Ohio’s Attorney General announced on Tuesday that the state has filed a federal lawsuit against Norfolk Southern after one of the rail company’s trains carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio on Feb. 3. The crash spilled gallons of hazardous, cancer-causing vinyl chloride, which drained into rivers and seeped into the soil.
Concerned about the potential of an explosion, authorities performed a controlled burn of the chemicals, releasing noxious fumes into the air and causing fear and confusion among the local community. The circumstances surrounding the derailment epitomize the railroad industry’s myopic fixation with cost-cutting practices that place profit before safety. With an eye towards unbridled growth, train companies view the suffering of workers and local communities simply as the cost of doing business.
Railroads were an integral part of America’s path toward modernization. They connected East and West, charting the course of industrial colonialism that would define the next two centuries. But the railway industry’s connection to America runs far deeper than the trains themselves. It was foundational in conceptualizing a powerful form of capitalism, one supported by the government and driven toward monopolization.
The railroad industry has a long history of exploitative practices. During the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s, over 20,000 Chinese immigrants worked essentially non-stop and were paid half of what their European counterparts received. In 1867, they organized one of the largest strikes in American history, pushing for better working conditions and equal pay. Railroad executives withheld their pay and rations, essentially starving workers to force them to come back to work.
The industry has hardly changed tactics since the 19th century. Near the end of 2022, there was a labor dispute between railroad companies and their workers, who were demanding higher wages and paid sick days. Train executives agreed to marginally increase their pay but did not guarantee any additional paid time off, which created a standstill with workers threatening to strike. Only after President Joe Biden’s administration intervened and an agreement was reached — in a deal that shortchanged workers and prioritized the smooth functioning of the railroads — was a strike averted.
Railroads fell from grace in the 20th century, mostly due to the rise of the automobile industry and commercial aviation. However, Wall Street soon recognized the industry’s money-making potential, and railroads have returned in recent years on a scale not seen even at their height in the late 1800s. Spurred by deregulatory actions, railroad companies have increased their profits by large margins each year since 2000. The Staggers Rail Act of 1980 allowed railroad companies to determine the routes they wanted to service, and it created a market for contracts and rate-setting without any government interference. Instead of making a strong commitment to improve aging infrastructure or improving the quality of life of their workers, between 2011 and 2021, major railroad corporations spent $191 billion on stock buybacks and dividends. Meanwhile, they allocated only $138 billion toward infrastructure improvements, evidencing that their allegiance lies in profit over expanded improvements to the railroads themselves.
Not only has deregulation allowed for more cash in investors’ pockets, it has also led to cuts in safety and inspection procedures — changes which so far have not been directly connected to the East Palestine derailment but still make the possibility of disaster far greater. Former President Donald Trump rolled back over 100 environmental regulations during his term, several at the demand of the railway industry, which sought to absolve themselves of responsibility for accidents involving toxic gasses. On top of this, a Wall Street-backed policy called Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) has drastically reduced the amount of time that trains spend in the terminal and forces workers to speed up their jobs without being able to thoroughly examine the trains.
Blocking — the process of balancing the weight of cars so that the heavier cars are near the front and the lighter cars are near the end — has become nearly impossible with the institution of PSR. Failure to block creates the danger of jackknifing, in which cars in the rear smash into those in the front, making derailments far more likely and destructive. This is precisely what happened in the Ohio derailment; as Railroad Workers United reported, 40% of the train’s weight was located in the back third of its cars. PSR has reaped dividends for train companies, allowing them to disregard its disastrous consequences. Deregulation has made already overburdened employees work even harder and has moved the rail industry away from its true mission: being a force for good in America’s economy.
As speculation runs rampant about the causes and potential effects of the crash, the people of East Palestine were left crippled with uncertainty, forced to reckon with the danger of the chemicals and weigh the decision to move.
“I have three grandbabies … are they going to grow up here in five years and have cancer?” one resident told ABC News on [date]. “So those are all factors that play on my mind.”
The American railroad industry wants us to see such incidents as a necessary cost of doing business — as a tragic yet unavoidable disaster. But that story is a lie with the intent to convince us that unbridled cost-cutting and deregulation are the only ways to ensure functioning railroads. When profit disregards people and the concerns of workers are set aside for time-saving policies, it is only the executives who benefit. Long gone are the train barons and tycoons of America’s past, but the greed that they championed is very much alive today.
Carson Kindred (23Ox) is from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
