CSX Transportation, the largest Class I railroad east of the Mississippi River, announced in a press release dated March 3 that a five-year agreement with workers represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) had been ratified.
This marks the eleventh union to ratify an almost identical agreement across various crafts at CSX. According to CSX, 47 percent of its unionized workforce is now under this agreement. This is virtually the same deal that was pushed through at BNSF and Norfolk and Southern. The pattern deal had been previously rejected by multiple bargaining units, including conductors and trainmen on BNSF and Norfolk Southern, and maintenance of way workers at CSX.
Union Pacific is the lone holdout against the pattern sellout deal among the American Class I railways, evidently hoping to impose even more odious contract terms.
The agreement provides for a two-tier health insurance scheme, modest improvements to vacation accrual, and other local bargaining craft specific issues. The anemic wage increases of 17.5 percent will be devoured by inflation, an erosion that will be intensified by the Trump administration’s tariffs, rising energy costs, and corporate price gouging on essential goods.
CSX maintenance of way workers rejected the agreement in October 2024, only to have it reintroduced with minor changes. Their union bureaucracy, Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division (BMWED), immediately sent out a “survey” to question membership about what could be changed, but the survey only contained questions about the “lock and hold” provision.
In other words, the union leadership presented this as the only issue they saw any possibility of changing. In this way they hoped to feign pursuing a fight against CSX, without actually mounting any real opposition. The contract, with the minor changes, was ratified after a second vote in the face of threats by union bureaucrats that a “no” vote would lead to an even worse agreement being imposed through arbitration.
As a result of BNSF workers’ rejection of the agreement the crew consist section was forced into arbitration in connection to a 2021 arbitration ruling. Not surprisingly the “neutral” arbiters sided with BNSF and allowed for the elimination of the second trainman position, even reducing the $27,500 buyout by $500. Declaring their opposition to workers interests the arbitrators declared “…the Board rejects the Union’s call for terms more favorable to the employees. The employees cannot simply claim “more” and be “rewarded with more.”
In a CSX 4th quarter earnings call Brandon Oglenski of Barclays, in possession of over $1.9 trillion in assets and one of the largest transnational banks in the world, posed the question to negotiators “…I think it’s worth coming back to the new five-year agreements that you guys signed with, I think 3.5 percent inflation locked in. A lot of investors just question like why go early there, especially as inflation is coming down, like couldn’t you get a better deal if you waited?”
CSX CEO Heinrichs retorted “…They [railroaders] went 3 years without a raise during a very highly inflationary time period and during COVID when they were essential workers, and all the things that happened there. And both the union presidents that we spoke to and the union leaders and the employees all said, we don’t want to do that again. And I can tell you, having been there on the days they were voting, Congress told us, don’t come back here again.”
This snippet of a conversation illustrates the dependency of the capitalist class on the continual ramping up of the exploitation of workers as well as the intertwining of finance and industrial capital. It also demonstrates worker’s potential power, under conditions where the mere threat of railroaders striking reverberates through the banks, industries, and the halls of the capitalist government. Quite a refutation of the notorious assertion “labor doesn’t contribute to profits” in 2022 by an unnamed railroad executive.
It is also illustrative of the tripartite conspiracy against railroaders by the corporations, government, and union bureaucracies. Just as these groups conspire to drive up profits by driving down living standards, workers must unite in new militant forms of organization to confront the capitalist class head on in struggle and take their share of profits.
These organs of worker’s power already exist in the form of rank and file committees affiliated with the International Workers Alliance (IWA-RFC). The Railroad Workers Rank and File Committee was established in 2022 and challenged the imposition of the 2022 Presidential Emergency Board recommendations, while the union bureaucrats agreed to endless cooling off periods. Railroaders must expand the work of the committee to fight these sell out agreements and unite with workers in all industries across the world to bring the fight against the transnational corporations.
