The people who keep America’s rail network running are demanding answers from Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern.
According to Trains, seven rail unions have asked the Surface Transportation Board to force UP and NS to make public detailed information about the merger’s impact on workers, including the number and location of jobs that would be abolished, created, or transferred. The railroads have classified that information as “highly confidential,” even though unions noted similar workforce-impact data was public in prior merger proceedings.
The public summary already shows UP and NS project 1,156 union jobs would be eliminated and 320 transferred in the first three years, even as the railroads continue selling the deal as a win for workers.
And the cracks are not limited to labor.
This week, the City of Meridian, Mississippi formally withdrew letters that UP and NS had included in their application as statements of support. In a letter to the STB, Meridian officials said they were no longer comfortable allowing the railroads to use those letters after the Board rejected the initial application as incomplete and held the revised application in abeyance for substantial supplementation.
As Meridian put it to the STB:
“Applicants thus far have not been able to show many of the major benefits their representative stated as facts in seeking our community’s support. Accordingly, currently we are not comfortable continuing to allow Applicants to include our letters as statements of support for benefits they have yet to substantiate.”
Meridian also applauded the STB for requiring UP and NS to make clear what effects their proposal will have so the public can be fully informed about this unprecedented merger.
For a merger this large, vague promises are not enough. Workers deserve transparency, communities deserve proof, and shippers deserve real answers. The STB is right to demand more before allowing UP and NS to move forward with the largest rail consolidation in U.S. history.