Congress Pact OKd on Ending Rail Walkout

Congress Wednesday night broke what appeared to be the final procedural logjam in ending a day-old national freight rail strike that threatened to paralyze the nation’s recession-plagued economy.

After initial disagreement, congressional leaders reached an accord with the Bush Administration on a bill that would immediately order 235,000 strikers back to work and create a new board to settle the protracted labor dispute.

It appeared likely that the bill would pass both the House and Senate late Wednesday night and be sent to President Bush for his signature sometime before dawn today.

House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) informed his colleagues of the agreement but declined to reveal details. He advised them to be available for a vote at any moment. The House agreed to suspend normal parliamentary rules to speed its consideration. The Senate stood by to act on the same measure.

Lawmakers and members of the Administration, led by Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner, met behind closed doors for several hours to consider proposals to end the walkout and appoint a new board to end three years of squabbling over contract terms by the railroad industry and unions.

A presidential emergency board, appointed by Bush, issued non-binding recommendations last January that were intended to end the contract dispute. However, the recommendations did not stave off a strike.

Earlier Wednesday, Democrats were pushing legislation that would immediately force the strikers to return to their jobs, then create a committee to evaluate the labor dispute. The committee would encourage new negotiations toward a settlement but ultimately could force one through binding arbitration.

The Administration, along with the railroads, had contended that Congress should flatly impose a settlement along the recommendations made by the presidential emergency board. Unions representing the strikers said that those recommendations ultimately would cost more than 20,000 jobs.

Wednesday’s strike began at 7 a.m. local time after a federally mandated cooling-off period ended at midnight. Workers from 11 unions began setting up picket lines at rail yards throughout the country.

Rather than attempt to operate a limited freight schedule with supervisory personnel, the railroads shut down. Trains en route to their destinations were stopped at the nearest freight yard.

“Nothing’s operating that we know of,” said George Whaley, a spokesman for the Assn. of American Railroads.

The strike quickly put a stranglehold on American industry, stalling rail carloads of everything from auto parts and coal to Cap’n Crunch and chicken feed. Ford Motor Co. cut two shifts at its big Chicago assembly plant Wednesday, and Island Creek Corp., a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, planned to shut one of its 19 coal mines by today at the latest.

Commuter rail services that depended on using freight tracks generally shut down, except in Chicago, where a federal court ruling kept them running.

Amtrak, which had said that it would stop its San Diego-to-Los Angeles passenger service during a strike, changed its mind early Wednesday morning. But hours later, to the confusion of many riders, Amtrak said it could not guarantee that it would be able to maintain its full schedule of trains.

On the picket lines, strikers expressed anger at the railroads for what they described as unfair wage and work rule demands. Many were equally unhappy with the knowledge that Congress would likely force them back to work within a few days, robbing them of the bargaining leverage that most strikes carry.

“If we haven’t got the right to strike, we don’t have any power at all,” said Wayne Jones, 48, who has worked as a track welder for the Santa Fe Railway in Los Angeles for a quarter century.

Workers struck after three years of unsuccessful negotiations on a new contract. Last January’s presidential emergency board proposal to settle the dispute did not advance the talks because unions considered the recommendations pro-mangement.

There were no reports of major strike violence. No new negotiations were scheduled.

The White House Wednesday sharply lowered its estimate of initial financial damage from the strike. Earlier in the week it had warned that a strike could cost the economy $1 billion a day. But White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said that the cost on the first day, when most businesses still had inventories, would be about $50 million. He estimated that the daily cost would gradually climb to $600 million a day over two weeks.

The strike will cost the railroads alone about $70 million a day in lost revenue and impose financial hardships on industries that rely on rail deliveries.

General Motors, the world’s largest auto maker, with 184 auto-related factories and 350,000 employees in the United States, said Wednesday that it would be forced into a virtual production shutdown by week’s end.

“We anticipate that approximately 75% to 80% of our operations will be affected within the next 24 hours,” GM spokesman Karen Longridge said.

Those kind of projections created a flurry of activity on Capitol Hill.

It remained uncertain Wednesday night whether strike-ending legislation would make its way to Bush before midnight or by today.

At a congressional hearing Wednesday morning, Transportation Secretary Skinner said that the White House wants to end the strike before “tomorrow’s (morning) rush hour.”

Rep. Al Swift (D-Wash.), chairman of the first House subcommittee that considered the legislation, said that it is crucial that a new panel created by Congress to end the rail dispute have the power to impose a settlement--a power that presidential emergency boards, a tool of the Railway Labor Act, lack.

“At some point, this has got to end and Congress is not going to set up a merry-go-round where it comes back here again,” Swift said.

One plan in the House called for a new 90-day cooling-off period. Unions and freight carriers would have 10 days to raise disputed issues. The new board created by Congress would then have 40 days to consider and propose recommendations. That would be followed by another 10-day period for negotiations, followed by 30 days to wrap up “loose ends” and submit remaining disagreements to binding arbitration.

Union officials acknowledged that the strike would be a short one.

“We have a feeling that at least by Friday morning, everybody’s going to be back to work,” said Jim Kennedy, secretary of the multiunion Railway Labor Executives Assn.