Rail & Labor News from RWU
| | Weekly Digest Number 36 - September 2, 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: RWU members from various crafts discuss the ramifications for railroad workers if the UP-NS merger proposal goes through with Max Alvarez from the Real News Network. More than a dozen railroad workers comprise the RWU Media Outreach Committee and are speaking with the press on a regular basis to get the working rank and file rail worker perspective out there to the public. Every RWU member on this panel speaks with one voice: the UP–NS mega-merger is a raw power grab. Past mergers left chaos, layoffs, and poisoned communities.. this one will only deepen the stranglehold. Four rail barons would control the nation’s freight while workers and the public foot the bill. RWU is clear.. this deal must be stopped. | |
Railroad workers are sounding the alarm about the potentially catastrophic consequences of the proposed mega-merger of two of the nation’s Class 1 freight rail companies. “Union Pacific said it would buy smaller rival Norfolk Southern in an $85-billion deal to create the country’s first coast-to-coast freight rail operator,” Reuters reported in July. “If approved, the deal would be the largest-ever buyout in the sector.” If this giant merger goes through, what will it mean for railroad workers, customers, and for the general public? In this episode of Working People, we speak with a panel of six veteran railroaders and members of Railroad Workers United to get a workers’ eye view of the proposed mega-merger and what it will mean for rail labor, the US supply chain, and for the public writ large.
| | Editor's Note: In a brazen assault on democratic principle, President Trump has summarily fired Robert Primus.. one of only two Democratic members of the Surface Transportation Board, just as the board readies to rule on the mammoth Union Pacific–Norfolk Southern merger. He was removed not for inefficiency or malfeasance, but for daring to stand for fair competition and consumer interests, a principle too radical for the “America First” cabal. Mr. Primus, a staunchly independent public servant and the lone dissenter in the CPKC merger vote, rightly denounces this action as “deeply troubling and legally invalid,” and pledges to fight it with every legal recourse he has. Labor unions and workers’ advocates are already crying foul, denouncing this as a naked act of political interference to grease the skids for corporate railroad consolidation. Make no mistake.. this isn’t governance, it’s gate-keeping for the cartels, and it jeopardizes the freight rail network that sustains our industries, our jobs, and our communities. | | |
WASHINGTON — President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday (Aug. 27) fired Surface Transportation Board member Robert E. Primus, breaking a 2-2 partisan split at the rail regulator while leaving it two members short of full strength just months before it is expected to receive the Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger application. The Wall Street Journal first reported the firing late Wednesday.
Primus, a Democrat appointed by Trump in 2020, was the lone STB member to vote against the 2023 Canadian Pacific-Kansas City Southern merger. He told the Journal he will fight the termination. “This is deeply troubling and legally invalid,” Primus said, adding that he intends to continue his work at the board.
| | Editor's Note: The Trump administration has sacked every member of the Department of Transportation’s safety advisory committees.. panels meant to give workers and experts a voice in how the freight rail, passenger rail, and trucking industries are regulated. They call it a “refresh.” We call it what it is: stripping away public oversight so corporate lobbyists can write the rules unchecked. These committees may not be perfect, but workers know what happens when management alone sets the terms.. corners are cut, safety is sacrificed, and lives are lost. Instead of strengthening labor’s voice in rail safety, they are dismantling it, sneering that concern for workers, communities, or the climate is “radical.” The robber barons could not dream of such open contempt for the people. | | |
Like many federal agencies, the Department of Transportation (DOT) uses advisory committees, primarily to help draft safety regulations for the freight rail, passenger rail, and trucking industries. The panels are composed of experts in the field and key stakeholders for both industry and its workers.
And now they’ve all been fired.The Trump administration is reconstituting all DOT advisory committees to align the membership with its policy goals. Rebuilding the committees from the ground up could take months. In a statement provided to the Prospect, a DOT spokesperson claimed the panels “are long overdue for a refresh,” adding they “have lost sight of the mission” and are “overrun with individuals whose sole focus is their radical DEI and climate agenda.” The agency’s main contention? Some committees “have not held a single meeting in over a year, while others have not produced recommendations or advisory reports.”
