{"id":6359,"date":"2022-05-04T10:45:09","date_gmt":"2022-05-04T14:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=6359"},"modified":"2025-09-08T21:03:42","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T01:03:42","slug":"theyve-been-working-on-the-railroad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2022\/05\/theyve-been-working-on-the-railroad\/","title":{"rendered":"“Miserable” and getting worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul KD:<\/span> Ross, can you start by talking a little bit about yourself and what you do and what Railroad Workers United<\/a> is?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ross Grooters:<\/span> Definitely. So I\u2019m Ross Grooters. I\u2019m a railroad worker. I work as a locomotive engineer and I\u2019m co-chair of Railroad Workers United, which is a cross-craft coalition made up of various members from 13 different railroad craft unions. Railroad Workers United essentially was formed to bring these different rail unions together, the rank and file of the different unions together in a discussion to help make our unions, and therefore our workplaces, better for all the workers on the railroad. Railroad Workers United has been around for more than 10 years. It seems like time flies. We have a biennial convention, and it coincides with Labor Notes.<\/p>\n

And I guess a little more about me is I\u2019ve been working on the railroad for 18 years and live here in the Midwest. I\u2019m involved in a myriad of things: I\u2019m a member of DSA, and I\u2019m on my local city council representing workers\u2019 interests, and serve on the public transit commission.<\/p>\n

\"An
An earlier moment of Midwest railroad worker militancy. Olive street, St Louis, railroad strikers, 1881. Photo<\/a> by Missouri History Museum.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

PKD: <\/span>So, I\u2019ve seen a lot of reports about the current state of the railways. And so I guess the first question is just, what is it like working right now for you? And then, as a part B to that, how has the pandemic, and also the George Floyd uprising back in 2020, impacted your work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

RG:<\/span> So, I think the shortest answer I can give for summing up what it\u2019s like working on the railroad right now is it\u2019s miserable. It\u2019s not a good work environment. It\u2019s incredibly toxic, and it\u2019s been made so increasingly in recent years because the railroads have adopted a model called Precision Scheduled Railroading. This has been around for a while and was first implemented on the Illinois Central, a smaller railroad, and then migrated to Canada to work on some of the Class One railroads up there, and eventually now has in some form been adopted by all the major railroad carriers.<\/p>\n

This model is essentially the Wall Street financialization of railroads. It\u2019s just squeezing every last penny. It\u2019s production above all else, and trying to make sure that operating ratios are maximized. All these kind of business jargon that are used, it\u2019s really just squeezing more out of workers for less and that\u2019s in a nutshell. It doesn\u2019t help run the railroads any better. It doesn\u2019t help consumers or customers. It doesn\u2019t help people in our communities. It doesn\u2019t help the workers. It\u2019s just simply about the bottom line and Wall Street profits.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s a little bit about how the railroad is operating right now and what it\u2019s like to work on the railroad. As far as the pandemic goes, one of the first things I can point out is that very early in the spring of 2020 the railroads were all ready to go. They operate together in a national rail carriers coalition, and they were ready very early on with a series of emergency exemptions on regulations.<\/p>\n

So essentially, they deregulated as much as they could through the Federal Railroad Administration, which oversees rules that the railroads operate by. And so, they implemented all kinds of exemptions on safety and inspections and, what they could get away with, with working rules.<\/p>\n