Rail & Labor News from RWU
| | Weekly Digest Number 18 - April 29th, 2025 | | Welcome to the RWU Rail & Labor News! This news bulletin is produced and emailed out each Tuesday morning. We hope you find each week's news and information useful. If so, please share with co-workers, friends, and colleagues. If you like, you can sign them up to get all the news from RWU HERE. Or forward them the link. Got a hot tip? Please forward the article and a link to raillabornews@gmail.com. Note: If you read over this news bulletin each week, you will be sure to never miss the important news of what is going on in the railroad world from a worker's perspective! | | THIS WEEK'S RAIL AND LABOR NEWS | | Editor's Note: Five years of bad faith, and now NJ Transit tears up its own offer as a “good faith” reset? Spare us. This is textbook union-busting: delay, confuse, and wear down the people who actually keep the trains moving. A strike isn’t coming because workers are unreasonable — it’s coming because management thinks they can win a war of attrition. They’re wrong. | |
NorthJersey.com / April 25th
NJ Transit has rescinded its previous contract offer to locomotive engineers, effectively forcing the two parties to start over in their five-year-old contentious labor dispute, and as the days tick down to a potential strike in mid-May.
The letter, addressed to Tom Haas, the general chairman of the BLET, said officials look forward to "re-engaging" in negotiations and proposed a meeting on Monday morning.
| | Editor's Note: Eddie Hall’s presidency ends the way it began: with a system built to survive him. His brief time in office barely dented the entrenched power structure of the BLET, and now the advisory board — the same inner circle that has presided over years of stagnation — hands the reins to one of their own. No election, no mandate from the membership, just a reshuffling of titles to keep the machine running. Real change won’t come from polite succession plans. It will come when working railroaders organize, stand together, and tear the old system out by its roots. | |
Progressive Railroading / April 25th
The BLET announced that National President Eddie Hall will retire on May 1. Under the BLET bylaws, First Vice President Mark Wallace will succeed Hall as national president.
Hall announced his decision to retire at an April 23 meeting of the union’s advisory board in New Orleans. Following that announcement, board members voted to elevate Vice President Gary Best to first vice president.
Hall was elected to the presidency in December 2022. He began his railroad career in 1995 when he hired out with the former Southern Pacific Railroad in El Paso, Texas. He was promoted to locomotive engineer in 1998 after relocating to Tucson, Arizona.
| | Editor's Note: Union Pacific calls it progress. The union calls it a ratification. Workers are left to call it what it is: survival. Another five-year deal rushed through with minor gains while the cost of living soars and working conditions rot. Wage bumps and cosmetic tweaks won’t fix an industry built to bleed its workforce dry. Stability for the company, stagnation for the workers — the oldest playbook there is. | |
Progressive Railroading / April 23rd
National Conference of Firemen and Oilers members have ratified a five-year labor agreement with Union Pacific Railroad, the Class I announced today. UP and the union announced a tentative agreement for wage increases, vacation, health/welfare benefits, and minor work rule changes, before the current one expires on July 1.
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| Editor's Note: BLET’s tentative deal with the Union Railroad of Pittsburgh offers modest improvements — steady wage bumps, a signing bonus, and better leave provisions. But like so many contracts today, it mostly tinkers at the edges. When corporations are raking in record profits, 3.5% raises and a few extra personal days feel more like consolation prizes than real progress. The fight for dignity at work demands more than incrementalism. | | |
BLET / April 25th
BLET has reached a tentative agreement with the Union Railroad of Pittsburgh. The deal governs pay, benefits, and work rules.
If approved, the contract will run through July of 2028 and provides for a $500 signing bonus and general wage increases of 4.0% in 2024, 4.0% in 2025, 3.5% in 2026, and 3.5% in 2027.
Additional provisions include:
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Adjustments to personal leave provisions, including increased leave days and elimination of the 48-hour notice requirement.
- Increased 401(k) employer match from $2,000 annually to $3,750 annually.
| | Editor's Note: Great to see Virginia and North Carolina continue in many ways to lead the nation in passenger rail expansion. Making use of existing freight mainlines, double and triple tracking, as well as revitalization of under-used and abandoned rights-of-way, Virginia is showing what can be done to move people off the state's highways and onto trains. Time for other states to follow their lead. | |
Progressive Railroad / April 25th
Virginia officials yesterday broke ground on the $265.4 million Virginia Passenger Rail Authority New River Valley rail project in Christiansburg.
The project will extend Amtrak service via NS from Roanoke to Christiansburg for the first time since 1979. The extension is the result of an agreement between the VPRA and NS completed last September, in which VPRA purchased one line and gained access to another.
