Amtrak, unions stave off a strike

Work stoppage would have hit hard in Boston

An Amtrak strike would have curtailed service such as the high-speec Acela from South Station to points south. (PATRICIA MCDONNELL FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE)

State transportation officials and business leaders breathed a huge sigh of relief yesterday after Amtrak and unions representing half its workers reached an agreement staving off a threatened Jan. 30 strike that would have plunged South Station commuter rail lines into chaos.

"We're thrilled to hear that a negotiated settlement has been reached," MBTA general manager Daniel A. Grabauskas said in a telephone interview from Hong Kong, where he was on personal travel. Grabauskas lauded US Senator Edward M. Kennedy for "an extraordinary job" pushing both sides to resolve an eight-year contract standoff.

"Without this resolution, we would be facing a major transportation shutdown in the heart of Greater Boston, impacting tens of thousands of workers and their employers," said Paul Guzzi, president of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. "It's terrific news that both sides could come to an agreement in time."

Amtrak workers who could have gone on strike nationwide include the dispatchers who control the last mile of tracks in and out of South Station and the entire line to Attleboro, Providence, and Stoughton. The T had assembled contingency plans to stop trains at outlying stations and have riders transfer to buses and subways and try to serve Providence and Needham line riders with buses.

But Grabauskas said that with the crush of the morning rush hour, the T wouldn't have the capacity to accommodate more than 25 to 40 percent of the 46,000 daily riders who use the South Station rail lines. Riders shifting to cars instead would plunge Boston highways into gridlock, he warned.

North Station lines would not have been affected because dispatchers under contract to the T control them. But there was an unknown risk that Amtrak strikers might set up picket lines that T commuter rail workers could refuse to cross, snarling operations north or south of the city.

Besides affecting T commuter service, a strike would have shut down nine Acela high-speed trains and nine regional trains each weekday from South Station and Back Bay to New York, Philadelphia, and Washington; five Portland-North Station Downeaster trains, and the Lake Shore Limited from South Station to Chicago.

Amtrak chief executive Alex Kummant said that agreeing on the deal "has not been easy for any of us," but he praised the union leaders and said "they share our sense of relief and resolve to move forward in a productive and cooperative spirit to provide excellent passenger rail service."

If Amtrak workers covered by the tentative contract ratify it later this winter, they will get an average $12,800 each in back pay and by 2009 will get wages about 35 percent higher than in 2000, union officials said.

In the interim, workers have been getting small cost-of-living increases each year, but depending on their job and union, they will get jumps of around 9 percent in pay this year and next to get to the full 35 percent increase. The workers range from coach cleaners earning around $30,000 a year to dispatcher supervisors making $80,000 and up. Union members who retired from the railroad after 2000 won't get any retroactive pay or pension boost, however.

Workers represented by the nine unions that jointly negotiated the pact include the dispatchers and workers who maintain cars, tracks, and signals, but not engineers or conductors, who are also negotiating new contracts but are months or years away from any possible strike. Amtrak has never had a strike in the 36 years since the government created the company to take over money-losing passenger service that freight railroad companies were pushing to abandon.

The federal Railway Labor Act generally forbids any strike until after the president appoints an emergency board to review the dispute and gives the railroad and its unions 30 days to accept a contract plan developed by the emergency board. In this case, a panel appointed by President Bush offered a proposed contract on Dec. 30, which officials said is largely similar to the tentative contract plan agreed to yesterday.

"The settlement that's been achieved is an extraordinary achievement that will benefit all the members of the Amtrak community, the employees, the company, the passengers, and the entire country," Kennedy said in a prepared statement.