Rail & Labor News from RWU
| | Weekly Digest Number 30 - July 22, 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: Merger talks between Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern are more than just boardroom whispers, they’re a declaration of war on workers, communities, and common sense. This isn’t about connecting coasts. It’s about consolidating power, crushing competition, and cutting jobs to juice stock prices. We’ve seen this movie before: longer trains, fewer workers, and safety pushed to the brink while executives cash out. If the STB signs off on this, it won’t be regulation, it’ll be surrender. Rail labor had better wake up and organize like everything depends on it.. because it does.
| | Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern discuss merger to create transcontinental railroad, AP source says | |
AP News / July 17th
Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern are in merger talks to create the largest railroad in North America that would connect the East and West Coasts.
The merger discussions began during the first quarter of this year, according to a person familiar with the talks who isn’t authorized to discuss them publicly. It would combine the largest and smallest of the country’s six major freight railroads.
Both railroads declined to comment.
Within the industry there is widespread debate over whether such a merger would be approved by the Surface Transportation Board even though those regulators approved the deal that created CPKC railroad two years ago with the Canadian Pacific’s $31 billion acquisition of Kansas City Southern railroad.
| | Editor's Note: Gareth Dennis reminds us that railroads have a past shaped by exploitation, but they don’t have to have a future shaped by it. His vision is clear: rail can be a force for equity, climate action, and public good if we stop letting it be ruled by short-term profit. | |
High Speed Rail Alliance / July 11th
Engineer and writer Gareth Dennis joined us from the UK to discuss his new book How the Railways Will Fix the Future. In it, he looks at the history of railways (including the role they have played in extraction and exploitation) but focuses on their power to tackle issues facing us today and to shape a better future.
Topics for discussion include lessons to learn from global railway operations on what works best long-term, and what this might mean in the United States.
| | Editor's Note: Unifor’s agreement with VIA Rail shows what’s possible when workers are willing to strike and leadership doesn’t blink. Wage bumps, better pensions, and paid sick time shouldn’t feel like victories, they should be standard. But in this era, even modest gains require a credible strike threat. Rail labor everywhere should take note: the boss only listens when you’re loud enough to walk. | |
Progressive Railroading / July 18th
Unifor Council 4000 and Local 100 members have ratified a new three-year collective agreement with VIA Rail Canada.
The agreement calls for 3% annual wage increases, pension improvements with a 100% employer match, improved benefits coverage and frontloaded sick days with a payout option for unused days, Unifor officials said in a press release. The agreement runs through Dec. 31, 2027.
During the bargaining process, negotiators could not reach a tentative agreement before a May 31 federally mandated reconciliation. However, it was reached prior to a June 22 potential strike date, which was approved by Unifor voters.
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| Editor's Note: The irony here is of course that Trump had called - during his three previous presidential campaign runs - for the U.S. to move forward with high speed rail development, while Republicans have worked tirelessly to block federal funding, contributing to its slow pace of progress in California. After a decade of infrastructure now completed - and the track laying phase set to begin - Trump revokes these funds. | |
Progressive Railroading / July 17th
The Federal Railroad Administration under President Donald Trump has terminated about $4 billion in unspent federal funding for California’s high-speed rail project, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced yesterday.
In addition to canceling the $4 billion slated for the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA), Duffy has directed the FRA to review other obligated and unobligated grants related to the CHSRA project. The U.S. Department of Transportation will also consult with the U.S. Department of Justice on the finding of FRA’s recent compliance review, including potentially clawing back funding related to the project and other potential issues, according to a USDOT press release.
The decision to revoke the federal funding follows the FRA's recent compliance review that found the project has no viable path forward, according to USDOT. Yesterday, USDOT officials said the CHSRA was given two opportunities to respond in a way that was consistent with the grant agreements, but neither response addressed FRA’s concerns.
| | Editor's Note: These figures - likewise with record ridership at Amtrak - show that there is huge pent-up demand for passenger rail services in the United States. Short-sighted self-serving politicians together with Class One opposition combine to stand in the way of passenger train development. We need a movement of workers, passengers, shippers, environmental activists and trackside communities to come together and demand the passenger rail service our people deserve! | |
Progressive Railroading / July 15th
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority achieved record-breaking ridership and on-time performance on New York City Transit, Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) and Metro-North Railroad in the first six months of the year.
Subway ridership was up 8% over the first half of 2024 levels, LIRR ridership was up 9% and Metro-North ridership was up 6%.
