We are inspired by the courage of the people of Los Angeles and join in their call for Brother Huerta’s release, and the release of all those who have been persecuted in the Trump Administration’s vicious and hateful raids.

Make no mistake – Brother Huerta’s arrest and the ongoing violence directed at our immigrant communities constitute an attack on the entire working class. We must stand together and fight for our sisters and brothers who are being harassed, arrested, detained, and deported. An injury to one is an injury to all.

In Solidarity,
Public Rail Now

The post Public Rail Now Condemns the Arrest of David Huerta and Stands in Solidarity with Immigrant Communities first appeared on Labor Today.

This violation of Brother Abrego Garcia’s rights, including the right to due process, has been acknowledged by federal courts and even the U.S. government.

That the federal government has not only dragged its feet in taking action to bring Brother Abrego Garcia home, but also inflicted further harm through the Department of Homeland Security’s exposing of Brother Abrego Garcia’s wife’s address on social media, in unconscionable and despicable beyond words.

Please join us in supporting Brother Abrego Garcia and his family and fighting to bring him home. An injury to one is an injury to all!

In Solidarity,
Public Rail Now

The post Public Rail Now Solidarity Statement with Kilmar Abrego Garcia and SMART-TD first appeared on Labor Today.

Railroad workers would go on to reject a tentative agreement that outright ignored the demands of the rank-and-file over these conditions. Using the anti-labor Railway Labor Act, a bipartisan Congress and then President Biden would go on to force that rejected agreement onto the rail workers in December 2022. With the warnings of the railroad workers ignored, disaster would soon strike on February 3, 2023, just two months after Congress ignored the safety concerns as a Norfolk Southern train derailed right outside East Palestine, OH leading to a massive environmental disaster.

This grim situation on the railroads was a catalyst for the cross-craft caucus of rank-and-file railroad workers, Railroad Workers United (RWU), passing a resolution in support of the nationalization of the railroads. This resolution would lead to the creation of the Public Rail Now campaign which is a grassroots coalition fighting for the nationalization of the railroads using the 1920s Plumb Plan as a model.

The Plumb Plan had a call for a tripartite leadership of the railroads consisting of labor, the public, and management. Though it was a step in the right direction, it kept the same abusive bosses in at least partial leadership of the railroads. Public Rail Now has improved on this concept now pushing a tripartite leadership consisting of labor, the public, and the planet. This concept is the embodiment of the labor-led anti-monopoly coalition LUEL has been organizing for, it unites the labor movement with community and climate mass organizations to fight the monopolist railroad cartels.

The Public Rail Now campaign has already brought a large variety of groups together like RWU, LUEL, Labor Network for Sustainability, national unions like the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers Union (UE), the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), and others to organize a push to nationalize the railroads. LUEL calls on rank-and-file leaders to fight for their unions to endorse the campaign and to go to their local labor councils to push for endorsements. Look out for events throughout the country as the campaign heats up, get involved, and join the fight against the monopolists.

The post To Fight the Monopolist Railroad Cartels We Must Unite to Fight for Public Rail first appeared on Labor Today.

Like Social Security, the Railroad Retirement is funded by employees and employers through a payroll tax. Railroad Retirement costs non-railroad employees nothing. Yet, fears from railroad workers that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by the richest man on earth, Elon Musk, is looking to cut such benefits to pay for the tax cuts to billionaires. The quasi-government body has announced already to discontinue the lease of 7 buildings around the country for the RRBs to execute its mission to improve “efficiency.”

Railroaders are familiar with claims of improved “efficiency” through making cuts while increasing “throughput to customers.”  Precision Schedule Railroading, the corporate railroad method that has led to countless railroad disasters, exploitive work conditions, and less service to customers is vehemently unsupported by railroad workers unions. DOGE and Elon Musk are trying to disseminate government bodies like the Railroad Retirement Board much like what Precision Schedule Railroading (PSR) has done to the railroads in order to give the railroad workers less.

The Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, in a statement posted on its website on March 7, 2025, listed three reasons how the underfunding would affect the department:

1. The RRB’s chronic underfunding has led to severe service delays, which directly impact the railroad workers and retirees who rely on the agency. If funding remains inadequate: The average wait time for occupational disability claim adjudication will remain at 450 days — meaning retirees and beneficiaries will wait well over a year for their claims to be processed.
2. The average phone hold times are already at 4 hours, leaving members struggling to get assistance.
3. With the current executive orders and government overreach, the RRB can only hire one employee for every four who leave, making it impossible to keep up with demand and worsening service backlogs.

The bottom line is that Railroad companies do not want to pay their employees the benefits they earned. Defunding railroaders’ benefits will lead to more exploitation of an already overly exerted industry of workers. Fighting for more public power for our railroads, freight, and passengers and not less is crucial to achieving a more secure Railroad Retirement. The goal of the railroad bosses is to underfund the services to make them unreliable and faulty to make it easier to dismantle them altogether.

Support the Public Rail Now campaign if you want to protect Railroad Retirement as stated on their website “There is reason to believe that public ownership of the railroads would bode well for the Railroad Retirement System because, as outlined, increased freight traffic, electrification, infrastructure expansion, a return of passenger service, shorter and safer trains, and an emphasis on service rather than profit and job cutbacks would necessarily translate into more railroad jobs and more payers into the Railroad Retirement System.”

Support for Public Rail Now will give railroaders more security for their retirement plans but it also helps protect Social Security due to the closely tied services of both programs for benefactors. An attack on either service, Social Security or Railroad Retirement hurts all Americans. LUEL calls on the American people to support and defend Railroad Retirement through support of the Public Rail Now Campaign.

The post DOGE Attacks Already Overburdened Railroad Retirement Board first appeared on Labor Today.

It was during the 2022 battle between railroad workers and the major railroad corporations that much of the U.S. public was first exposed to the reality of what it is like to be a railroad worker.

Since then, public interest in the railroads and railroad workers has apparently waned. This is unfortunate, as the problems highlighted by the mainstream media during the 2022 battle have, for the most part, not been resolved.

For this reason, Public Rail Now, a coalition of railroad workers, labor organizers, trackside community advocates, environmental justice activists, and others demanding public ownership and operation of the U.S. rail system, launched a questionnaire and interview project to elevate the voices of railroad workers and bring the railroad industry back into the light. Over the two-month period of November and December 2024, we received over 130 questionnaire responses from railroad workers across the U.S. which were as enlightening as they were alarming. The follow-up interviews only reinforced our view that the problems in the railroad industry require bold action on the part of the federal government.

Excessive working hours, draconian attendance policies, dangerous conditions, and hostile managers, among other features, constitute a harrowing industrial situation which has not much improved since the Biden administration forced a highly unpopular contract down the railroad workers’ throats.

All the Livelong Day

According to one CSX conductor, using personal leave today is “like buying concert tickets . . . nine times out of ten, I’m either sleeping or working, so I can’t call off when I need to.” The workers in his subdivision have to compete to use leave, and with about 100 workers to compete with, it is nearly impossible for many workers to get the time off when they need it. “You’re competing with 100 other guys for that personal day,” he said. “If it’s a summertime weekend, good luck.”

The long working hours demanded by the rail corporations, reinforced by oppressive attendance policies, make it difficult for railroad workers to spend time with their loved ones. “We used to be able to take off,” a BNSF conductor told us. “Not anymore. I am seeing my family less.” To compensate for the hours spent away from spouses and children, railroad workers often eschew a full night’s rest. An already fatigued workforce is further exhausted.

It is important to note that while railroad workers are unable to spend time with their families, even on holidays, this is not the case for management. According to an engineer at UP, “Every day now is a Monday. No holidays whatsoever. Management does not work on holidays . . . They don’t have limited time off. It’s demoralizing as hell having to put up with that mentality. You’re expected to be at work and they’re spending time with their families.”

Many railroad workers, particularly those with children, are the sole wage-earners in their homes, as the severity of their work schedules complicates employment for their spouses and makes childcare difficult. “It’s hard for a spouse to get a job when you’ve got this job,” a UP conductor explained. “You never know when you’ll need a babysitter, or if your wife gets sick . . . especially with the attendance policy, it’s difficult to have a spouse working and having young kids.”

