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nationalization
The Case for Public Ownership of US Railways
The toxic rail derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, was a symptom of a privatized rail system that prioritizes profit over public safety.
Aug 04, 2024
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.
A public rail system would directly benefit workers, trackside communities, small shippers, farmers, passengers, and the environment.
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 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.
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.
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Blueprint Offers Fossil Fuel Phaseout Solution: Nationalize Big Oil
"If we are to truly start phasing out fossil fuels," said a report co-author, "we must tackle the economic and political weight of the fossil fuel majors."
Dec 08, 2023
Over a week into the United Nations Climate Change Conference, a pair of groups on Friday unveiled a detailed report to argue that taking control of fossil fuel companies is necessary to accelerate the renewable energy transition—and explaining exactly how to do it.
"The climate crisis is accelerating right before our eyes," reads the blueprint from 350.org and the Multinationals Observatory. "If we wish to minimize the global rise in temperatures, not only do we need to stop exploiting new fossil fuel deposits but we also need to reduce gas and oil production by 5% and coal by 8% every year until 2050."
The report—titled TotalEnergies: This Is What a Total Phaseout Looks Like—explains that "after decades of denial and overt obstruction, big oil and gas multinationals like TotalEnergies are now choosing to adopt a more subtle, and seemingly more constructive, narrative on the climate question. They've claimed to whoever would listen (mostly successfully when it comes to political leaders) that although they were definitely part of the problem, they were also part of the solution, if not the solution itself."
"As the climate crisis rages on, it is urgent that we dare to imagine a world without fossil fuels—and this must start with thinking through how to concretely reclaim control over fossil fuel giants."
Clémence Dubois, 350.org's associate director of global campaigns and coordinator of the report, used the U.N. summit as an example, noting Friday that "a record number of close to 2,500 fossil fuel lobbyists, including CEO of TotalEnergies Patrick Pouyanné, are at COP28 this year to push this version of the story."
Some world leaders have rejected Big Oil's claims—Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, said this summer that "what the industry is doing with its unprecedented profits... has changed my mind" about companies being part of the solution—but many others continue to buy into it.
Fossil fuel giants have "hugely monopolized the climate action narrative—aiming to neutralize and undermine the arguments—while also managing to secure a large share of the funding to finance the development of the technological and market 'solutions' they're pushing," the report says. "They've also bought up the smallest players in the renewable and energy transition sector and are occupying more space in climate-related policies at a global level, within or around the margins of U.N. conferences. With an oil boss as president of COP28, we are witnessing the culmination of this process."
Abu Dhabi National Oil Company CEO Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber has long been a controversial pick for COP28 president but has come under fire recently for allegedly using his role to pursue oil and gas deals and falsely declaring on Sunday that "there is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phaseout of fossil fuel is what's going to achieve 1.5°C," a reference to the Paris agreement's more ambitious 2100 target.
Dubois asserted Friday that "as the climate crisis rages on, it is urgent that we dare to imagine a world without fossil fuels—and this must start with thinking through how to concretely reclaim control over fossil fuel giants that have become too harmful, and what that looks like."
Using TotalEnergies as a case study, the report stresses that the process "must be based on the following three foundations—a nonnegotiable, rapid exit from fossil fuels; the participation of TotalEnergies' employees to ensure a fair and inclusive transition (so no one is left behind); and finally, democratic conduct and supervision in conjunction with the scientific community, all affected stakeholders, and all citizens."
"Going down the route of regulation was often disappointing and ineffective," but "we could still consider pushing further down this road as a way of diverting the current trajectory of TotalEnergies, its partners, and those who fund its activities," the document notes. Doing so would involve serious climate, financial, and tax regulations; changes to lobbying policies and competition law; and price controls.
"Another complementary route to change would be to transform the company's strategic direction and governance from the inside, so that they reflect a wider set of interests and objectives that go beyond profitability and return on investment for shareholders, starting of course with a key goal of rectifying the climate crisis. This is what we could call TotalEnergies' democratization roadmap," the report details.
The publication then offers a third route—nationalization—stating that "there's no doubt that taking public control seems like the first crucial step in releasing TotalEnergies from the stranglehold of the financial markets, reducing its capacity for harm, and imposing a new trajectory to exit from fossil fuels in a transparent and democratic way."
Nationalizing the French multinational would require action from the nation's Parliament. The report points out that "this law could go beyond TotalEnergies to cover other French companies that own or exploit fossil fuel deposits and could include supplementary provisions to ban fossil fuel assets from being held as private property and forbid companies operating under French law from being involved in developing or exploiting new fossil fuel sources."
The document also acknowledges that national control "does not in itself guarantee democratic supervision and decisions that will lead the company in the 'right direction,'" especially "if the state itself is not democratic or does not have structures in place to democratically control and guide these public companies."
"Acquiring TotalEnergies is therefore only the first step," the document emphasizes, "and must be followed by at least two further steps—democratizing governance and operational management and, at least initially, transforming the company into a public, industrial, commercial institution with a clear mission to exit from fossil fuels."
"We cannot wait for fossil fuel companies to be willing to change by themselves."
The report also envisions a TotalEnergies takeover as part of a broader movement that could start at the European level and "then be gradually rolled out to private multinationals headquartered in North America and elsewhere to publicly owned oil companies, including some (like in Latin America) that have been public organizations with social objectives at different times in their history."
Report co-author and Multinationals Observatory co-founder Olivier Petitjean said Friday that "with this report, we want to open a debate on an idea which may seem radical but which is also, in a way, a truism: If we are to truly start phasing out fossil fuels, we must tackle the economic and political weight of the fossil fuel majors."
"We cannot wait for fossil fuel companies to be willing to change by themselves," Petitjean argued. "Global heating and its impacts are accelerating, just as war and pandemics have done, and this could be a trigger for change, with previously unthinkable scenarios quickly becoming credible or even unavoidable. We want to challenge political leaders to imagine them, and to implement them."
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