5/25/2023 0 Comments Waves complete costThe recommendations were meant to serve as a jumping off point for a new contract.Īs of Thursday, more than a half-dozen unions still need to reach an agreement with U.S. The Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) - a three-person board appointed by President Joe Biden that convened in July and August to come up with ways that the unions and railroads could resolve their negotiations impasse - issued recommendations last month that sought to resolve the impasse in negotiations. A federal mediation board took up the negotiations but released the parties from those efforts earlier this summer. In many cases, it would be completely impractical,” AAR’s report continued.Ī new labor deal for union members has been in the works since January 2020, but negotiations between the unions and the railroads had failed to progress. “For most of those firms, though, switching on short notice to trucks or barges, or changing their production processes to reduce or eliminate the need for rail service, would, at best, be extremely costly and disruptive. “Over the long term, most firms that use rail transportation could modify their distribution patterns or production processes so they would not have to use railroads as much as they do today. Firms rarely rely exclusively on rail transportation,” the report said. “Railroads operate in an intensely competitive transportation marketplace. AAR reached its conclusions by updating data from a 1992 Federal Railroad Administration econometric study.ĪAR, which represents freight and passenger railroads, also said a short-term switch to trucks or barges “would be costly and disruptive,” with an additional 467,000 long-haul trucks needed per day to handle the freight that would have otherwise gone on rail. The Association of American Railroads estimates that a nationwide shutdown of rail operations could cost $2 billion in lost economic output each day, according to a report released Thursday. Rail stakeholders are concerned that a possible strike by some union members due to stalled contract negotiations could result in multibillion dollar economic impacts.
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