This household dynamic is one of the reasons railroad workers oftentimes stay on the job though they would prefer not to. “I need the job, my wife doesn’t work, I’ve got four kids,” a BNSF conductor said. “I haven’t been home this entire week. I’m home 12-12.5 hours at a time. Fatigued all the time. You hope to get a few hours of sleep before you go back out.”

“Orwellian Nightmare”

With few exceptions, workers – regardless of collar color – deal at some point or other with employer surveillance. On the railroads, surveillance of the workforce reaches well beyond necessary safety measures to the point of incredulity. “I’ll be honest, I saw the survey and I was nervous to fill it out,” a conductor told us. “They’ve got the eye in the sky; they’re always watching you.”

According to an engineer at UP, managers “hide in bushes, on hillsides with binoculars. We had a manager who parked his rig a mile away and he’d walk in the dark in the middle of the night and sneak up on you.” Recalling an incident that could not help but elicit a chuckle, a CSX maintenance of way worker said one day on the job “something came walking up to us out of the woods – it was a manager in a ghillie suit. I’ll put my hand on a bible for that one.”

A CSX engineer told us one of his past managers “would climb a tree – he bought night vision goggles and a radio for watching crews … he’d sit in that tree and watch you for hours.”

In addition to guerilla-style stalking, railroad managers have embraced the use of drones – sometimes to disastrous results – in their surveillance of workers. “I’ve seen the drones,” a CN engineer said. “They’ve flown them right at the conductor’s window. These managers want to make a name for themselves. They don’t care who they [expletive].”

“I know a couple of instances where a manager crashed a drone,” a CSX conductor said. “I know they got in trouble flying the drones by airports and near a chemical plant.”

A UP switchman who was injured at work expressed his frustration with the fact that cameras are often used not for worker safety, but for discipline. There were seven cameras in the area where the injury took place, but “somehow there was no footage of when it happened. Any shred of evidence of the conditions we’re working in, even the GPS data, none of that is ever available to us. It’s used against us.”

“Two words,” he said, “Orwellian nightmare.”

“You’re just a Number”

A sentiment that emerged time and again throughout the interviews is that working on the railroads is not what it used to be. “I’m a third-generation railroader,” a UP engineer said. “It’s not the railroad I remember, when I would go to work with my dad as a kid.” He added, “I refused to help my nephews get rail jobs – they asked me and I said absolutely not.”

“It used to be the job to have,” a BNSF conductor explained. “Good benefits, a good blue-collar job, but now they can’t keep anybody. I got hired on because I knew somebody.”

The quality of railroad work has diminished since many of the “old heads” (longtime railroad workers) were hired, not just in terms of work-life balance, but also material conditions. Several railroad workers described the shoddy equipment and furnishings they encounter on the job which management often refuses to repair, leaving the workers to do it themselves. “I have zip-ties and duct tape,” a conductor said, “you’d be amazed how often I have to use them.”

Considering the critical importance of the railroad industry in the U.S. economy, these statements – only a fraction of what we gathered in our questionnaire and follow-up interviews – are all the more astonishing. The question presents itself: how can such a crucial and profitable industry care so little for its workforce? One would think that workers with such a tremendous responsibility – keeping the U.S. economy running – would enjoy at least a modicum of respect and appreciation from their employers. This, however, is not the case.

“You’re just a number – they don’t care if you die,” a UP engineer said, “they’ll get another dancing chicken out there to do the job.”

To learn more about the campaign for a public rail system, please visit publicrailnow.org

The post Every Day is a Monday: Railroad Workers Describe Life on the Tracks first appeared on Labor Today.

Hosted by Public Rail Now, the webinar will feature a panel of union rail workers from both countries who will discuss working conditions, organizing strategies, and the political and economic forces that impact freight and passenger rail. The event will provide an opportunity for participants—including workers, labor organizers, environmental activists, and transportation advocates—to learn from each other and explore ways to work together in the fight for safer, more sustainable, and worker-controlled railroads.

“The rail industry is transnational, and so is our struggle,” said Nick Wurst, from SMART-TD and a member of Railroad Workers United. “By building stronger connections between U.S. and Canadian railroad workers, we can better challenge corporate greed and push for policies that protect both workers and the public.”

