At our fourth quarter SAC meeting with BNSF, we were made aware of the Carrier’s plans to mandate a half-day broken rail training program as a pre-requisite for bidding maintainer positions.  The Committee took considerable issue with this unilateral attempt to change the requirements to secure maintainer positions.  As our Agreement makes clear, in order to be awarded a maintainer position, one must simply be the senior class 1 bidder on the district who has completed the two-year training program.  There is no requirement one be adept at track inspection.

Soon after the fourth quarter meeting, we began hearing anecdotal scenarios wherein maintainers who had the training were coerced into walking trains over broken rail in situations they did not feel comfortable.  They were leveraged to do this based on the Carrier’s position they were now sufficiently trained.  The culmination of these two factors resulted in this committee, along with our BMWE counterparts, authoring a joint letter to BNSF to insist such acts of coercion would not be tolerated and the unilateral mandate on broken rail training as a prerequisite must not be implemented.  Signalmen will not stand idly by and allow the Carrier to utilize us to infringe on the Scope rights of another craft.  Just as our brothers and sisters in the BMWE are not hired to be Signal Maintainers and work on troubleshooting signal circuits, we are not in the business of taking work from Track Inspectors. 

Pursuant to our insistence, the topic was discussed again at our first quarter 2023 SAC meeting, where additional concerns were raised by the BRS.  As we informed the Carrier, there is never an acceptable time to force one craft to do the work of another.  However, given the recent scrutiny brought to bear on Carriers in the rail industry, BNSF would be simply tone deaf to attempt such a change now.  BNSF then affirmed that it would rescind its plans to make the training mandatory for Signal Maintainers. 

While this development resulted in a positive outcome, it served as a reminder for the committee that we must constantly be diligent when it comes to protecting our Scope work. Perhaps of equal importance is the need for us to ensure Carrier does not use us to trample on the Scope rights of other crafts.  We rely on each of you to inform us of such attempts by the Carrier and thank those of you who continue to sound the alarm when it occurs.