Many of our members have contacted this office to report on BLET propaganda they have heard, and several have commented on how completely irrational some of that rhetoric is. I wanted to share just a few of those observations from our members:

1. BLET asserts that UTU leadership strong-armed the Carriers, the Congress, the Courts, and the arbitration process to gain remote control work for its members. At the same time, they argue that ground service employees should join their organization because UTU has become a weak and ineffective union. So, is UTU powerless and irrelevant, or does UTU have an iron grip on every authoritative body in the industry? BLET can’t have it one way when they’re making excuses for their own failings, and then argue the opposite position when they raid UTU membership.

2. In the name of safety, BLET officers call for a complete cessation of RC operations, but suddenly go silent when someone asks if Engineers on the Montana Rail Link (where BLE holds the RC contract) should also lay down their control boxes for safety’s sake. BLET pickets the Federal Railroad Administration to prohibit RC operations until stricter regulations are written to insure safety, seemingly unaware of the fact that even if FRA wrote new regulations that required all RC operators to be fully certified as locomotive Engineers, all it would mean is that the UTU represented ground service crafts currently operating RC would begin carrying locomotive Engineer certificates. The Engineers’ craft still would have no seniority rights to RC assignments because BLET leadership has already blown that opportunity.

3. In a vicious and inflammatory "Death By Friendly Fire" article posted on their International Web Site on December 12, 2003, BLET Vice President and International Legislative Director Raymond Holmes refers to the tragic death of a ground service employee in San Antonio, Texas, and without a shred of evidence that remote control actually caused the accident, brazenly suggests that UTU leadership is responsible for this brother’s death. Using that same sick logic, one would have to conclude that BLET leadership (including the author of the article) is responsible for the thousands of tragic deaths, amputations and other career ending injuries that have been sustained by ground service employees while Engineers operated the locomotive. In other words, if every accident that occurs in a remote control operation is the direct fault of UTU, then the only logical conclusion is that every accident that occurs while an Engineer is at the controls must be the fault of BLET. If UTU embraced that twisted logic, then our official Web Site could carry a very long list of injuries and deaths and train wrecks and hazardous material spills all caused by BLET’s irresponsible actions in "allowing" certified, licensed locomotive Engineers to operate trains throughout the country. If we employed the same tactics as BLET, then we would be calling for communities across America to ban the operation of locomotives by Engineers because they pose a clear and present danger to themselves and the general population. Any rational person understands that such conclusions are utterly ludicrous, and that’s why you don’t hear them coming from the UTU. Yet a BLET International officer makes exactly the same wild assertions, exploiting the tragic death of a railroader in the process, and then accuses UTU of being "off target."

4. BLET offers cheap dues for ground service members, and promises to aggressively handle all of their claims and grievances, and get them better contracts and the respect they deserve. But what about those BLET Engineers who are still paying full dues and losing their Engineer jobs because of remote control, who don’t have any protection except that provided by UTU agreements, and who can’t get BLET to handle their claims and grievances? If BLET can provide superior representation for cheaper dues, perhaps they should start with their Engineer members who have already given so much and gotten so little.

5. If BLET organizers (paid for by IBT) are successful in raiding the UTU until they gain enough members to win a representation election and take the Trainmen’s contracts, those cheap dues won't seem like much of a bargain after BLET does to their train service members what they did to Conductors on VIA Rail in Canada, or when they negotiate a new version of their ill-conceived "Lake Erie Plan". Without exception, BLET’s past performance has demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that their primary goal is to elevate the locomotive Engineer at the expense of other crafts, and there is certainly nothing in their recent behavior that would suggest any change from that historical pattern (see Item 6).

6. BLET claims that UTU sucker-punched them over remote control, because that new technology fits the traditional scope of the Engineer’s duties. (An earlier article on this Site already addressed BLE’s inept handling of the remote control issue more than a decade before UTU ever got involved, so we won’t repeat that here.) Ironically, at the very time they were condemning UTU for "stealing" Engineers’ jobs, BLET negotiators were pursuing a new rule on BNSF to secure extra pay for Engineers to operate push-button pin lifters from inside the locomotive cab so BNSF could run Engineer-only helper service. Those efforts resulted in Article IV of the new BLET "Local/National" Memorandum of Agreement, and now Engineers on BNSF will receive an extra $16.00 when they do the Conductor’s work in those helper operations. It is strange indeed that BLET couldn’t negotiate a remote control agreement for Engineers (whom they say owned that work to begin with) but they had no trouble negotiating extra money for Engineers to do Conductor’s work.

7. BLET asserts that competition between the rail and trucking industries is "virtually non-existent" because IBT-represented truck drivers only haul a little over 2 billion tons of freight annually. Obviously, the important question is not "How many loads do Teamsters haul" but "How many loads do they want?" We’ve seen the video of the tough-talking Teamsters Vice President who stood before BLE representatives pounding the pulpit and shaking his fists and inviting BLE to join IBT and "kick UTU’s ass." If it’s true that there is really so little competition between the two industries, then let’s see that same Teamsters’ Vice President stand before a room full of IBT Truck Drivers and tell them that they should delete Article 29 from their National Master Freight Agreement so their new railroad brothers can have those insignificant jobs.

I want to thank the many members who have provided insight and analysis of BLET’s propaganda, and I encourage you to keep asking the obvious questions that will expose the true intent of their raiding efforts.