Event Details:

Date: Monday, March 10
Time: 7pm Central time
Location: Online Zoom link provided upon registration

The discussion will include perspectives from UNIFOR, SMART-TD, and BMWED. Panelists will examine issues such as crew size reductions, safety violations, corporate consolidation, and the push for public rail ownership.

Following the event, attendees will be encouraged to take action, including supporting worker-led resolutions, contributing to public awareness efforts, and strengthening organizing networks between U.S. and Canadian railroad workers.

Register Here: Zoom link registration

For more information, please contact info@publicrailnow.org.

The post Railroad Workers from U.S. and Canada Unite in Upcoming Webinar on Industry Conditions and Cross-Border Solidarity first appeared on Labor Today.

by Adam Barrington,
Public Rail Now National Organizer

The National Transportation Safety Board announced in June that the infamous East Palestine, Ohio, freight train derailment was caused by a defective wheel bearing.

But that technical issue does not tell the whole story.

Federal investigators found that the railway company Norfolk Southern failed to communicate information to emergency responders in a timely manner, which contributed to the exposure of responders and the public to post-derailment hazards. 

According to the June 2024 NTSB report abstract on the derailment and hazardous materials release, Norfolk Southern’s delayed transmission of consist information “also delayed the Ohio State Patrol’s recommendation to the incident commander that the shelter-in-place order be replaced by an evacuation.” 

Norfolk Southern officials and contractors also provided misleading and incomplete information while advocating for an unnecessary vent and burn of tank cars carrying vinyl chloride. A vent-and-burn action is, according to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), a response of last resort. 

Norfolk Southern began planning the vent and burn shortly after the derailment, rejecting three other removal methods that could have been far less dangerous to responders and the people of East Palestine. 

While there may be some temptation to view the catastrophic derailment in East Palestine as an unfortunate fluke, the truth is that disastrous events are predictable features of the American rail system. 

Under the private ownership of the Class I railroads, we have seen time and again the callous prioritization of profit over people. For the sake of short-term profit, inspections are cut short, tracks and equipment are not maintained, and the rail workforce is gutted — features of an industrial system that calculates derailments as part of the cost of doing business.   

The Class I railroads’ — the largest domestic rail carriers — pursuit of short-term profit has led to critical understaffing, longer trains, diminished maintenance of tracks and equipment, inadequate inspections, and other underinvestments that leave rail workers and trackside communities vulnerable to derailments and disasters.

The Class I railroad robber barons are perfectly willing to risk the lives of workers and people living in trackside communities so long as it means more money for them and their shareholders. This is not hyperbole. 

Between 2013 and 2022, the rate of rail accidents rose 28 percent as a result of the implementation of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR). In short, the philosophy of PSR can be summed up as “speed over safety.” Since 2015, over 50,000 railroad workers — nearly 30 percent of the rail workforce — have been laid off. The workers who remain on the railroads experience chronic fatigue as a result of unpredictable schedules and critical understaffing.  

Last spring, it was reported that Union Pacific, one of the six Class I rail carriers, undermined government safety assessments and retaliated against workers who reported rail car flaws. In 2023, the FRA found that 73% of Union Pacific locomotives have federal defects. 

According to the NTSB, Norfolk Southern interfered with the East Palestine investigation and abused its status as a party to the probe. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy revealed that she was threatened by Norfolk Southern during a private exchange with a senior company executive two weeks prior to the NTSB East Palestine board meeting. 

These are but a few examples of the criminality and nefariousness that characterize the privately owned rail system. What’s more, even if one puts aside moral questions regarding the behavior of the Class I railroads, one finds an industry being strangled to death by a get-rich-quick scheme that victimizes workers and trackside communities, cheats small shippers, and — because the rail robber barons are completely allergic to capital expenditure —dooms the US rail system to degradation and ossification. 

Another concern is how the American rail system is regulated. While the FRA is ostensibly tasked with overseeing and regulating US railroads, this arrangement becomes murky when one considers the significant degree of industry influence. 

The Association of American Railroads (AAR), the industry group representing the interests of North America’s major rail corporations, sets its own safety standards and works closely with the FRA, effectively as an independent regulatory body. AAR even manages the FRA’s Transportation Technology Center through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Transportation Technology Center, Inc. 

