Never let a crisis go to waste. From natural disasters to man-made disasters to the recent public health crisis, the vultures are always there to use our political system to their financial advantage. The East Palestine train derailment is no different.
The labor unions are frequently at the front of the line of opportunists. Take, for instance, the coronavirus bonanza, which big labor (with a little help from their Democrat friends) used to bail out their sickly pensions with a sickening payoff. And take East Palestine, where the tragedy of an everyday American town is now being exploited to beef up union membership rolls.
The Railway Safety Act, a Senate bill meant to shore up railroad safety in the wake of the East Palestine disaster, could be a bi-partisan win for fine-tuning safety measures. It could focus solely on the technological upgrades needed to avert future disasters. Co-authored by Ohio Sens. Sherrod Brown (D) and J.D. Vance (R), the bill could offer a moment to put aside partisanship and focus on bringing good out of a tragedy that will permanently scar East Palestine.
But no. The railroad union bosses have teamed up with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, whose main qualification for his job seems to be his haircut, to lard the bill up with make-work provisions. At a time when technological advances are opening new horizons in safety through automation, the unionistas are pushing for a permanent requirement that all carriers use a minimum of two-person crews.
This, despite the fact that the ill-fated Norfolk-Southern train itself had not two but three crew members. Mandating two on a crew would have done nothing to avert the disaster. It’s not responsive to the challenge at hand. Moreover, the make-work provisions will not affect Norfolk-Southern-sized railroads. It will primarily hurt the smaller regional and short-line railroads, which are more likely to use a one-man crew.
Follow the money: Bigger crew sizes means bigger dues dollars. The union breaks off a piece of that and turns it into campaign contributions – mainly for the Democrats. Both the United Transportation Union and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen support Democrats on a grossly disproportionate basis. Who pays? The railroads, who then pass the costs on to their customers—and the rest of us, the consumers.
Think of the knock-on benefits: No need for the union to deal with crew size in collective bargaining agreements. No need to worry about the efficiencies created by technology in the future. Years from now, there will still be a dues-paying crew there to babysit the robot train.
As with the pension bailouts, the crew-size requirements represent unfinished business from the Obama years. During Obama’s politically corrosive second term, the Federal Railroad Administration pushed the very requirement before Congress today. Under the guise of concern about the effects of implementing technologies like positive train control, the FRA pushed crew minimum regulation despite conceding that “FRA cannot provide reliable or conclusive statistical data to suggest whether one-person crew operations are generally safer or less safe than multiple-person crew operations.” For a nation that uses drones to execute pin-prick airstrikes in civilian areas globally and even toys with using AI to run strikes, this aversion to rudimentary technological advancement in rail operations appears to be out of character.
Using the East Palestine tragedy to advance an unrelated union agenda dishonors the people of that town. Unfortunately, it’s par for the course among our political class. But this time, Congress has an opportunity to keep the vultures at bay. This time, in light of the way Biden and Buttigieg chose to forsake the good people of this American town, justice demands of Congress a nobler approach.
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Russ Brown is the President for the Center for Independent Employees and sits on the Board of Directors for the North American Transportation Employee Relations Association (NATERA).