5,000 signatures reached
To: President Biden and Secretary of Transportation Buttigieg
Tell President Biden to clean up Trump’s mess of train deregulation
The Trump administration spent four years deregulating the rail industry -- putting corporate profits ahead of safety regulations and workers’ rights. Trump even appointed a former rail CEO to head the Freight and Rail Administration -- cementing the Trump administration’s legacy of greed over safety.
President Biden and Secretary of Transportation Buttigieg should fix Trump’s mess and hold the rail industry accountable, and restore the common-sense rules that the Trump administration blocked!
Why is this important?
In 2018, the Trump administration rolled back an Obama-era rule, which had required rail companies to upgrade brake systems on trains carrying certain hazardous materials. Norfolk Southern was among a group of rail carriers who opposed this regulation and that contributed more than $6 million to Republican lawmakers in the 2016 election -- the most contributed by the rail industry to one party in over two decades.
But that’s not all! Norfolk Southern has spent nearly $80 million on lobbying efforts over the last 25 years, including opposing two-person crew requirements on every train -- a safety measure that workers say is vital to limiting train derailments and that the Trump administration again rejected.
In allowing the industry to regulate itself, the Trump administration said “that no regulation of train crew staffing is necessary or appropriate for railroad operations to be conducted safely at this time” and said separately, “the expected costs of requiring ECP brakes would be significantly higher than the expected benefits of the requirement.”
It’s up to us to hold greedy corporations accountable to workers and to communities across the country.