With a deadline approaching, a railroad trade group is warning that deliveries of all kinds of goods and passenger traffic could be disrupted by a work...
With a deadline approaching, trade group warns deliveries of all kinds of goods and passenger traffic could be disrupted by a work stoppage or lockout.
A strike or lockout won’t be allowed until next Friday at the soonest under the federal law that governs railroad negotiations. The railroad trade group said a strike would idle some 7,000 freight trains a day run by Fort Worth-based BNSF, CSX, Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, Kansas City Southern and other railroads and disrupt passenger operations nationwide because Amtrak and half of all commuter rail systems rely at least partly on tracks owned by the freight railroads.
“Should negotiations fail and result in a work stoppage, Congress must act to implement the PEB recommendations,” Jefferies said. “Most freight railroads currently lack extra capacity to make up for down time,” the agricultural groups said in their letter. “Thus, a sizable portion of freight backlogged due to a stoppage may never be made up leading to less production from rail-dependent businesses to the detriment of producers and consumers.”
“It makes sense for them to hold on until the last minute and try to get the best deal that they can. For the railroads, it makes perfect sense for them to say a disruption would be cataclysmic,” Hatch said.