Union Pacific has granted sick days to 47% of its workers, Norfolk Southern to 46%, and BNSF, the largest freight railroad, to 31%. Hinrichs said granting paid sick days “is a continuation of the spirit of cooperation that we are committed to pursuing as we work together to improve the employee work experience, enhance the safety of our operations, and grow the business”. Union officials praised CSX’s new CEO, Joseph Hinrichs, who used to head Ford Motor Company’s automotive division. They could, however, get approval weeks in advance to take paid personal days.ĬSX was the first to grant paid sick days to several of its unions and has now granted sick days to 61% of its 17,089 unionized employees. “The rail companies,” he added, “miscalculated about how the public would see their huge profits and the stories of how hard rail workers’ lives were and not having sick days and the draconian policies they were operating under.”įor years, freight rail workers weren’t allowed to call in sick the morning of their shift. Each railroad is negotiating with each of its individual unions on this.” “We’ve made a lot of progress,” said Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, the main US labor federation. But since then, union officials says, members of the Biden administration, including the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, and labor secretary, Marty Walsh, who stepped down on 11 March, lobbied the railroads, telling them it was wrong not to grant paid sick days.

When Joe Biden and Congress enacted legislation in December that blocked a threatened freight rail strike, many workers angrily faulted Biden for not ensuring that the legislation also guaranteed paid sick days. “It was public pressure and political pressure that got them to come to the table.” We’ve been trying to get this for decades,” said Artie Maratea, president of the Transportation Communications Union.

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