Below are the answers to frequently asked questions we have received about the new tentative agreement.

For the complete letter from the Penn Fed, with all attachments, click here.
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2. Why are the retirees being left out of the back pay?

3. You said that the contract was fully retroactive, but retroactivity only starts
     in 2002 What happened to the first two years?

4. Is all of the retroactive cost sharing in the health and welfare going to be
    deducted in the first 40% payment?

5. What happens if we defeat this agreement?

1.

The tentative agreement will pay the retroactive money in two installments. The first

installment will be 40% and due within sixty days of the effective date of the agreement. The

second installment will be the remaining 60% and is payable within one year of the first

installment. The contingency language is limited to the second 60% payment. Under the

contingency language Amtrak can notify the union that they do not have the funds to pay the

second installment and thirty days after that notification we are free to go on strike.

Collective bargaining agreements are usually enforced by going to arbitration or by

pursing a law suit. Both of these processes take time. This contingency language is better

than arbitration, or filing a lawsuit, because it literally permits us to hold a gun to their head and

force them to pay us. This is the same language we agreed to in 1997 and it ensured that we

received every penny of our back pay agreement. In 1997, the average back pay was about

The proposed language in our tentative agreement is better than our 1997 agreement

because it requires Amtrak to pay us our second installment within ninety days if Congress

appropriates money sooner for this purpose. The leadership in the House and the Senate are

already looking for ways to appropriate the money necessary to pay the second installment of

our back pay, so there is actually a possibility that we will receive the second installment earlier.

By agreeing to the contingency language on the second back pay installment only, we

successfully ensured that you will get all the wage increases and first back pay installment

without a strike. We fully expect that Amtrak will make the second back pay installment.

strike. Since the second back pay installment is not due until a year from now, you lose nothing

by this arrangement.

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2

.

The tentative agreement is based on the recommendations of the Presidential

Emergency Board (PEB). The PEB recommended that the retirees be left out of the back pay.

The difference between the costs of the back pay with the retirees and back pay without the

retirees is seven per cent. We informally polled our membership to see if they would be willing

to take seven per cent less to cover the retirees. There was an overwhelming negative

response to this idea. The leadership of the House and the Senate put a lot pressure on

Amtrak and the Union to settle based upon the recommendations of the PEB. It is outrageous

that the retirees were left out of the back pay but the politicians said the PEB incorporated 95%

of the union's national agreements into the recommendations and they were not going to add to

it. We fought hard for the retirees and their back pay and lost this issue. Amtrak was also

demanding to reduce the health care coverage for those on disability retirement and to make

the retirees contribute to the cost of their health care and we were able to defeat both of these

demands.

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3.

The tentative agreement doesn't subtract the cost of living (cola) we received the first

two years during the period without a new contract from the retroactive money. The tentative

agreement also rolls 27 cents of this cola into the basic rate before the general wage increases

begin in 2002. The PEB recommendations, and thus the proposed settlement, are based on

the national freight agreements for the nine unions. There were six different national variations

on the wage agreements for the first five years among the nine unions. Most of these

agreements did not have wage increases in them higher than the cola payments we received

for their first two years. In order to put a unified proposal forward to the PEB we had to

combine the six agreements for the first five years into one unified proposal. The small

increases that we already received under the continuing cola provisions of our present

agreement with Amtrak were on average about the same as the national settlements by most of

the unions in the dispute and therefore no retroactivity was payable for the first two years.

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4.

No. The entire retroactive amount will be calculated minus the entire health and welfare

cost sharing and then 40% of that will be paid in the first installment. This method will evenly

spread out the health and welfare cost sharing between the first and second payment.

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5.

Thirty days following notice that the agreement has been rejected by the membership

we have a right to go on strike. However, we are right back where we started before we

initialed the tentative agreement. It is certain that Congress will not permit a strike. They will

pass legislation that will either impose the PEB as our new agreement or require a new

process. A new process will give Amtrak another chance to obtain their demands to destroy

our working lives. There are two things that will be guaranteed by votirrg no on this agreement.

The first is that there will be another delay in obtaining a raise and back pay. The second is

that Congress will act to prevent a strike and the result will not be better and could be worse.

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