Federal Judge Orders End to Conrail Strike

PHILADELPHIA —  A federal judge ordered 3,400 striking Conrail employees to return to work Friday afternoon just hours after the track maintenance workers walked out over the company’s use of outside contractors, shutting down the freight railroad’s operations.

U.S. District Judge James T. Giles issued the temporary restraining order pending a full hearing Aug. 27 on Conrail’s contention that the strike is illegal.

“This is undoubtedly in line with what we have said before: that they don’t have the right to strike,” said Conrail spokesman Bob Libkind.

The ruling came hours after 3,400 workers walked to protest Conrail’s use of outside contractors to build tracks in Marysville, Ohio. The union, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, said Conrail promised in writing not to contract out the work.

“They didn’t even notify us that they were,” union General Chairman Jed Dodd said Friday morning. “We found out about it when the contractor showed up to install track.”

Dodd said the union has protested to Conrail but the railroad had not replied.

The strike shut down all movement by Conrail, which operates in 12 states in the Northeast and Midwest, Washington, D.C., and Quebec. The United States’ fifth-largest freight rail company, Conrail moves about 7% of the nation’s freight volume.

Libkind said the company did contract out work, and he didn’t know about any promise not to use outside contractors, adding, “It’s totally irrelevant.”

He said the strike is illegal under railroad labor law. “You have to go through a whole series of things” before there’s a strike or a lockout, he said. Those procedures have not been followed, he said.

Dodd said other railroad unions honored his labor group’s picket lines.