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| Editor's Note: Even as the Trump administration rips away $4 billion in federal funding for California’s high-speed rail, the people of the state are not fooled. A clear majority.. 62% overall and 80% of Democrats, say keep building. They understand what the politicians and profiteers will not: this project is about the future, about jobs, about public good. Workers and communities are willing to invest, even if it means state dollars must fill the gap. The only ones standing in the way are the same powers that have starved public infrastructure for decades while feeding Wall Street. The choice is simple.. move forward with modern rail that serves the people, or remain shackled to the past by those who profit from delay. | | |
As the Trump administration moves to revoke $4 billion in federal funding from California's high-speed rail project, a new poll finds that 62% of registered voters in the state — and 80% of Democrats — support continuing to build the project, according to the U.S. High Speed Rail coalition.
The voter survey by the Politico-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab at University of California-Berkeley found that one-third of Democratic voters said they continue to back high-speed rail even though it will mean using more state resources to make up for federal funding cuts. Thirty-eight percent of Democrats said their support depends on the project meeting its current budget, U.S. High Speed Rail officials said in a press release.
| | Editor's Note: For over a decade in Nebraska, BNSF called it a workplace while women endured daily abuse.. graffiti on locomotives, filth in bathrooms, even a dead bird left on a train. A judge tried to bury the case, but the 8th Circuit refused. This is not safety, it is cruelty dressed as work. Carriers preach safety while tolerating abuse, and too often labor’s voice was quiet when it should have thundered. Dignity on the job is not a perk, it is the first condition of safety. | | |
A federal appeals court on Thursday revived a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit accusing BNSF Railway of allowing a severe and pervasive hostile work environment toward women in a western Nebraska railyard.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Omaha said a trial judge wrongly dismissed claims that from 2011 to 2022, BNSF subjected train conductor Rena Merker and other female workers at the Alliance railyard to a near daily barrage of sexual harassment by male coworkers, as well as supervisors.
This allegedly included sexual advances, derogatory comments about women's bodies, sexually explicit graffiti at the railyard and on locomotives, soiling of unisex bathrooms, and a dead bird left on the toilet seat of a female conductor's train.
| | Editor's Note: Peter DeFazio spent 36 years in Congress, four of them chairing the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Few know better how Wall Street’s appetite devours everything in reach. He watched guardrails fall, banking rules gutted, trade tilted to corporations, election spending unchained. He saw railroads turned into an extractive resource under Precision Scheduled Railroading, service cut, communities abandoned, workers cast aside. His warning is plain: without strong public oversight, Wall Street will strip railroads and the nation bare. | | |
Serving as chair of the powerful House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for the last four of his 36 years in Congress, former Congressman Peter DeFazio has a priceless and practically peerless perspective on why it is so important for government to be a counterforce to the insatiable appetite of Wall Street.
Mr. DeFazio's career spanned a period when, to his dismay, the checks on big banks, controls on corporate trade, and limits on election spending all went off the rails. He saw firsthand the rise of "Precision Scheduled Railroading" and how it left service, communities, and public interests behind, as Wall Street targeted railroads as an extractable resource, not unlike the forests and communities he also fought to protect.
| | Editor's Note: This is a curious development to be sure. Trump has traditionally been an opponent of Amtrak funding and expansion, so it it hard to say just what is going on with this latest antic. | | |
The Trump administration said Wednesday it is taking over management of Union Station, the latest step in President Trump’s aggressive intervention in the nation’s capital. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced, while also unveiling new high-speed Acela trains going into service this week.
“Instead of being a point of pride, Washington’s Union Station has fallen into disrepair,” Duffy said in a statement. “By reclaiming station management, we will help make this city safe and beautiful at a fraction of the cost.”
| | Editor's Note: The carriers have their “pattern”.. a tentative deal with the Signalmen sold as progress but built on a weak foundation that leaves workers behind. An 18.8% raise over five years barely keeps pace with inflation, while small perks are waved as proof of victory. The first agreement sets the floor, and that floor is already low. This isn’t progress.. it’s pacification, designed to keep rail labor quiet while profits surge. | | |
The National Carriers Conference Committee (NCCC) on Aug. 26 reported reaching a tentative national agreement with the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen
The agreement, which is subject to ratification, is consistent with the terms set by dozens of local and national contracts between railroads and unions that have been ratified as part of the 2025 bargaining round, according to the NCCC.
The terms of these pattern agreements provide:
- “Wage increases of 18.8% over five years. Based on current inflation projections, this increase will translate to real wage growth for covered railroaders along with pay certainty for the life of the contract.
