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Supply freight engineers alarm to strike

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A pair of unions representing 57,000 conductors and engineers say they are willing to strike over quality-of-life issues if they can’t reach a contract deal with rail carriers.

Business groups and political officials are growing increasingly concerned about the potential for a freight rail strike that could further snarl the country’s supply chains this holiday season if a union contract dispute can’t be resolved.

A 30-day moratorium that has so far forestalled a strike is set to end Friday for members of the two largest U.S. freight rail unions, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, or BLET, and SMART Transportation Division. 

Both have yet to reach deals with rail carriers, which have struck or are close to reaching tentative agreements with the other 10 of the country’s 12 rail unions.

A strike by BLET and SMART-TD, which represent 57,000 conductors and engineers who staff most trains in two-person teams, could cause problems that reverberate across the economy even after it ends.

President Joe Biden and senior administration officials made a fresh effort on Monday to step in and mediate the dispute, hoping to head off a strike, a White House official told NBC News. Meanwhile, Amtrak preemptively canceled three long-distance train routes that run on lines operated by freight railroads.

The two unions say quality-of-life concerns — primarily carriers’ scheduling practices that leave many workers on call 24/7 every week of the year — remain a major obstacle to an agreement and one they are willing to strike over.

“The railroads are using shippers, consumers, and the supply chain of our nation as pawns in an effort to get our Unions to cave into their contract demands knowing that our members would never accept them,” the unions’ presidents, Jeremy Ferguson of SMART-TD and Dennis Pierce of BLET, said in a joint statement.

The National Railway Labor Conference, which represents the rail companies, hailed the 10 unions it has reached agreements with and urged the pair of holdouts to follow suit.

“It is critical that the remaining unions promptly reach agreements that provide pay increases to employees and prevent rail service disruptions,” it said in a statement. “The two operating craft unions, BLET and SMART-TD, continue to maintain positions that were expressly rejected” by federal mediators.

Business groups are growing increasingly worried about the potential for a strike, which the Association of American Railroads, an industry group, warns could cost the U.S. economy some $2 billion a day.

Forty percent of goods that are shipped long-distance in the U.S. traverse the rail system, and a strike could deliver a catastrophic blow as the economy emerges from stresses like supply-chain delays, labor shortages and inflation.

“A national rail strike would be an economic disaster — freezing the flow of goods, emptying shelves, shuttering workplaces, and raising prices for families and businesses alike, but that is exactly what is likely to happen in less than four days,” Suzanne P. Clark, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement Monday.

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