Testimony of Dennis R. Pierce

National President

Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and

Trainmen

Before the House Subcommittee on Railroads,

Pipelines and Hazardous Materials.

Surface Transportation Reauthorization

March 8, 2022

BEFORE THE

HOUSE TRANSPORTATION & INFRASTRUCTURE COMMITTEE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON RAILROADS, PIPELINES, AND HAZARDOUS MATERIALS

Good morning, Chairman Payne, Ranking Member Crawford, and Members of the

Subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you this morning.

North America, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, which was founded in

and intercity passenger railroads. We should not forget that commuter rail carries 500 million

passenger trips a year in the most congested portions of the shared national rail network.

I want to tell you about the members of the BLET. These people are proud and hard-

working Americans. They have worked careers where pride is derived from the role they play in

moving America’s freight safely and on time. To call BLET members essential is as much a fact

as calling a spine essential to the skeleton. The service of all railroad workers is the product that

supports American commerce. But there is a problem that is forcing our members to lose pride

in their work. And the pride in the service they provide America is being replace with the misery

and contempt they hold for their employers at the Class 1 Railroads in the country.

There was a sea change in the economic philosophy underpinning rail service when Class

and harsher attendance policies that demand they work day in and day out. These policies

subject our members to disciplinary consequences, including termination, even if they take time

off because they are to sick or to tied to work safely. The policies are destroying the family lives

of our members, even to the point of destroying their very families.

This is all part of the railroad business philosophy of extreme “leanness”, which means

furloughing employees to rock-bottom staffing and forcing the remaining employees to always

work without scheduled days off, without paid sick days and without access to true access to

but harried workforce. Our members still believe in providing the best service to the customers

business model in exchange for a short-term growth Wall Street model. This involves pushing

an operating ratio below 60% to return the other 40% to investors, managers and CEO’s—which

results in furloughs and risky operations.

Speaking of adding risk and strain to railroad operations, railroads are running trains with

typical lengths in excess of 3 miles (15,000-17,000 ft.) and those trains can also weigh 15,000

tons or more. Some trains have reached lengths of more than 20,000 feet long. The trains are

getting longer to facilitate making the work rolls shorter. Twice the train length, half the

employees, with new strains added daily to an infrastructure not designed for this business model

Simply put, PSR has transformed railroad companies into finance operations that happen

to own railroads. Safety professionals are being supplanted by finance managers. Reporting

Some still want to see their business grow because their customers are happy with their service

and their employees are happy to do their jobs and to work for their employer. But over the past

several years, it has been Wall Street that calls the shots; managers who don’t go along with this

approach leave or are forced out.

Railroad Locomotive Engineers operate trains. Conductors or Trainmen are the

necessary second set of eyes and ears on the train, and they broadly handle the rest of the train

event, and most trains and their equipment experience unplanned events, the train must stop and

be inspected. If that inspection requires a walk to the rear of the train, the train is stopped while

the conductor dismounts the train and walks up to 3 miles to the rear inspecting one side. The

conductor then switches sides and walks 3 miles back to the leading end of the train to inspect

the other side—a six-mile walk. If this happens multiple times in a tour of duty, its simple math

go home after that. It is normal for them to be forced to wait until the railroad provides them

with a ride to get off the train. They often wait for this transportation in remote areas for hours,

before being picked up. This then begins another period riding in a vehicle to their final

terminal. It is not rare for operating crews to experience total on-duty times of 18 hours or more.

called to repeat that same trip to get home, in many cases days after they left home, only to be

forced to repeat that cycle as soon as they are legally rested to do so. It has been said that railroad

work was “a decent living, but a terrible life.” This is why.

With wages stagnating while profits skyrocket, and Class 1 rail carriers refusing to come

to the bargaining table with fair contract offers, engineer positions are fast becoming underpaid

and overworked jobs. Railroaders are fed up with the job cutting and conscription-like

attendance policies where they are forced into the terrible choice of either working sick or

working tired, or getting fired. Your money or your life. Hedge fund railroading is bad for the

sick and tired of railroads not being held to the same high standards under the law as their

employees (our members) are held. Railroads act this way because they are virtual and

geographical monopolies. If you don’t like the service on Railroad A, there is not a Railroad B

down the street. It is a take it or leave it proposition for the customer/consumer. What about

competition and the market forces of capitalism, one might inquire—not on the nations Class 1

Railroads. There are too many barriers for entry to start up your own railroad to compete. This

is where the STB comes in.

STB can help with service standards

We know the STB is here to ensure that service from the railroads meets the needs of

their years of training and attempts to be a better business and provide for shippers discarded for

short term cost cutting and asset extraction.

clogged ports, and a workforce forced to work beyond the point of safe operations. Operational

problems happen daily, such as trains too long to receive proper air-brake testing, and trains so

long that they cannot be safely doubled from one yard track to the other because the yard tracks

are physically not long enough.

furloughed because the rail carriers have lost interest in providing the switching operations

All things considered, the strict adherence to PSR and like business models only serves to

forcing employees to do just that. In fact, railroads are now part of the great resignation in this

country. On just one class one, over 600 well paid and highly trained employees have resigned

in recent weeks as opposed to be threatened with their jobs if they will not or cannot work every

time the railroad calls. People cannot work all the time; and machines cannot be made to run

catastrophic accident. We do not want to see that happen and we are here to tell the Congress

that the STB can play a role.

BLET believes that STB being responsible to regulate railroads can help by handling

service complaints in a timelier and more effective manner without the worry that it would be

interfering in commerce; rather, the Board would be helping commerce and the free flow of

products carried by railroads. The Staggers Act and the Interstate Commerce Commission

Termination Act of 1995 are not sufficient to protect employees, customers, and shippers against

a railroad business model where endless cost cutting-at everyone’s expense except the railroad

We do not have all the answers on how to accomplish this but suffice to say the rail

carriers have shown no interest in our opinions, even though we see events daily that prevent

shippers from receiving their goods when they should. That said, some suggestions might be to

collective bargaining agreement. But we think that mandating and enforcing good service will

result in proper employment levels which will support good rail service.

BLET is also not in favor of certain proposals being considered by Congress involving the so-

for many reasons. Among them:

We do not support legislation or regulation that expands or provides additional rights to

rail carriers for “reciprocal switching,” because it departs from longstanding rules and precedent

under our collective bargaining agreements. The detrimental effects on rail employees from

potential “reciprocal switching” legislation should outweigh the perceived benefits from

get their goods from railroad A to railroad B. Currently, to get their traffic from one railroad to

another all a shipper would need to do is an interchange at a location(s) where it is possible.

In addition, conferring any new rights to a rail carrier will not change the geographical

layout and/or the conditions necessary to perform an interchange between rail carriers.

The use of the term “reciprocal switching,” is a misnomer because interchanges are not

the same thing as switching. The proper term for getting a shipment from one railroad to another

is called an interchange. Interchanges only can occur where it is physically possible in a location

with the proper rail infrastructure (e.g., an interlocking, wye). Neither trackage rights nor