With Ralph Hardy’s retirement, a special election is underway for his replacement for the remainder of his term. The nominees are: Tim Burhman, Jo Jones and Brett Smith. Below is a letter from Tim Buhrman. Other letters will be posted from other nominees if they desire to submit one.
General Chairman Luke Edington sent the following message regarding the carrier’s interpretation of when documentation is required for PS usage.
Brothers and Sisters,
Union Pacific has taken a new position on the use of a single paid sick day. Under their new interpretation, an employee’s use of paid sick leave is in conjunction with other forms of leave if the employee observes a single paid sick day, marks up, and does not work before observing another form of paid leave. The time marked up between the paid sick day and the other form of leave does not matter, they still consider the two in conjunction.
This position is contrary to what was discussed and agreed upon at the bargaining table. We’ve been trying to resolve the issue but are now preparing to arbitrate the matter. If one of your members receives a message from UP requesting medical documentation for their use of a single paid sick day, make sure they respond to the message. If they do not, the Carrier will charge them with a violation of 1.13. Their response can be simple, but they must reply. I recommend the member discuss the message and their response with you or the office before submitting it. Additionally, please send all instances to the office so we can add it to the file. For your reference, the agreement language is below, and the entire agreement is attached.
Article III.
D. In certain cases where an employee uses consecutive days of paid sick leave or uses paid sick leave days in conjunction with other leave, the Carrier may require employees to provide medical documentation to support the use of paid sick leave. Nothing in this Agreement is intended to change the Carrier’s existing return to work or fitness for duty processes or practices.
Q8: May I take consecutive days of paid sick leave without medical documentation?
A8: It may be necessary to take consecutive paid leave days in cases of illness. However, you may be asked to provide medical documentation to support absences exceeding two or more consecutive paid leave days or cases where paid sick leave is used in conjunction with other leave. Employees should communicate with their local managers about the need for extended absences.
On February 26, UP’s attorneys filed a response to SMART-TD’s complaint seeking to set aside the SBA 1208 arbitration award. In summary, UP claims that the board did not fail to “conform or confine itself to the” scope of the board’s purpose, but rather operated within the scope of “whether and how” to implement Articles V, VI, VII of the 2022 National agreement.
You can view the response here in its entirety.
The court has ordered the parties to confer to agree to a scheduling plan for the case moving forward.
A new Engineer Claims Form Packet is now available. It can also be viewed/downloaded on the Information portion of the website.
A new discipline agreement was incorporated in the 2025 National Agreement. All discipline related documents (Notice of Investigation, postponement, transcript, etc.) will be sent to the charged employee via E-mail starting on January 1, 2026. To ensure you receive these documents, if charged by the Carrier, please make sure you have a non-UP E-mail on file in your SAP Portal.
Follow the steps below, if you are unsure of how to update this information:
- Login to MyUP
- Open the menu on the lefthand side of the page
- Click on Employee
- Click My Information (Second bullet from top)
- Click ‘My Profile’
- On the new page that opens, in the right hand column next to email addresses, select “add” then “other E-mail”
- Enter email address and click “Save”
To update an old non-UP E-mail address that is still on file, click the pencil to the right of the E-mail address and update it to a current address.
On Dec 29th, SMART-TD International in concert with the 4 General Committees on UP property filed a complaint in the US District Court of Nebraska seeking to set aside the award issued by SBA 1208. Attached is the filing in its entirety.
In summation, the organization argues that the carrier and the neutral exceeded the authority of the board. They particularly take issue with the following:
- Disposing of existing agreements that provided for extra rest or “smart rest”
- Failing to provide extraboard employees with scheduled days off as provided by Article V of PEB 250
- The award provision that allow for “any qualified employee” to fill conductor vacancies having no basis within the PEB
General Chairman Edington writes:
Brothers and Sister, I hope all of you are enjoying the holidays and time with family.
We filed in the District Court of Nebraska today to vacate SBA 1208 (Articles V-VII Arbitration Award). All the General Committees are listed as parties along with the International. We are pursuing three counts: the permission to use “any qualified employee”; the elimination of extra rest; and no scheduled rest for extra board employees. Our dissenting opinion is also included at the end of the attachment.
Under Section 9 of the RLA, the entire award would be vacated if the court ruled in our favor on just one of the counts. We haven’t gotten any timeline on the court proceedings from legal counsel yet. I’ll pass those along when they are received.
Negotiations over implementation of the Award are still scheduled for January 12-13. We have a duty under the RLA to bargain in good faith until the court makes a final ruling and will continue to do so.
We don’t anticipate anything being implemented on property until the lawsuit is resolved as a ruling by the courts could negate anything that is implemented.
Updates will be sent out as they are received and, as always, don’t hesitate to contact the office if you have any questions.
Fraternally, Luke Edington
General Chairperson
SMART TD GO-953