“…but it costs us so much to run ACRE and pay the bills!”

We've all heard variants of this argument over the last seven years, from Mike Doyle and Tony Bottalico and others. In order to do the job they take over $70 a month from conductors and nearly $90 a month from engineers. It's all explained as being necessary for salaries, upkeep, and whatnot used in order to keep the union running.

I've researched what other commuter-rail Divisions, Locals, and General Committees of Adjustment spend on salaries, office overhead, rent, the payroll, and the rest. The US Department of Labor's website has all the basic information that's filed with the government on Forms LM-2, LM-3, and LM-4 by all unions in the United States. It's been extremely interesting reading.

I've searched high and low for any commuter-rail union or General Committee that spends the kind of money ACRE does for rent. Nobody, even in the notoriously expensive New York area, spent $108,495 on rent in 2006. Neither BLE&T nor UTU; not on the Long Island RR, NJTransit, Massachusetts Bay Commuter Rail (Boston), Amtrak (their GC is based in Cherry Hill, NJ), Virginia Railway Express (DC to the Virginia suburbs), SEPTA (Philadelphia). Nobody. $71.45 a year out of everyone's pocket – not just conductors and engineers, but all members of ACRE – goes for rent. Commuter-rail Divisions and General Committees, even in expensive areas, pay less than half what ACRE pays. Before the advent of ACRE, engineers didn't pay rent at all – we ran just fine for seven years out of home office space.

Is there a reason – other than the obvious convenience of having offices immediately adjacent to the Terminal, in a building where Metro-North is a major tenant – why ACRE pays such high rates? As any native New Yorker knows, the moment you leave midtown Manhattan, prices drop like a stone. Why not look up around 125 th Street for a place to have offices, or the area around Fordham Road? Or are those not the kinds of neighborhoods ACRE leadership likes to frequent? It may mean having to actually ride a train one or two stops – but I've never seen any other commuter-rail local union or General Committee claim they're less effective because their offices don't sit on top of the Carrier's headquarters.

The cell-phone carrier bills run up by ACRE are nothing short of amazing. $14,087 to Nextel for the “National Headquarters” alone? Along with another $7223 spent by Local Division 9 with Sprint, and another $12,952 spent by Local Division 1 with Nextel? This means another $9.27 spent by every single member of ACRE on Nextel. Along with $16.33 of every Division 1 member's dues and $18.86 of everyone paying dues or Agency Fees to Local Division 9. $34,262 on cell phones? I've got a coverage plan for all of North America (450 free minutes a month and texting until my thumbs fall off) for $960 a year. And my phone works pretty much anywhere on the railroad. At that rate, conductors and engineers are paying for 35 people to have cell phones with notoriously lousy service. I can see General Chairmen and Local Chairmen having phones so their membership can reach them when they're needed. But that adds up to at most 15 people. Who are all these people who have cell phones and why do they need them? Or is it simply considered a perk of office to have a cell phone you don't have to pay for out of your pocket? $12.50 a year per capita for officers' cell phones instead of $28.13 means a $1.30 drop in monthly dues.

Commuter-rail people with full-time General Chairmen, such as the LIRR and Amtrak (which covers multiple commuter-rail operations) generally pay them over $110,000 a year, strictly out of union funds. These folks put in the hours on the members' behalf , hours that preclude them from working regular runs. However, General Chairmen in the UTU or BLE, whether full- or part-time, don't also have substantial amounts of money put in their pockets by the Carriers. Their money is honest – members' money for the members' interests. And their members can damn well cut off the cash flow by voting them out of office, so it's in the General Chairmen's interest to do right by their membership.

I've heard objections in the past to paying Doyle's and Bottalico's full salary out of dues money, mostly related to “We'll have to raise the dues to do that.” How come no other General Committee has problems paying their General Chairman strictly out of dues money? Is that because BLE&T Divisions, UTU Locals, and General Committees don't make a habit of paying their other officers the amounts of money ACRE pays without putting in the hours and losing time on the job?