Weekday subway on-time performance in the first six months of 2025 was 83.7%, up 2.4% from the same point last year. The subway is on track for the best non-pandemic year in its history, MTA officials said in a press release. Weekday subway delays were down 11%, while weekend delays were down 14%. LIRR's on time performance of 95.9% was up 1.4% from 2024, and Metro-North's on time performance rate was 98%.
| | Editor's Note: Michael Dewaine Townsend was 39 years old. He didn’t die in some freak accident, he died doing a dangerous job in a system that treats safety as a cost to be managed. Remote-control switching, close clearances, night work.. none of this is new, and none of it is safe without real oversight and enough hands on the ground. The railroads will call it a tragedy. We call it what it is: preventable. Until labor forces change, they’ll keep writing eulogies instead of safety plans. | |
Trains Magazine / July 16th
A Fairfield Southern Co. employee involved in remote-control switching died from injuries suffered when he struck a railcar on an adjacent track, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a preliminary report on the June 16, 2025, accident issued today (July 16, 2025).
During switching work at the U.S. Steel Flintridge Yard in Fairfield, Ala., at about 9:53 p.m., the employee, a footboard yardmaster, was riding the lead car in a shoving move from track 1 to track 4. During that move, the lead car passed a section of track with close clearances from railcars on the adjacent track 3; at some point, the footboard yardmaster called for the radio control operator to stop, and the operator placed the train into emergency braking. The injured employee requested medical assistance and emergency services were dispatched, but the footboard yardmaster died while being transported to a nearby hospital.
NTSB reports do not identify those involved, but a news report said Michael Dewaine Townsend, 39, died from blunt force injuries.
| | Editor's Note: A conductor lies broken because a car rolled back, and the rulebook never told him to expect it. This is what happens when railroads prioritize liability over life: they write just enough rules to cover themselves, not enough to protect us. The coupler was defective, but so is a system where safety depends on what’s written down, not what’s right. Until labor rewrites the terms.. louder, stronger, and unafraid, these “accidents” will keep happening, and the industry will keep pretending they’re unforeseeable. | |
Trains Magazine / July 15th
A Norfolk Southern conductor suffered serious injuries in an accident in Norfolk, Va., when he did not confirm that rolling stock was stationary before working in the path of a free-rolling car — and NS operating rules did not explicitly address the need to do so.
The NTSB issued its final report on the incident today (July 15, 2025).
The incident occurred about 10:10 p.m. local time. A crew switching coal hoppers at the Lambert’s Point Yard made multiple attempts to couple one car to a string of 19 behind the locomotive; on the last of these, the 20th car rolled upgrade, and the conductor asked the engineer to stop the train and apply three-step protection to prevent the train from moving. Less than a minute later, the conductor was struck by the loose car, which had rolled back downgrade. NTSB investigators discovered that the last car on the string, No. 19, had a defective coupler that prevented it from coupling to the 20th car.
| | Editor's Note: CPKC turned a service crisis into a smash-and-grab.. gutting jobs and slashing hours while blaming the very chaos they helped create. Now SMART-TD members are left to decide if a strike is their only way to be seen. This is what corporate railroading looks like: cut the workforce, overload the rest, and dare them to flinch. But workers built this industry, not executives. And if labor has the courage to shut it down, they just might remind them who really runs the railroad. | |
Freight Waves / July 13th
A CPKC union is conducting a strike poll of members, claiming the railroad took advantage of a service crisis to make workplace job changes on the troubled Kansas City Southern network.
The International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers (SMART-TD) Local 457’s General Committee of Adjustment is polling members on a possible strike vote, General Chairman Samuel Habjan confirmed in a brief phone interview with FreightWaves late Saturday. The results of the poll are expected today. Habjan would not speculate on the results of the poll, or the union’s plans.
An email signed by “union members local 781” and obtained by FreightWaves claimed that the railroad was using the service crisis to cut jobs and reduce some employees’ working hours.
| | Editor's Note: A trainee was killed doing what he was told, the way he was taught.. and the NTSB laid it bare: the rules were weak, the training was worse, and no one in power bothered to fix it. This wasn’t a tragic oversight; it was a system designed to rush new hires onto the rails without the tools to stay alive. The industry talks safety, but it trains for speed and hopes for luck. If rail labor doesn’t demand accountability at every level, we’ll keep burying the next generation before they even get qualified. | |
Trains Magazine / July 17th
The death of a CSX conductor trainee in a June 2023 incident in Baltimore is an indication of broader safety and training gaps in the rail industry, the National Transportation Safety Board said.
In the June 26, 2023, incident, an individual in phase II of conductor training was killed when he fell from an intermodal railcar during a shoving move at the Seagirt Marine Terminal, and was struck by the train he had been riding.
