Rail & Labor News from RWU
| | Weekly Digest Number 43 - October 21, 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: As we go to press, another needless fatality. We do not know yet why this happened, but we can always speculate - fatigue, lack of training, overwork, etc. We will report more fully in issue #44 of this e-newsletter next week. | | |
Trains Staff / October 20
The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the death of a BNSF conductor struck by a train on Sunday (Oct. 19, 2025), the agency has announced.
The fatality occurred about 9:40 a.m. in Columbus, KTVQ-TV reports. BNSF and Columbus police, as well as the Stillwater County Sheriff’s Office, were also investigating the incident. Columbus is about 40 miles west of Billings on BNSF’s MRL Subdivision, the former Montana Rail Link.
| | Editor's Note: Yet another article that urges caution when it comes to these mega rail mergers. STB ad politicians should take note. | |
Jim Dodds / October 10
We are on the cusp of what has the potential to be one of the most transformational times in the history of U.S. railroading. On July 24 of this year, Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern announced what had been rumored for a few weeks prior: The two would seek the first-ever transcontinental U.S. railroad merger, uniting lines connecting both coasts under a single banner.
While this has the potential to be groundbreaking in the railroads’ abilities to compete more directly with major nationwide trucking companies, it comes under the shadow of significant uncertainty, including integration challenges with combining two massive operations, the concerns of shippers and labor unions, and regulatory concerns—chiefly, the Surface Transportation Board’s significantly more complex and untested 2001 merger rules adopted after the denied merger of BNSF and CN from 1999-2000. While I intend to touch on all these issues, I’m primarily focused on what will likely be necessary to obtain approval under the new rules, focusing especially on the competition enhancement—an STB requirement.
| | Editor's Note: Ostensibly this is a good idea, one that has been proposed for decades. But in the context of proposed cuts to Amtrak and passenger rail, the shrinkage of domestic freight service ad PSR, it is absurd. When and only when, North America embarks upon the establishment of a robust rail network, does this idea make sense. | |
Andrew Osborn / October 17
Russia and the United States should build a "Putin-Trump" rail tunnel under the Bering Strait to link their countries, unlock joint exploration of natural resources and "symbolise unity", a Kremlin envoy has suggested.
The proposal by Kirill Dmitriev, President Vladimir Putin's investment envoy and head of Russia's RDIF sovereign wealth fund, envisages a construction project costing $8 billion, funded by Moscow and "international partners", to build a 70-mile (112-km) rail and cargo link in under eight years.
Dmitriev, who has struck up a working relationship with Steve Witkoff, Trump's special envoy, suggested U.S. energy majors could join Russian projects in the Arctic, and proposed that the tunnel be built by The Boring Company, a U.S. tunnel construction company owned by U.S. billionaire and sometime Trump ally Elon Musk.
"Imagine connecting the US and Russia, the Americas and the Afro-Eurasia with the Putin-Trump Tunnel - a 70-mile link symbolizing unity. Traditional costs are $65B+, but @boringcompany's tech could reduce it to <$8B. Let's build a future together," Dmitriev wrote to Musk on X.
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| Editor's Note: Fatigue is of course the major reason behind any failure of train crews to properly follow signal indications. Short of PTC implementation, fatigue must e dealt with. Whatever the case, Canada is one sever train wreck away from mandating PTC, just as the Chatsworth, CA wreck in 2008 ushered in a new era in U.S. railroading nearly 20 years ago. | | |
Incidents in which train crews fail to recognize and follow signal indications remain one of Canada’s key transportation safety issues, the Transportation Safety Board said this week in updating its ongoing Watchlist of such issues. It also noted that fatigue management continues to be an issue across all modes of transportation.
“These are complex and long-standing issues, but they are not unsolvable,” Yoan Marier, chair of the TSB, said in a press release. “Real progress requires leadership, accountability, concerted efforts, and sustained action by both industry and regulators.”
The TSB’s listing on the signal issue notes that the agency has called repeatedly for “physical fail-safe defences,” like the U.S. positive train control system, to address the problem. “Canadian railways operating in the U.S. are required to have PTC, but the same protection is not mandatory in Canada, creating a significant safety disparity on an integrated North American network.”
| | Editor's Note: Shippers like this one are becoming more ad more alarmed at the prospects of a UP-NS consolidation. Are they making this stuff up? Are they crying wolf? No, they have been through this game before ad know what awaits them - melt-downs, fewer options, higher rates, lousy service. | | |
The CEOs of 40 chemical manufacturers warned President Donald Trump today that the proposed Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger will reduce rail competition, drive up rates, and make their companies less competitive in global markets.
“You have committed to restoring American manufacturing, strengthening domestic supply chains, and outcompeting global rivals and we … fully support those goals. To achieve them, we require a rail system that delivers for U.S. manufacturers and consumers,” the CEOs, whose companies are members of the American Chemistry Council, wrote in a letter to the president. “That means we need more rail-to-rail competition, not less. We respectfully urge you to continue challenging anticompetitive regulations and support a strong STB that can help build a rail network that supports the needs of American manufacturers and consumers.”
| | 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 latest Wall Street bubble in the making is Artificial Intelligence. Workers beware! The whole drive behind it is displacement of workers - both skilled ad unskilled - to make money for wealthy stockholders. | |
AFL-CIO / October 15
There is a path where new technology makes work better and safer, with good union jobs that have fair pay and better job quality. In this vision, working people have economic security, knowing that companies and public agencies must follow rules to make sure technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) is used safely, responsibly, and fairly. These rules put people first, and include worker input in the research and development (R&D) process, during development and deployment, and at the collective bargaining table where they negotiate protections with employers.
Throughout our history, unions have been at the center of technological change, have managed through major transitions, and have fought to ensure that new technologies serve workers and their communities, and make jobs better and safer. But AI shouldn’t repeat the mistakes of the past...
| | Editor's Note: Workers need to look to the past for organizing strategies that worked - mass strikes, sit-down strikes, member mobilizations of all sorts. Yes we also need to look to the future and adopt new tactics and strategies to an evolving world ad economy. | |
Peter Olney and Rand Wilson / October 16
For workers to survive Trump’s MAGA moment and build a fighting labor movement for the future, both electoral politics (something old) and militant actions to disrupt business as usual (something new for many unions) will be key.
In the same way that union members confront a bad boss, the way to stop an authoritarian takeover is with continued, escalating collective action. Early on in Trump’s second term, veteran union organizer Stephen Lerner made that recommendation, urging labor to throw caution to the wind and take bold action against Trump’s attacks.
| | Editor's Note: One of the major reasons to work union is that you have the right to "just cause," ad cannot be fired or otherwise disciplined without it. Just what is it? And how do we exercise our rights to it. Come to this workshop and fid out. All Local Chairmen and VLCs encouraged to attend! | | |
Labor Notes
Just cause is the keystone of the union contract, protecting members from unwarranted and excessive discipline. But many of its most important secrets have been restricted to arbitrators and labor professionals.
Join Labor Notes October 27, 2025, 7:30 pm EDT for a Steward's Workshop on Just Cause, where we'll talk about what it is, what it isn't, and how stewards can use it to vigorously enforce the rights of members.
This workshop will be based on the popular resource, "Just Cause: A Union Guide to Winning Discipline Cases" (available from Labor Notes), by veteran labor attorney Robert Schwartz.
| | 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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