BLET Weekly News Recap - 5-3-24 -(Excerpt)
CANADIAN NATIONAL/WISCONSIN CENTRAL:
BLET Divisions unanimously vote yes on new quality of life agreement
Nine Canadian National/Wisconsin Central (CN/WC) divisions that comprise the GCA voted unanimously April 24 that in favor of a new quality of life agreement that covers roughly 600 locomotive engineers.
General Chairman Eric Hau said the goal was “to attract, retain, and offer a better overall quality of life to CN/WC locomotive engineers.” Now that the quality of life agreement has been ratified, the union will begin working with CN to make sure that there is a smooth rollout of the changes, Hau said.
Some highlights of the new agreement include:
- Improvements to the traditional seniority system;
- Engineers will no longer be forced to locations more than 100 miles away to protect their engineer seniority;
- All extra board positions will become a standard 5 days on and 2 days off, with a 9.2 basic day biweekly guarantee, bid by seniority; and
- Increased pay for extra board engineers to time and one half (over and above guarantee payments) for working on their rest days.