The expanded service is expected to begin in 2027 with two daily roundtrips between Christiansburg and Washington, D.C.
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Progressive Railroad / April 25th
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy yesterday warned recipients of federal transportation funding that they must comply with federal legal obligations and policies or risk losing those grant dollars.
Federal policies that must be followed include the Trump administration's enforcement of U.S. immigration laws, as well as the prohibition of DEI Duffy said in a letter to U.S. Department of Transportation funding recipients.
| | Editor's Note: The industry blames the engineer. The NTSB notes the missing safeguards. But the real culprits — the railroads that fought tooth and nail to delay, weaken, and dodge full PTC implementation — walk away untouched. Easton wasn’t an accident; it was an inevitability built into a system where safety is optional and accountability ends at the bottom. Workers carry the blame. Executives cash the checks. | |
Trains Magazine / April 23rd
The probable cause of a rear-end collision between two NS freight trains near Easton, PA, last year — an incident that involved three trains in all — was the engineer’s failure to follow restricted speed requirements, the NTSB said.
But the lack of PTC safeguards that could offer protection against human error contributed to the wreck, the board said in its final report on the March 2nd, 2024, accident.
Trains operating at restricted speed can go no faster than 20 mph and must proceed at a speed slow enough to allow the engineer to stop their train within 1/2th range of vision.
| | Editor's Note: Norfolk Southern gambled with lives in East Palestine, then spent a year trying to buy, spin, and lawyer its way out of the wreckage. This jury verdict cuts through the noise: the railroad that ran the train owns the disaster. GATX may have built the car, but it was NS that put it to work and sent it barreling through working-class towns like they were disposable. $600 million is just the price of admission to a system that lets corporate power walk away from the damage it creates — while the people left behind pay in ways no settlement can cover. | |
RT&S / April 24th
An Ohio jury decided that NS was responsible for the $600 million settlement agreement with East Palestine residents and that GATX was not liable.
AP reported that GATX, the company that owned the car with the bad wheel bearing, did not have to help pay for the settlement. GATX’s position has been that since NS inspected and operated the train, the railroad was responsible for seeing that it reached its destination safely.
| | Editor's Note: The big two western freight rail carriers may appear confident, but remember that the big U.S. freight carriers have been involved in numerous "melt-downs" in the last 30 years due to their inabilities to handle all sorts of things - from inclement weather to the post-pandemic rebound, corporate mergers (UP-SP-CNW) and carve-ups (Conrail) to various traffic surges. Let's hope they are on top of this looming hot mess. | |
FreightWaves.com / April 25th
Since late last year, BNSF Railway and UP have been busy handling a surge of containers from West Coast ports as U.S. companies pulled forward imports to beat potential tariffs.
But now with a trade war underway — and tariffs as high as 145% on goods made in China — the number of containers bound to the U.S. from China has dropped precipitously. So shipping lines are canceling sailings from Chinese ports.
“It’s my prediction that in two weeks, arrivals will drop by 35% as essentially all shipments out of China for major retailers and manufacturers have ceased, and cargo coming out of Southeast Asia locations is much softer than normal,” Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka said Thursday.
| | Editor's Note: In this incident, the crucial question is WHY did the contract rail worker go between the cars without protection? Lack of training? Lack of a proper safety program at the corporation? Pressure to get the work done in a hurry? Fatigue? Hopefully the final report will uncover what factors underly this tragedy. | |
Trains Magazine / April 23rd
The conductor of a contract switching operator at BNSF Railway’s auto distribution facility in Richmond, Calif., was killed when he was pinned between two railcars during a shoving move, the NTSB said in its preliminary investigation report on the April 4 incident.
The conductor of the three-person switching crew was working with two locomotives and five railcars, attempting to couple to another car. The cars had misaligned couplers, which would not allow coupling. Preliminary investigation by the NTSB found no communication by the conductor that he was planning to go between the cars to address the mismatched couplers.
| | Editor's Note: If any railroaders or our allies out there can assist this professor's work on this Boston & Maine strike of locomotive engineers from the 1870s, please make contact with him. Thank you! | |
H-Labor - Dave Burzillo / April 25th
I am currently researching the Boston & Maine Railroad Strike of February 12, 1877.
While I have a lot of material on the strike and its aftermath, and can tell a detailed story of the strike, my primary interest is exploring the impact of the strike on each of the sixty-seven engineers who were fired.
