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public interest
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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Good News! We Can Bend the Corporations to Our Will
No government-sponsored institution should be encouraged to continue causing severe harm. Obligations to the public interest which were removed long ago can be reinstated.
Feb 04, 2023
“We learned last week that certain fossil fuel producers were fully aware in the 1970s that their core product was baking our planet. And just like the tobacco industry, they rode rough-shod over their own science.
Some in Big Oil peddled the big lie. And like the tobacco industry, those responsible must be held to account.” UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Davos, January 18, 2023
Liberal democracy is now close to failing. One reason for this is that it has proved incapable of protecting the public interest from severe damage caused by big corporations. The next few years will tell whether it withers and dies or rights itself and survives.
Democracy is based on the consent of the governed. Sometimes this can mean serving the wants and desires of the majority, but to survive long-term, democracy must work for everyone. It can’t leave a large minority behind. Nor, may it allow the public interest to be severely harmed.
To ensure neither will occur, there must be a shared commitment among the governed to not cause great harm to each other. At least to this extent, citizens must commit to the obligations of citizenship as well as take advantage of its rights.
The bad news is that corporations, the world’s most powerful citizens, are unburdened by any obligations of citizenship. Such obligations were eliminated in the late 1800s when legislatures mistakenly decided they were unnecessary. In fairness, this was decades before big companies developed the technology and size capable of causing the severe harm we are experiencing today.
Democracy recognizes that some citizens will take advantage of the absence of law to pursue their own interests in ways that harm others. It assumes that before too much damage can occur, the elected representatives of the people will enact a new law which prevents such behaviour from continuing. Such laws contain the damage. In this way, democratic government fulfills its purpose to protect the public interest.
However, this assumption is no longer valid. Through lobbying and financing the campaigns of politicians, big corporations (and their trade associations) have become proficient at delaying and frustrating the passage of new laws which would prevent them from continuing to destroy.
Corporations weren’t present when the American founding fathers drafted the U.S. Constitution. The word “corporation” doesn’t appear anywhere in the document. The concept of the modern corporation didn’t arrive on the scene until nearly 100 years later when its obligations to the public interest were eliminated.
Try to imagine the drafting of the Constitution in 1787 if modern corporations were present. Had the founding fathers been able to foresee the developments in technology and the changes in corporations which would occur over the next 250 years, would they have originated the same form of government which now so inadequately protects the interests of individual Americans? It seems unlikely.
That raises the question, what needs to change: democracy or the corporation? Changing democracy means changing the Constitution. That’s not easy and deciding how to change it is not obvious.
The good news is that changing the corporation is much less difficult and the necessary change is readily apparent.
We can no longer assume corporate behaviour which severely harms the public interest can be brought under control by new laws passed by local, state, or national governments. Unlike the founding fathers, we now know better.
Corporations are all formed under laws which can be amended relatively easily. No government-sponsored institution should be encouraged to continue causing severe harm. Obligations to the public interest which were removed long ago can be reinstated.
The key to restoring the assumption upon which democracy is based is to impose on corporate directors a legal obligation to not severely harm the public interest. When a company discovers that it is causing severe harm by significantly contributing to the warming of the planet, killing millions of people each year or otherwise, its directors must have a legal duty to make it stop.
The duty of directors in existing law to “act in the best interests of the company,” must be amended to clarify that this obligation does not extend to circumstances where it will result in severe harm to the environment, human rights, the public health and safety, the dignity of employees or the wellbeing of the communities in which the company operates.
Nineteenth century legislatures passed laws which to this day encourage corporate directors to continue with their intentional destruction of the public interest. The way to correct this mistake is to balance the rights of corporations once again with at least the bare minimum obligations of citizenship, obligations upon which democracy depends.Keep ReadingShow Less
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