NORTH PLATTE, Neb. -- Eighty Union Pacific Railroad train-crew members based in North Platte would see their bases shifted to the Omaha area, the railroad said Thursday.
The figure contrasts with a potential impact on 200 Bailey Yard engineers and conductors estimated Tuesday by Jeff Cooley, president of Local 200 of the SMART-TD conductors union and former president of the Midwest Nebraska Central Labor Council.
U.P. spokeswoman Robynn Tysver released a specific number of affected employees following a story reflecting Cooley's estimate in Thursday's Telegraph and other Nebraska newspapers.
She had confirmed in a Wednesday email that the Omaha-based railroad no longer intends to maintain its "double-ended" crew pool for trains running between North Platte and either Fremont or Missouri Valley, Iowa.
That system bases roughly half of that route's engineer-conductor teams at each end. According to an Aug. 4 letter by U.P. Director of Labor Relations Beth Wilderman, all would instead be based in the Omaha area under a "single-ended" pool, with North Platte their "away-from-home" destination.
Tysver said Thursday that the proposal would shift bases for 80 North Platte-based engineers and conductors who run east toward Omaha. That would equal 40 two-person locomotive crews, rather than the 100 in Cooley's estimate.
Cooley, a North Platte-based conductor who lives at Lemoyne, said Thursday he based his estimate of about 200 affected employees primarily on the numbers of members of Bailey Yard engineer and conductor local unions who work trains east from North Platte.
It also included employees on "extra boards," a railroading term for employees on call to run trains not covered by regularly scheduled crews. Those people also would be impacted by U.P.'s proposed base shift, Cooley said.
Tysver reaffirmed the railroad's Wednesday statement that its move won't affect other Bailey Yard train crews who run trains to locations other than the Omaha area.
Some North Platte engineer-conductor teams work U.P.'s historic mainline west to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Others operate trains east and southeast to Marysville, Kansas, and still others run the Panhandle branch line northwest to South Morrill and its junction with the U.P. line to the Powder River coalfields in northeast Wyoming.
Cooley and Gary Person, president and CEO of the North Platte Area Chamber & Development Corp., said they'll work to keep the affected train crews from having to relocate from North Platte.
The Midwest Nebraska Central Labor Council, an AFL-CIO affiliate, issued a Monday statement opposing the base transfers and their potential impact on engineers' and conductors' families.
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