The general practice in BLE&T Divisions, UTU Locals, and the General Committees of both unions is to pay non-full-time officers on a “time lost” basis. That is, if an officer or member of the union has to mark off their regular railroad job to perform union business, the BLE&T would reimburse the officer or member the money lost as a result of that mark-off. Money is not paid out of the members' pockets simply as a function of being an officer – they must actually mark off and lose money in order to be reimbursed. Paying union officers simply to exist is not a general practice in rail labor, especially when the officers in question are not only not losing money but actually making money on sixth and seventh starts.

If ACRE changed to this basis of paying officer salaries on a “time-lost” basis, the cash could easily be found to not only pay Mike Doyle and Tony Bottalico full salaries (instead of having the majority of their pay coming as a Carrier allowance for good behavior), but to lower dues dramatically.

Taking the LIRR on the BLE&T side as an example, all figures from 2006 LM-2's:

Total membership, General Committee and Division 269 – 444 (ACRE Local Division 9 – 383)

The General Chairman (full-time) made $106,206 in salary and expenses until he was voted out.

Local 269's Division Secretary/Treasurer made $23,385.

Their GCofA's Sec'y/Treasurer was also 2 nd Vice General Chairman. Due to his holding the two positions at first and then giving up those when elected General Chairman, he made $47,547.

The 1 st Vice-GC made $21,897 holding the single position.

The current and immediate past Presidents of Div. 269 together were paid $14,161.

One “committeeman” got $12,276.

The BLE&T National Division meeting was last year, so their Delegate marked off for a week and got $1685 for his missed time. (I had my vacation changed so I could represent our Division.)

The Division Chaplain got $50 in expenses.

That's it.

Total of all the salary and expense cash flow for engineers' officers, on a railroad slightly larger than ours, with more stringent rules and discipline and equally idiot management: $227,207. And they paid less than half what ACRE paid in rent ($43,600).

If you go through ACRE Local Division 9's LM-2, along with their “National Headquarters” LM-2, a much different picture emerges:

Mike Doyle's salary and expenses came to $56,437. He gets the majority of his compensation from Metro-North (over $100,000), which brings his total pay to an amount far higher than that earned by any working Locomotive Engineer.

John Potthast got $27,299 for serving as Vice General Chairman. Even if you use the round number of $300 a day (based on a straight-8 hour day plus certification) for lost wages, when you divide it into his salary of $21,300, I don't particularly remember him missing fourteen weeks and a couple of days of work.

The other three Local Chairmen between them got $70,561 in salaries and expenses, $55,823 of which was salaries. None of these people if they're anywhere near well enough to work is known to miss out, and all have been well-known to come out on their relief days – what gives here?

Joe Lindenberg got $22,981 in salary and $4,405 in expenses.

Mike McCarthy got $5,028 as Division President.

John Gaines got $6705 from Division 9 as the Legislative Rep – in addition to the $32,001 salary and $22,030 expenses he got from ACRE “National Headquarters.” For what? He's certainly an unknown in Albany. What has been his use in Hartford? Has he been to Washington DC, where many of the major decisions regarding passenger railroading are made, from railroad funding to engineer certification?

When you add all these monies to all of the other salaries and expenses for officers and employees, a total of $200,045 in salaries and expenses were paid at the Local Division 9 level and an additional $55,328 was paid to engineers on the “National Headquarters” payroll, for a grand total of $255,373. And that's before we even get into the issue of all the other people on the “National Headquarters” payroll, to the tune of $55,289. Or another nearly-$37/year out of everyone's pockets.

We all know running a union costs money. But why so much, when so many others get it done for so much less? Or has this been the plan all along – to use “the union” as a cash cow?

Do I think that the BLE&T can come back to be the true voice for Locomotive Engineers, cut the total monthly dues back by at least $8-$10 compared to ACRE full dues of $88 a month, and still be able to pay a full-time General Chairman if we so decide we need one? If we budget ourselves properly and don't waste money as ACRE does, of course we can! After all, we can always choose not to have a full-time salaried General Chairman – there's no law that says we have to have one, it's just a choice for the rank-and-file to make given to us by the by-laws of the BLE&T.

Mary Donch

Vice-Chairman, GCT

BLE&T Division 127