newpylong wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:43 pm
Secondly, labor contracts are not perpetual. They will cease to exist when one of the signees does not exist. In this case it is the Springfield Terminal. That's why the unions seek NY Dock protection when being bought out etc.
Mr. Newpy, first let me state that I respect that you have "been out there on the ground", and during my time now almost forty-five years ago, I was "just an office boy" holding a position titled "Rate and Schedule Analyst" within Labor Relations.
However, I am having difficulty reconciling my past experience with your captioned statement.
Looking at an Agreement I still have in file, namely the National Manning and Training Agreement between Employees within the craft of Locomotive Fireman and the Carriers (the NRLC) dated July 19, 1972 that spelled the end of that position by phase out, I find language "....and shall continue in effect until changed or modified in accordance with the procedures of the Railway Labor Act, as amended."
This language always meant to me, as well as to my Superiors, that an Agreement under the RLA never expires, and so long as there are employees on a property covered by that Agreement, regardless of whomever the employer might be, it remains in force. However, a very safe assumption, a high priority will be to address those existing labor agreements on your former property.
Now "changed or modified" means that a party has served Notice (a "Section 6" under the Act) that they desire to change either a rate of pay or working conditions upon an/the other. The timing of Changes are often controlled with language such as "No party to this Agreement shall serve or progress prior to (date) any Notice pertaining to matters covered by this Agreement".
From such language the vernacular (my Boss', a one time Conductor, favorite word), "three year contract" arises. However, away from your property, in the few occasions railroad employees have "hit the bricks", any signage to the effect of "no contract, no work" is simply misleading, if not outright false.
Now so far as your reference to
New York Dock, which appertains to protection of adversely affected employees, with the ranks now so thin arising from employees "who've just had it" (or how I was feeling about my industry career when I pulled the pin" during December 1981) and left for other endeavors, I don't think Chessie or G&W will be paying much of anything under this doctrine.