- “Enhancements to world-class health and welfare benefits with no increase to the employee contribution rate. Employees’ 2025 health care premiums have decreased to about $277/month, well below the national average of more than $500/month for employer-provided family coverage.
- “Access to more paid vacation time for employees earlier in their careers.”
| | Editor's Note: Who knows what game the "Oracle of Omaha" is playing here. The fact remains - as stated in the final paragraph of this article - that a successful UP-NS combination mitigates that a BNSF-CSX merger is practically inexorable. And regardless of what Buffet says, he is only going to be around for another few years. | | |
BNSF Railway wants to date CSX — but has no interest in getting married. Five days after Union Pacific announced its $85 billion deal to acquire Norfolk Southern.
Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett and CEO designate Greg Abel told CSX CEO Joe Hinrichs that they would not bid for the Eastern railroad. Rather, Buffett told CNBC in an interview today, Berkshire believes that its BNSF Railway should forge closer ties with CSX to gain growth synergies without the expense and regulatory risk of a merger.
| | 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: The article below outlines a strategy for labor to win with. In face of the last 6 months of brutal attacks upon labor and the working class in general, the labor movement has hardly issued a peep. It is time for labor to assume the leadership of the fight, just like we did in the 1930s. | | |
By Erik Loomis
This is a most unfortunate Labor Day for labor. The labor movement has taken it on the chin repeatedly in the last several decades, but President Trump is the most ruthlessly antilabor president since before the Great Depression.
If the labor movement does not fight harder than it has since Mr. Trump regained the presidency, its future will be dire. Mr. Trump and his administration have unilaterally stripped collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal workers. At the Department of Veterans Affairs alone, 400,000 workers, or 2.8 percent of America’s unionized workers, have lost their collective bargaining rights because of an executive order that will eventually affect more than one million federal workers.
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| Editor's Note: For the millions of workers who have experienced working union, the findings of this report may come as no surprise. For all of their shortcomings and imperfections - which rail workers often complain about bitterly - unions deliver the goods for working people. They remain the best bet for workers who wants better wages, benefits and working conditions. | | |
A new Economic Policy Institute report documents the strong correlation between higher levels of unionization and a range of economic, personal, and democratic well-being measures. In the same way unions give workers a voice at work, with a direct impact on wages and working conditions, the data suggest that unions also give workers a voice in shaping their communities. Where workers have this power, states have more equitable economic, social, and democratic structures.
The report finds that unions:
- Boost wages. A worker covered by a union contract earns 12.8% more in wages than a peer in a nonunionized workplace, on average. But unions don’t just help union workers—they help all workers by setting higher standards that nonunion employers must meet to attract and retain the workers they need.
| | Editor's Note: It is time for the Labor Movement to take note and wake up! They are gunning for us and with this ruling, unions as we know them are about to be outlawed. It is time to fight back with everything we have .. or we will not have a labor movement in the coming years to fight back with. All hands on deck! The National Mediation Board and the Railway Labor Act will be next if this stands. Railroad workers have been in the forefront historically of the working class fight. It is time for us to resume that position! | | |
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with SpaceX earlier this week, ruling that the National Labor Relations Board’s current structure is unconstitutional. The decision will keep the agency hamstrung until the case makes its way to the Supreme Court. or the last year or so, federal district court judges in the Fifth Circuit have been enjoining the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from processing unfair labor practice charges against employers in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. I’ve written a couple of pieces about this including this one in September of last year
| | Editor's Note: The extraordinary attacks on the ranks of working people in the last 6 months have exceeded anything we have seen for decades. The all-encompassing nature of this asault seems to suggest that the powers-that-be want to completely destroy what is left of the labor movement in the United States. | | |
In countries across the capitalist world, trade union movements are being challenged to their very core by the growth of right-wing populist and neo-fascist mass movements. What makes this situation especially dangerous is that labor unions and supporters are facing not just maniacal leaders or even military juntas, but a strengthening political alignment between segments of the capitalist class and these same right-wing social movements. The post-Cold War rise of right-wing populism overlapped with, but had different roots than, neoliberal authoritarianism which, over the second half of the 20th century, curtailed the growth for left and progressive politics, while the ability to protest became increasingly limited. During this period, capitalist states reduced their role in any degree of wealth redistribution and enhanced their repressive apparatuses.
| | 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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