At this time, I have not been able to locate any studies of nineteenth-century strikes, railroad or otherwise, that analyze the impact of a particular strike on a cohort of individual strikers. If any such studies exist, I would like to be able to compare my conclusions. Is anyone aware of any such studies? I would appreciate any suggestions.
| | Editor's Note: The late Pope Francis had a deep love for trains. He understood as a child, as a worker, and later as a man of the cloth how the rails - and the trains that roll across them - connect people, bring us together in a shared experience, and build community and shared experience. | |
RailTech.com / April 23rd
Following the passing of Pope Francis, Italy’s Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane has rolled out an extraordinary rail plan to accommodate the waves of pilgrims converging on the Eternal City. And the gesture feels wholly fitting.
The late Pontiff – himself the son of a railway worker – was a passionate advocate for public transport. And on a more personal level, he nurtured a lifelong affection for trains, seeing in them both a practical necessity and a powerful symbol of connection.
With the railways quite literally running in his blood, it’s little surprise that as pope, he brought some of the values often tied to rail travel – connection, group movement, humility – to the Vatican. In fact, in 2015, one of Italy’s railway unions made him an honorary member – an honour he quietly renewed each year.
| | Editor's Note: Railroad Workers United has been a member organization of the Rail Users Network (RUN) for seven years now. We encourage all rail workers to consider joining and supporting the expansion of passenger rail in the U.S. A good way to get started would be to take part in their annual spring virtual conference. See below. | |
Rail Users Network / April 24th
Please join us at the Rail Users’ Network’s Spring Virtual Conference, which is taking place on Friday May 16, 2025, from 1:00 – 5 pm. The conference will provide an update regarding what is happening at some of the major transit agencies across the states.
The conference is designed not only for passenger rail and transit advocates but for civic and business leaders, environmentalists, planners, real estate developers, and members of the general public who are interested in knowing more about passenger rail transit in America. Registration fee for nonmembers is $25, which includes RUN membership through 2025. Be sure to register by May 2 so that we can send along the info needed to attend.
| | NEWS FROM AROUND THE LABOR MOVEMENT | | Each week, RWU includes a few articles about advances and developments in the larger labor movement that are of interest to railroad workers. Got an artcile to submit for possible inclusion next week? Email it along to raillabornews@gmail.com. Thank you! | | Editor's Note: Many of us support our union and are proud to be members, but have been letdown by its behavior and performance. This workshop is for you, brothers and sisters! | |
Labor Notes / April 24th
If you’re a union member, unfortunately, the chances are good that you’ve had your heart broken at least once by one of your leaders. Whether you tried to get involved and there was nowhere to go, or the members got sold out, or leaders want to keep the union as their exclusive club, it can feel pretty harsh. In this workshop, we’ll talk about how to organize with your fellow union members to recommit to your union and to change the culture into one where leaders respect and serve the members.
When: Tuesday, May 6
Time: 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern Time (4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. Pacific).
Where: This is an online workshop and will be held via Zoom.
Registration fee
$0 - Free registration
$10 - Suggested registration
$25 - Suggested registration plus a HALF-OFF one-year subscription to Labor Notes.
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Portside Labor / April 22nd
A U.S. judge has ordered the Trump administration to put in writing that thousands of federal workers were not fired over their performance, as agencies had claimed in terminating them en masse.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco said claims by six agencies that nearly 17,000 federal workers were fired in February because of their performance were "a total sham" that could hobble their careers. Alsup in March had ordered the agencies to reinstate the workers, but the U.S. Supreme Court paused that ruling earlier this month. On Friday, he declined a request by a group of unions and the state of Washington to order reinstatement a second time.
| | Editor's Note: The current attempt by the ruling class to divide-and-conquer the working class should sound familiar to most railroad workers, who have long been skillfully pitted against one another by powerful robber barons and rail corporations. It is time for all workers - and especially rail workers - to come together in solidarity. These example from Minnesota labor history provide some inspiring examples of worker solidarity in action. Once again, "An injury to one is an injury to all!" | |
Portside Labor / April 24th
Workers have a long and storied history of resisting attempts to pit them against each other. We found examples specific to Minnesota’s labor movement, which has a militant legacy that can be learned from today.
Workers organized and mobilized to take defensive and offensive measures against various forces, such as hate groups, corporations, and corporate-backed elected officials, that sought to violently divide their communities and hoard resources.
| | WEEKLY DERAILMENT DEPARTMENT | | Each Tuesday in this news bulletin, RWU does our best to present a picture of what has been happening over the course of the previous week in terms of derailments in North America, and investigation determinations of previous accidents. NOTE: This list is by no means comprehensive. Smaller and less consequential mishaps are generally not reported here. If the wreck results in injury or fatality, or is especially damaging/extreme, a full article will appear as a feature in the dozen or so rail articles above. Know of a train wreck? Please feel free to forward a link to raillabornews@gmail.com for possible inclusion next week. Thanks! |
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