CSX on Oct. 22 reported reaching new five-year tentative collective bargaining agreements with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and National Conference of Firemen & Oilers (NCFO) and ratifying an agreement with the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers – Transportation Division (SMART-TD), covering yardmasters.
CSX and the SMART-TD yardmasters had announced their tentative agreement in August.
CSX’s new tentative agreements with IBEW and NCFO are pending ratification by the unions’ members at the railroad.
CSX was the first Class I railroad to take its labor negotiations out of national handling. Well ahead of Nov. 1 Section 6 notices, it has, to date, entered into agreements (some tentative and some ratified) with 13 labor unions, covering 17 work groups, accounting for almost 60% of its unionized workforce. “The terms of the agreements are aligned, providing equivalent packages of improved wages, health care, and paid time off benefits,” CSX reported.
“The new tentative agreements are a significant step forward in our continued partnership with union leaders,” said Joe Hinrichs, President and CEO of CSX. “These agreements strengthen our commitment to creating a workplace where every employee feels valued and empowered, while improving safety, efficiency, and service. Together, we are building a stronger foundation for our future success.”
CSX said it “remains committed to working with other unions and crafts to reach similar agreements over the coming days and continuing to partner with employees to make meaningful improvements in their work environment.”
The last bargaining rounds, in 2020, led to the formation of a Presidential Emergency Board in July 2022. Nearly five months later, President Joe Biden signed into law a congressional resolution (H.J. Res. 100) imposing on four holdout rail unions a collectively bargained Tentative Agreement ratified by eight others.
Railway Age Interview With Joe Hinrichs, Oct. 17
The morning after CSX released its third-quarter 2024 financial and operating results, Railway Age spoke with Hinrichs about its earnings, plus its labor agreements. Following is the Q&A on labor, lightly edited for clarity.
Railway Age: You have taken your railroad’s labor negotiations out of national handling, and, well ahead of Nov. 1 Section 6 notices, entered into some tentative and some ratified agreements with your unions. Opinions in the industry vary on this move, as Railway Age Editor-in-Chief William C. Vantuono points out in a recent commentary. Obviously, you and your team thought through the complexities. What is your outlook on this?
Joe Hinrichs: First of all, for many people change is uncomfortable. We have to recognize that if we keep doing things the same we’ve always done, that we’re going to get the same results, and the results haven’t been satisfactory to anybody. You think about the last round of negotiations, everyone was dissatisfied—from from the union employees, the union officials, the government officials, regulators, to our customers, our employees. So we sat down and talked about that, about how can it be different. And all the railroads are in different places, with their different agreements, different unions. And the complexity of this ecosystem, with however you want to count them, 11, 12, 13 different unions, is very complicated. And each railroad is a different place. What we [at CSX] need to work on is different than what BNSF needs to work on, and so on and so forth. So we did try as an industry coalition to come together and reach voluntary agreement with one union. We started with TCU, but we weren’t able to get there as a coalition together voluntarily. So we [CSX] moved forward with TCU. You saw the other unions come over as well. I think that’s an indication of the union leaders, union employees and the companies, many of them, want to move forward with a different kind of relationship than we’ve had in the past. We serve our customers, and to serve our employees, it’s in our best interest to have a much more collaborative working relationship with our unions—work together on safety, work together on better customer service, work together on growth initiatives, work together on efficiency, work together on what’s important to our employees like scheduling work life balance. If we’re spending three years fighting over what the wage increases are, or the single-person crew mandate, we don’t get time to spend on those other things that are important. Our view is let’s get the national contract issues out of the way so we can spend the next several years working together on those things that are important.
Railway Age: Are you concerned about creating multiple and differently timed threats of work stoppages?
Joe Hinrichs: I understand the issue. Frankly, because of the network and the ecosystem that we have, it would be almost impossible for one railroad to not be running and the other ones to run. So the solution to that is let’s all work together to both unions and companies to resolve our issues and find solutions behalf of our employees and on behalf of our shareholders.
Railway Age: How will national handling proceed now with some tentative and some ratified agreements in place?
Joe Hinrichs: That’s a good question. That’s something that we’re all working on. There are different, without getting into the details, there are all kinds of different scenarios that can play out. We could do national handling with a few, a small number of unions that haven’t reached agreements. We could wait. You don’t have to do it on Nov. 1. You don’t have to serve Section 6 notices on Nov. 1. The different ways to play out, we’re still talking about it. But there are different options. Now that there’s been a basic pattern set, because Norfolk Southern and BNSF and ourselves have reached many agreements, there should be a way to move forward with the other unions as well.
Further Reading:
- CSX’s Hinrichs: ‘Ready to Meet Our Customers’ Needs’ (UPDATED 10/17, TD Cowen Insight, PLUS Interview With Joe Hinrichs on 3Q24, Weather Impacts, Labor)
- ‘This Scenario Is a Bit Unusual’
- CSX, NS, BNSF Ratify Five-Year Agreements With SMART-MD
- CSX Expands Labor Agreements With IBB, TCU
- CSX Tentative Agreements with BRC and SMART-TD GO-049 Extended to 12 Unions (Updated Aug. 23)
- Canada’s Arbitration Mandate and the Hinrichs Maneuver
