent raise spread over two years to their current average salary of $64,000 a year. The company's latest offer was a boost of 9 percent over two years.

Court rejects railroad challenge to state safety rules

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court on last week rejected a railroad industry effort to stop enforcement of California's new safety standards for trains on mountain grades.

The standards are a response to a series of derailments.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a federal judge’s decision to let the state Public Utilities Commission rules take effect last fall. Railroads contend the rules conflict with nationwide federal rail safety standards.

The PUC regulations cover 150 miles of tracks in 13 mountainous areas around California. They require each railroad to follow its own current rules on the configuration of locomotives, braking systems and car placement to keep trains stable and avoid derailments on curving grades. Changes in the rules would require PUC approval, and violations would be subject to civil or criminal penalties.

The rules also increase track standards on the Cantara Loop near Dunsmuir, where part of a Union Pacific freight train derailed in July 1991, spilling 19,50 gallons of weed killer into the Sacramento River and harming fish and wildlife for 38 miles downstream.

The regulations took effect last September, six years after the Legislature passed a law requiring them. The PUC did not explain the delay, but said the rules were needed to address the dangers of derailments on steep, curving inclines.

Two crew members were killed in the February 1996 derailment of a Santa Fe freight train at Cajon Pass in San Bernardino County, site of a similar derailment that injured two workers in December 1994.

Another part of the rules, now on hold and awaiting arguments before a federal judge, would require a railroad to report any spill or threatened spill of hazardous materials to state and local governments and provide information for emergency crews.

The regulations are being challenged by the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific and Burlington Northern and Santa Fe railroads.

The case is Union Pacific vs. California PUC, 97-17302.

Two of three Americans run red traffic lights

WASHINGTON -- Two of three Americans see other drivers run red lights every day, according to a survey released today to kick off National Stop on Red Week.

This nationwide week of awareness, the result of a partnership between the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), American Trauma Society and Chrysler Corporation, runs until Sept. 11 and features events in Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

The survey, released just before the Labor Day holiday and as children are returning to school, polled 800 licensed drivers between the ages of 18 and 65, and also found that:

Ninety-six percent of the drivers fear they will get hit by a red light runner when they enter an intersection.

One in three claim they personally know someone who has been injured or killed in a red-light-running crash -- similar to the percentage of people who know someone who was killed or injured by a drunk driver.

About 21 percent said they felt that drunken driving incidents are decreasing, but only six percent felt that incidents of red light running were decreasing.

According to the department's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 1997, there were 1,114 traffic fatalities in intersections where drivers had failed to heed red light signals. Triple that number, 3,548, fatalities occurred in intersections where there were traffic signs or devices of some type.

The survey also asked drivers to speculate as to why other motorists run red lights. The overwhelming response -- 54 percent -- was that they were in a hurry. The survey results indicate that Americans need to be more proactive in assuming responsibility for their own and others' safety.

CP to present reform plan for hauling Canadian grain

WINNIPEG -- Canadian Pacific Railway will present a three-part plan to reform Canada's grain handling and transportation system to Justice Willard Estey, who has been charged with overseeing a review of the system.

The plan calls for:

Flexible car allocation programs to ensure the right grain cars are delivered to port at the right time. To accomplish this, the railway said the Car Allocation Policy Group should be eliminated. It said the group was a multi-party, multi-layered bureaucracy that hinders efficient allocation.

Direct shipper-carrier negotiations, in which shippers interact one-on-one with their carrier of choice. This would eliminate the role of intermediaries, such as the Canadian Wheat Board, in the transportation process, providing faster, more efficient supply, leading, delivery and unloading of grain cars.

Flexible price and service based on market demand, which would encourage players in the industry to develop service options and innovations currently not available to farmers. The current maximum rate scale creates an average-pricing system that not only hides the true costs of transporting grain, but deters efficiency building in the system by offering the same prices for grain movements of different values, it said.

The railway also is calling for clearly defined roles and responsibilities for all the players, along with more transparency to ensure accountability within the grain handling and transportation system. The review has two phases. The first phase was to consult with shareholders to identify key issues and options for consideration. The second includes analysis and development of reform initiatives through a public consultation process.

Railroad study task force to study DM&E line

ST. PAUL - The effects of a new railroad on Minnesota towns will be studied by a state task force. Several towns have hosted recent public meetings organized by the Dakota Minnesota and Eastern Railroad and say they want to keep closer tabs than the federal government does on the railroads planned track upgrades and increase in coal-carrying traffic.

Many of the cities say they're already seeing an increase in rail traffic. Task force members will compare ideas on what make city officials feel they need to regulate rail operations and make proposals for changes in state or federal laws.

Drunk driving plea earns hard time

SAN ANTONIO -- A 25-year-old man is looking at hard time after pleading no contest to causing a drunk driving wreck that left a 17-month-old girl dead.

Prosecutor say Reid Rime slammed into a car containing Emily Murray, her sister and parents pushing the car onto railroad tracks into the path of an oncoming train. Rime ran away but he was nabbed and while police were booking him he ran away again. He could face 20 years.