In the NTSB investigation of the East Palestine derailment, AAR’s standards for hot bearing alerts and alarms came under scrutiny, as they served as the guide for Norfolk Southern’s own criteria that contributed to the disaster. It is worth noting that under the Trump presidency, railroad industry executive Ronald Batory was made FRA administrator, further blurring the line between government regulator and regulated industry. 

With the foxes running the henhouse, simple demands for more and better regulation of the railroad industry are inadequate. The real solution, advocated by Railroad Workers United (RWU) and allied organizations across the country, is public ownership of the railroads. 

Last spring, RWU launched the Public Rail Ownership (PRO) campaign, building a diverse coalition including rank-and-file unionists, environmentalists, progressives, community activists, and others calling for a rail system that operates in the public interest. 

The campaign has hosted webinars, published scholarly works such as Maddock Thomas’s “Putting America Back on Track: The Case for a 21st Century Public Rail System,” and attended union conferences to make its case.  

What a publicly owned and operated rail system in the United States will look like has yet to be determined, but there are models that can serve as guides. 

The rail system in the US is, compared to other countries, an anomaly in that it is predominantly owned by private companies. This was not always the case, and there’s inspiration to be found in US history for the development of a 21st century public rail system. 

During World War I, the US rail system was nationalized amid a consensus that the private rail system was unable to serve the needs of the country during wartime. Under the control of the US Railroad Administration (USRA), the railroads operated far more efficiently and effectively than they had under private ownership. 

Working conditions and service improved drastically, winning the support of workers, shippers, and much of the public. The nationalized rail system was so popular among rail workers that in a 1918 American Federation of Labor-sponsored referendum, the vote to keep the nation’s railroads in public hands was overwhelmingly in favor: 306,720 to 1,466. 

A public rail system would directly benefit workers, trackside communities, small shippers, farmers, passengers, and the environment. The Class I carriers have made it clear that they have no intent to expand rail, or take the crucial step towards full catenary electrification. 

Under public ownership, the fetters of the short-term profit motive would be cast off the rail system, opening the door to large-scale infrastructure modernization and expansion projects, creating jobs in construction and spurring economic development in neglected areas of the country. A publicly owned and operated rail system would also create thousands of railroad jobs, as the stripped-to-the-bone PSR model advocated by the Class I carriers would be destined for the dustbin. 

The task at hand is massive, and the road ahead is fraught with challenges. However, there is little hope for any improvement of the US rail system so long as it remains in the hands of the irresponsible and unaccountable Class I robber barons. RWU and its allies invite all organizations and individuals to get involved in the Public Rail Ownership campaign, and help make public rail a reality. For more information, please visit publicrailnow.org.

Article was originally published at inequality.org.

The post Making the Case for Public Rail Ownership first appeared on Labor Today.

Earlier this year in June, the BNSF Railway Company had been ordered to pay the Swinomish Indigenous Tribe $394M for trespassing trains carrying crude oil across the Swinomish Reservation several times from 2012 through 2021. Court documents state that up to 250,000 tanker cars carrying crude oil crossed through Swinomish tribal land throughout this time period. The dangers of these trains can be seen in the March 2023 derailment on Swinomish territory of a BNSF train which spilled 3,100 gallons of diesel fuel in Anacortes, WA.

A BNSF train also carrying crude oil derailed near Custer, WA in December 2020. Despite no casualties, cars leaked and caught fire, causing an environmental hazard with between 5,400 to 8,000 gallons left abandoned.

“We’re concerned about not only our safety and the safety of our brothers and sisters that we’re working with, but the public and the communities that we’re moving our trains through”, said Herb Krohn, a train conductor and the Washington State Legislative Director for SMART-TD. Train derailments in the state of Washington had more than doubled over a ten year period ending in 2023.

As long as the US rail system is under the mercy of for-profit, private interests, cutting costs at the expense of public and environmental health will undoubtedly continue to occur. It has become obvious that only a democratically-run, publicly-owned railroad can reduce these catastrophes. That is why groups such as Railroad Workers United are leading the charge for the nationalization of the railroads through the Public Rail Now campaign.

The post The State of the Railroads in Washington and the Need for Public Rail first appeared on Labor Today.

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The post RWU: Putting America Back on Track—The Case for Public Rail Ownership first appeared on Labor Today.