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Both of the unions that represent operating employees now have new presidents who toppled incumbent presidents in fairand-square elections. Delegates to the United Transportation Union's convention elected Charlie Little, and earlier this summer the oldest of the railway labor organizations, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, made Clarence Monin the 18th president in the union's 133-year history.
I had admiration and personal liking for the guys who got beat, Tom DuBose at the UTU and Ron McLaughlin at the BLE. With Little and Monin, the liking will come as we get to know each other, but there's a certain admiration already in place.
First, Charlie Little. Just a short time after he took office, he and his negotiating team worked out an agreement with the National Carriers' Conference Committee. But a couple of the UTU's six separate elements refused to ratify that proposed contract and so it was defeated, under UTU's all-or-nothing Constitution.
Little promptly accepted arbitration, something that unions very rarely do in major disputes. Now UTU's new president may have figured (as I did, frankly) that the arbitrators were quite likely to pick up the previously-negotiated agreement and make it their award-which they did, including in the award some stinging comments about the failure of employees to approve agreements which their elected leaders had reached in good faith.
For my money, it took guts for Charlie Little to go for arbitration, given labor's bad experiences with the process in the past. And I also respected a man who chose...