The NTSB report says its investigation found the trainee was in an unsafe riding position during the move, leaving him vulnerable to slipping and falling into the train’s path. Contributing factors, the report says, were deficient CSX operating rules, which did not provide adequate protection against slipping; deficient CSX training, which not adequately address how to safely ride on intermodal railcars; and a lack of federal research to help address safe riding practices.
| | Editor's Note: The author John Paul Wright worked for CSX for many years and is an RWU member, previously serving many terms on the Steering Committee in a number of roles including Organizer. | | |
Have you ever imagined the thrill of operating a train? This captivating book takes you on a journey through a remarkable sixteen-year railroad career. It begins with the author's transformative experience at a railroad conductor school in the vibrant city of Cincinnati, Ohio, where the foundations of train operation were established.
The book concludes with a difficult decision to leave the rails, driven by weariness from over-union organizing and a moment of following one's bliss into the world of American folk music. Each chapter illuminates the challenges and triumphs encountered, painting an authentic portrait of a life dedicated to the rails, radical labor music and the union.
| | Editor's Note: The author Mike Elliott was a railroader for many years in the Pacific Northwest, who filed a whistleblower case and won, only to have it appealed by the carrier and thrown into the courts. He won there. The carrier appealed. He won on appeal! This is his story. Essential reading for any railroad worker who wishes to file a whistleblower case against their employer. | | |
This is the incredible true story of railroad worker and union official Mike Elliott, targeted by his railroad employer, BNSF Railway Company, for his safety-related activities. As the union's state legislative board chair, Elliott was the top safety official in the state, and the voice for over 900 rank & file locomotive engineers operating trains around the clock, every day of the year.
When his members reported a plethora of trackside signal malfunctions on the BNSF Seattle subdivision, Elliott went to the railroad first, asking that they fix the problems. When the BNSF failed to act, he contacted the government's regulatory authority, the Federal Railroad Administration. That led to an FRA inspection of over 130 miles of the railroad's track and signal systems turning up hundreds of federal defects – all with potential to put workers and the public at risk.
What followed was a retaliation plot reminiscent of the Nineteenth Century Robber Barons: A management-staged conflict at work, police called in, arrest, jail, criminal charges, and termination from his job – not once but twice.
| | 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: There were once two million railroad jobs in the U.S. alone. Over the course of the last century, the vast majority no longer exist, many lost due to technological changes. Now, AI has the potential to eliminate many more that remain. RWU hopes to play a role in combating this threat. The officials of what remains of the scattered rail unions would be wise to come together and present a united front to defend what we have left. | |
Jacobin / July 15th
Creeping anxiety about AI-driven job loss has spilled into public consciousness.
A decade ago, there were conversations at Silicon Valley house parties about universal basic income as a fix for the impending wave of automation. A year ago, computer scientists began elaborating their predictions not just on the open-access archive arXiv but as elegantly formatted self-standing websites, such as Situational Awareness (recommended by Ivanka Trump) and Gradual Disempowerment, followed by AI 2027 (read by J. D. Vance).
This past month, from Barack Obama’s X feed to Time magazine to the New York Times, AI job anxiety has gone mainstream. Faced with the sensation of being atop a roller coaster about to pitch into the unknown, normal responses include emotionally detaching — or chalking the grand predictions up to hype. It is of course the business model of these tech companies to promise their products can save money by replacing labor; they need us to believe it.
| | Editor's Note: Perhaps it is time for rail workers and truckers to come together to fight for regulations to ensure that workers who transport hazardous materials are safe. | | Truckers, tired of being exposed to hazardous waste, call on the feds for help | |
In These Times / July 18th
A seemingly unlikely coalition of oil and gas workers and environmentalists have joined forces to ask the federal government for help.
On June 4, the driver advocacy group Truckers Movement for Justice and Ohio Valley Allies, Earthjustice, Oilfield Witness and several other environmental groups sent a letter to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and top officials at the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. They made a simple request: that regulations around the transportation of hazardous materials be enforced.
It’s not the kind of thing one should need to ask, really, but these particular regulations concern oil and gas waste. The industry generates both an enormous amount of toxic byproducts and the kind of money — and therefore, power — that both boggles the mind and rules nations.
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Work Bites / July 16th
This past April, labor advocates for single payer health care published a white paper called, “Medicare Advantage: What Labor Leaders Need to Know.”
In it, the authors remind labor leaders—including those in New York City who spent the last four years trying to push 250,000 municipal retirees into Medicare Advantage—that Medicare Advantage is “neither Medicare (the public, universal program without intermediaries between patients and the healthcare they need), nor is it an Advantage, except to profit-driven insurance companies.”
What Medicare Advantage is, the white paper goes on to say is “another Wall Street privatization scheme of raiding public funds for private profit much like the attacks on public schools, water systems, and even parking meters. With support from both the Democratic and Republican parties, Medicare is just the latest target, and the privatization is happening rapidly.”
| | 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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