In a series of meetings conducted under nationally agreed to Work/Rest Guidelines/Principles, several General Chairmen have been involved in what has proven to be a slow and tedious process to address fatigue among operating employees. In this process, a group of Carrier officers and General Chairmen, assisted by UTU International Vice President Rick Marceau, have been meeting to review data and discuss ways of implementing the recommendations of the national Guidelines/Principles. A facilitator provided by the National Mediation Board has chaired these meetings, and observers from the Federal Railroad Administration have been present at each session. UTU withdrew entirely from this process when the Carrier unilaterally implemented its "Availability Policy" in 1999. After the Carrier rescinded that policy, this Committee rejoined the Work/Rest initiative, in order to utilize this forum to voice the employees concerns and demonstrate to the NMB and FRA our good faith desire to resolve these rest and fatigue issues.

This process recently produced a proposal to afford every employee in unassigned pool freight service a mandatory rest period of eight hours undisturbed rest at the home terminal of the assignment. This would eliminate the practice of calling employees who had only been off for 6 or 7 hours to give them a report time on their eight hour mandatory rest period. Under the proposal, the phone could not ring until an employee had been tied up for at least 8 hours, and then the standard call (90 minutes in most cases) would be applicable. This proposal will be distributed to Local Chairmen in the near future, so they can decide independently whether such a proposal is desirable for their particular territory.

We have also asked the Carrier to make this arrangement available to extra boards. It was the opinion of this Committee that we could not adequately address the fatigue issue if we made 8 hours undisturbed rest available to a pool, but not to the extra board that protected that pool. If providing only the employees in a pool 8 hours undisturbed rest resulted in extra board employees working even more short rest trips, we have done little to address fatigue and improve safety. The Carrier was not willing to make a blanket offer to give extra boards 8 hours undisturbed rest, but did agree to some extra board pilot projects. We will be communicating with Local Chairmen to determine what locations would be appropriate for such pilot projects. More information on this and other Work/Rest initiatives will be distributed as this process continues. It is my hope that we can eventually move beyond these basics to some really meaningful and needed changes.