In your position with the Union Pacific Railroad, you are governed by Collective Bargaining Agreements which have been negotiated and voted into effect by United Transportation Union (and its predecessor unions) members as far back as 1898. For your position here in Klamath Falls, you are one of the lucky few to be governed primarily by the provisions of the many agreements of the former Southern Pacific Western Lines. The Union Pacific completed its take over of the SP in 1998, and has managed to pretty much convert the entire railroad over to its own, inferior, agreements. Not so with you.
To understand how, why, and which agreements apply to you personally, you must first understand he structure of the UTU, (called the "organization" for the remainder of this page) as well as the laws governing bargaining with the railroad (called "carrier" from now on).
The organization consists of three levels. The International, which is based in Cleveland, Ohio; the General Committee, which is located in Santa Cruz, California; and the Local, numbered 1573, which is based in Klamath Falls, Oregon.
The agreements which effect you are rarely ever "complete" in scope. Most agreements simply change, or "modify" as it is usually referenced as, other agreements already in place. The terrifying part of this is the fact that, instead of one nice, big, organized document to look at which tells you everything, there are literally hundreds of agreements, side letters, court decisions, arbitrations, and memorandum of understandings' that have come in and out of effect through the years that will have changed an aspect of a previous agreement.
On the SPWL territory, this is somewhat simplified in that your seniority has been consolidated into "seniority hubs", and YOUR hub, the Roseville hub, has as its basis the 1974 "red book" agreement between UTU trainmen and the former Southern Pacific. From this starting point, you can follow the progression of red book modifications, national agreements, hub agreements, local agreements, and decisions which affect you. This is why you pay union dues, to have someone who's full time job is to read, understand, interpret, and hopefully enforce all these different documents, in your behalf, among other things.
That said, lets look at the different types of agreements that can be made.
When the time comes for major changes to the agreements, such as raises in pay, changes in health care benefits, etc., the International office is responsible for negotiating in your behalf. This process is probably the most bureaucratic, drawn out nightmare you could possible imagine. This process also affects not only you, not only your fellow UP employees, but also those of every major carrier operating in the United States, who are party to the national negotiations. The laws which govern how this process occurs is actually an Act of Congress titled the Railroad Labor Act. In your job with a railroad, you are no longer working in an industry which is locally based. Therefore, your employment is considered to be on a national, or federal, basis. This being the case, very few, if any, local or state labor laws will apply to you and your job. When the carriers or the organization desire to make changes to agreements on a national scale, they serve "Section 6 Notices" on each other (this is in reference to section six of the afore mentioned Railroad Labor Act). These notices outline changes each party desires to the agreement; these notices are usually extreme to the point of ridiculousness. By asking for sweeping changes (the carrier wanting to pay you minimum wage, the organization asking for million dollar pay raises), the hope is that there will be a middle ground agreed to at some point. This process can take years. For example, the most current national agreement was scheduled for renegotiation in January 2005; it has yet to be even finalized for a vote as of the start of 2007. The agreements made nationally can either be voted on and ratified by the membership of the UTU (as in the case of the most recent one in 2002), or they can be forced upon you by the federal government (as in the case of the "Halloween Agreement" of October 1985).
More close to home are the Hub Agreements in effect for our area. The Roseville Hub agreement effects only employees working within, and holding seniority in, its boundaries. This is why you will hear a conductor from Eugene talking about an agreement provision that you have never heard of; even though we work across the same stretch of mainline that they do, they are in a completely different Hub than you, therefore different agreements. These agreements are negotiated by the General Committee which represents your area. In your case, it is General Committee of Adjustment #887. The International Office can step in to help with negotiations if requested, but for the most part the buck stops with the General Committee.
Next effecting you are local agreements. In the case of working in Klamath Falls, there is only one of these in effect currently. It is referred to as the "Pelican Pool Agreement", and we will have it posted here on this site as soon as we can get it into an electronic format. Such agreements are also negotiated by the General Committee but will only affect the area it applies to (in the case of the Pelican Pool, Klamath Falls, and Dunsmuir only).
All these different agreements directly affect you and your job, ranging from how much and for what you are paid for to what kind of medical insurance you get to how the process for discipline is handled. You can only benefit yourself by reading, understanding, and holding the carriers accountable for compliance to these agreements. You can download, view, and print off every one of these agreements from the General Committee website using the links above on the left.