Rail & Labor News from RWU
| | Weekly Digest Number 31 - August 4, 2026 | | 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: Before we start gloating about CPKC's performance vs. the other Class One carriers, please consider the following: 1 - the routes are fairly short on CPKC compared to the routes running on the other carriers; 2 - a lot of public money has been pumped in to infrastructure to facilitate these trains, especially the Chicago - Milwaukee - Twin Cities route over the years; 3 - the eastern routes listed are lightly trafficked by freight trains; a few years ago Amtrak agreed to support the CP's bid to acquire the KCS if a combined CPKC made concessions to Amtrak. So at the end of the day, CPKC is not just being a "good host" here. They win the award every year - and will most likely continue to - because it is easy to. | |
Progressive Railroading / July 27th
Amtrak has named CPKC its best host railroad for 2025, the 10th consecutive year CPKC, and Canadian Pacific before it, has earned that recognition.
Amtrak’s Host Railroad Report Card ranks freight railroads based on their ability to keep Amtrak intercity passenger trains running on time. CPKC was one of two Class Is, along with Norfolk Southern Railway, to earn an A rating from Amtrak in 2025 and the only Class I to do so in 2024.
The Best Host Railroad award is based on Host Responsible Delays per 10,000 train miles, CPKC officials said in a press release.
At a ceremony at CPKC’s U.S. Operations Center in Kansas City, Missouri, on July 24, Amtrak Assistant VP, Host Railroads, Tamara Noel presented a plaque to CPKC team members.
| | Editor's Note: Every age produces those who insist that greater economic power will somehow produce greater public good. History asks a more difficult question: Who gains the power, who bears the risk, and who holds the power accountable once the decision can no longer be undone? Those are the questions that matter long after the press releases have been forgotten. | |
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Progressive Railroading / July 28th
Union Pacific Railroad and Norfolk Southern Railway met the Surface Transportation Board's July 27 deadline to submit supplemental information to support the Class Is' revised merger application.
The STB accepted UP-NS' revised merger application on May 28, with a caveat that the railroads submit further information for the board to review. The railroads submitted the first portion of required supplemental information on July 7.
Yesterday's submission of supplemental information also included four new or expanded commitments, UP and NS officials said in a joint press release. If the $85 billion transaction is approved by the STB, UP-NS is promising new competitive opportunities for committed gateway pricing, expanded customer protections for competitive Class I access, new service level protections and stronger oversight of post-merger benefits.
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Progressive Railroading / July 30th
The Government of Canada is investing CA$1.95 billion to renew VIA Rail's long-distance, regional and remote locomotive fleet while bringing passenger locomotive assembly back to the country for the first time in decades.
Canada allocated CA$1.6 billion for the production of 45 new locomotives by Stadler. The Swiss rail manufacturer has a global center of competence facility for mainline locomotives in Spain; Stadler will leverage both global and Canadian supply chain partners to complete up to 36 locomotives in Canada.
Another CA$357 million is allocated to VIA Rail for construction of a new assembly and maintenance facility in Montreal, Quebec, where the Canadian locomotive assembly will take place. To be built by Pomerleau, the facility will support the maintenance and operation of the new fleet at VIA Rail's Montreal Maintenance Centre in the long term, Transport Canada officials said in a press release.
| | Editor's Note: Civilizations have rarely lost their liberty in a single dramatic moment. More often, they surrendered it piece by piece, persuading themselves that each new concentration of power was merely practical, efficient, or inevitable. The question before any generation is not whether power can be made larger, but whether it has already grown too large to remain accountable. | |
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Trains Magazine / July 29th
The additional merger information that Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern provided federal regulators this week does nothing to fix the proposed combination’s major flaws, CPKC CEO Keith Creel says.
Speaking with analysts on the railway’s earnings call today (July 29), Creel was critical of the UP-NS supplemental filing with the Surface Transportation Board and took a dim view of the UP-Canadian National deals that were announced last week.
Creel credited UP and NS for taking steps to ensure that a post-merger UP does not control the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis or the Kansas City Terminal.
But otherwise the merger’s unresolved flaws include a significant reduction in shippers’ competitive options, a history of anti-competitive behavior by UP, and the creation of a railroad that’s too big to fail, Creel says.
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| Editor's Note: The purpose of oversight is not to eliminate disagreement, but to ensure that disagreement is heard before decisions become irreversible. Lasting public confidence is built not by silencing critics, but by requiring every claim to withstand careful examination. In matters of lasting consequence, skepticism is not an obstacle to progress.. it is one of its safeguards. | |
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Trains Magazine / July 28th
Not surprisingly, opponents of the Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger remain unmoved by the two railroads’ latest regulatory filing addressing plans for their union.
