Originally Posted by
AxlF16
You exchange openers and begin the Section 6 process sooner. The assumption is that the company will try to delay while the union uses the NMB process to increase pressure on the company. Entering mediation and moving towards the ability to strike takes a long time (it's not a fixed time...but think in terms of years) so the sooner you get started the better off you are. The process leading to TA1 was an aberration. We didn't request mediation, or use any of the traditional methods to pressure management.
A shorter duration agreement is probably more favorable to us....IF we aggressively drive the next section 6.
A possible point of hope is that the NMB
may, and I stress
may, be turning over a new leaf. I say that based on the fact that, earlier this year, the NMB shifted from a 2 to 1 Republican majority to a 2 to 1 Democrat majority. Likely as a result of that, the consortium of railroad unions that filed for mediation in Jan 2022 was released from mediation in June 2022. That’s unheard of. That’s an incredibly short stay in mediation compared to past precedent. The railroad unions represent more than 100,000 employees and 30% of the nation’s freight capacity.
Typically, unions have had to stay in mediation much, much longer than that. In 2010, the NMB said that the average length of mediation cases between 2004 and 2008 was 758 calendar days. That doesn’t mean they had been released after that amount of time, it just means that that was the average length of time in mediation. To get released usually takes even longer.