BNSF CEO Katie Farmer and the Stop the Rail Merger Coalition have both issued statements reiterating their opposition in the wake of Monday’s UP-NS filing to address questions from the Surface Transportation Board about matters including competition, market share, and the impact of other mergers their deal might trigger.
Farmer, in a four-paragraph statement issued today (Tuesday, July 28), says that elements highlighted by UP and NS in Monday’s filing, including an expansion of their Committed Gateway Pricing proposal, “are more of the same — processes with multiple caveats that are difficult to understand, available to very few customers, and only available for very short periods of time. They do nothing meaningful to mitigate the massive anticompetitive impacts of 50% market share held by one company.”
| | Editor's Note: Working people have already paid for the security they were promised. The question is whether government will provide the institutions necessary to honor that promise with the same diligence with which it collected the contributions. A right delayed by administrative neglect is too often experienced as a right denied. | |
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Transportation Trades Division / July 30th
Today, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) met to consider several bills and voted unanimously to advance S. 4965, the Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) Stability Act of 2026.
Since 1935, the RRB has administered retirement, survivor, disability, unemployment, and sickness benefits for rail workers, retirees, and their families. Despite having a solvent, self-sustaining funding stream — provided by payroll taxes paid by rail workers and employers — the RRB still relies on Congress to determine the amount of administrative funding it may use to pay for the expenses necessary for administering benefits. Years of chronic underfunding have caused temporary closures at RRB field offices around the country, unacceptable mounting delays in processing benefits, and the inability to modernize outdated operating and processing systems that further contribute to an ever-growing claims backlog.
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Trains Magazine / July 30th
Freight car inventory at the Belt Railway of Chicago’s Clearing Yard has topped 5,000 for the first time in data going back to 2017, pushing up dwell times and prompting an analyst to sound an alarm about potential congestion at the busiest classification yard in the Windy City.
Volume at the twin hump yard has generally trended higher since CSX downgraded its Barr Yard and shifted much of its classification work to Clearing Yard.
“The BRC has inventory breakpoints that trigger remedial action. The first is a ‘yellow alert’ when average daily inventory at Clearing hits 4,800 and ‘red alert’ when it reaches 5,100. We’re now between the two,” analyst Rick Paterson notes in his latest State of the Rails Report, based on Surface Transportation Board data.
Cars spent an average of 31 hours at Clearing last week, up from its normal range of 15 to 20 hours. The only time dwell was higher in recent years, Paterson notes, was during the 2021 polar vortex.
| | Editor's Note: There is an old habit of treating labor as a cost while treating capital as an achievement. Railroad workers built these systems with their skill, their sacrifice, and too often with their lives. They deserve to be regarded as stakeholders, not savings. A society that measures progress by the number of livelihoods it can eliminate has mistaken efficiency for justice. | |
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Axios / July 29th
Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern project 1,138 workforce reductions and 546 transfers from their proposed deal, they disclosed in a filing Monday.
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Union Pacific employed more than 29,000 workers and Norfolk Southern had more than 19,000 as of the end of 2025.
Why it matters: The Surface Transportation Board ordered employee impacts be reported publicly by Monday.
Between the lines: The exhibit was already filed with the STB as confidential, but the board decided it wasn't privileged information.
Zoom in: Union Pacific job cuts are based on attrition assumptions and were factored into Norfolk Southern considerations, the railroads said.
By the numbers: The railroads expect nearly 700 job eliminations in the first year, nearly 300 in the second, and almost 160 in the third.
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| Editor's Note: Democracy does not ask the powerful to explain themselves because it distrusts success. It asks because no private enterprise, however prosperous, is entitled to public authority without public accountability. Every unanswered question belongs not to the applicant, but to the people who will live with the consequences long after the proceedings have ended. | |
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Stop The Rail Merger Coalition / July 27th
Stop the Rail Merger Coalition responded to Union Pacific (UP) and Norfolk Southern’s (NS) submission of supplemental information filed today to address serious gaps the Surface Transportation Board (STB) identified in the companies’ merger application.
This marks yet another time UP and NS have gone back to fill holes in their own application. The companies’ original filing was incomplete, and their amended filing fell short. In May, the STB gave the two companies until July 27 to provide new material, saying that “completeness” was not the same as showing a merger was in the public interest. Now, months later, they are submitting a third round of material because regulators keep finding the same problem: this deal does not add up, no matter how it is packaged.
“Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern have had multiple opportunities to show that this merger serves the public interest and enhances competition. They have failed every time,” said the Stop the Rail Merger Coalition. “You cannot paper over a bad deal that fuels monopoly power by giving one company control over nearly half of the rail traffic in the U.S., raises costs on farmers and manufacturers, and puts thousands of rail jobs at risk.”
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Governor Dan McKee / July 23rd
At the site of the Pawtucket and Central Falls train station, Governor Dan McKee held a ceremonial signing of bills H7608/S2913 requiring a minimum of two crew members to operate any train or light engine carrying freight. Joining the Governor were bill sponsors Representative Matthew Dawson and Senator Lammis Vargas, as well as the New England Chair of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen Daniel Cadogan and the New England Safety and Legislative Director of SMART-TD Dave Stevenson.
“Requiring two crew members on a train carrying freight is a commonsense safety measure,” said Governor McKee. “If an issue arises on a delivery route, you need two crew members on board—one to operate the train and a second person to address the problem.”
“This is commonsense public safety legislation,” said Representative Matthew S. Dawson (D-Dist. 65, East Providence). “Just like commercial airliners are required to have two licensed pilots on every plane, freight trains, which can consist of dozens or even hundreds of cars carrying heavy and sometimes hazardous loads, shouldn’t be entirely reliant on a single individual.”
| | Editor's Note: Every generation of working people has been told that now is not the time to raise its voice. Yet nearly every right labor enjoys today exists because someone refused to accept that answer. A nation should be cautious whenever the machinery of law is used to quiet those whose only lasting leverage is their labor. | |
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Trains Magazine / July 30th
A federal judge has again granted a request by CSX to block a potential strike or other “self-help” by members of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers-Transportation Division.
In a decision on Wednesday, July 29, Judge Wendy Berger of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida granted a preliminary injunction to prevent self-help actions by SMART-TD members in a dispute over CSX attendance and discipline policies.
Berger had previously granted a temporary restraining order in the dispute [see “Court blocks possible strike …,” Trains.com, July 16, 2026]. But that action is limited to a 10-day duration until the court can conduct a hearing; the preliminary injunction will be in effect until the case is decided or otherwise settled.
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| 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: Obviously, the Feds have no reason to prosecute a union man who was engaged in a legal public action. The Justice Department has been systematically attempting to thwart working peoples' democratic expression, and the arrest and threat of imprisonment of a high profile union leader was designed to quell labor dissent. | |
The AP / July 27th
The Justice Department has moved to dismiss its criminal case against a labor union leader who was arrested while protesting the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in California.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles filed a motion Monday to dismiss its case against David Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union California, which has more than 750,000 members including janitors, security officers and other workers. The government will seek to have the case permanently withdrawn within weeks if Huerta continues to comply with the terms of his pretrial release and stays out of trouble, prosecutors said.
Huerta said in a statement that he was tackled, pepper-sprayed and detained for exercising his constitutional rights to protest and cast the case against him as part of a broader “weaponization of the judicial system.”
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Labor Notes / Event on September 2nd
What's the secret to winning a strong contract?
Hint: You won't find it at the negotiations table!
Save the date for a two-part workshop from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern on Wednesdays, September 2 and 9, on how to build a successful contract campaign and harness the power of the rank-and-file membership to win the strongest possible contract.
Registration fee: $15 - Regular registration
We will cover the basics of building a Contract Action Team (CAT), putting together an escalating campaign (potentially culminating in a strike), and dynamics between the bargaining committee, CAT, and the membership.
This workshop is for union members looking to build their skills for contract campaigns. We recommend that you register with a group of your coworkers if possible.
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AFL-CIO
Extreme heat has engulfed the nation, with cities coast to coast breaking all-time heat records this summer. But while workers continue to face dangerous and potentially deadly working conditions, anti-worker leaders in Congress are quietly attempting to stop any heat safety protection laws from being passed, now or in the future.
H.R. 6213, the misnamed Heat Workforce Standards Act, would prohibit the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) from creating or enforcing any national heat safety law.
Tell Congress to protect workers from heat—and not block heat safety protections. Dial 844-937-2517 or fill out the form on this page to make a call.
Working in extreme heat, both inside and outside, makes workers vulnerable to heat-related illness and even death. It’s a difficult problem to track as heat-related deaths and illnesses are not always recorded as such. As a result, this is a serious problem that is undercounted.
| | 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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