BNSF Railyway’s public statements about a tentative collective bargaining agreement reached after arbitration with union officials tout a 3.5% wage increase per year for the next five years, as well as additional vacation and “meaningful” enhancements to health care benefits.
What they do not mention is that these gains will come at the expense of yard helpers and brakemen at BNSF, the latter of which appear to be poised to be phased out altogether.
Emails obtained by Cowboy State Daily show that BNSF plans to eliminate about 20 brakemen, as well as 60 yard helper positions companywide on Dec. 27, two days after Christmas. It wasn't clear how many Wyoming jobs could be impacted.
A list of those losing their jobs is set to be sent out to union representatives by Dec. 20.
That is likely to be just the first wave of job losses that are ahead.
“January and February 2025, BNSF plans to remove brakemen on thru-freight trains, and local management will be working with local chairpersons to review assignments that could be possible crew reduction,” said the email, which was sent out to members of SMART-Transportation Division GO-386 union.
New Position Created
The arbitration agreement also outlines the creation of a new position called road utility conductors, who would perform supervision and administration of train operations, as well as ground service work.
The basic daily rate for an eight-hour day for these new positions, also referred to as road utility positions or RUPs, will be $548.63.
BNSF did not respond to Cowboy State Daily inquiries about the job losses or the new positions.
Andy Foust, legislative director for SMART-TD stationed in Nebraska, told Cowboy State Daily the arbitration agreement is almost identical to one that union members who work for BNSF voted down Sept. 11.
The only change after the required mediation, which lasted five years, was a $500 reduction in sign-on bonuses.
Foust said the BNSF agreement is similar to one Union Pacific union members have already signed, and that he expects what happens at BNSF will be similar if not identical to what happened there.
“Right now, there are no RUPs on some Union Pacific properties, they just cut the helper,” he said. “It wasn’t like a one-for-one deal. It was we’re going to cut the helpers and we’re not, we don’t have to replace them.”
Other places, helper positions were replaced with a utility position.
“It’s just whatever they feel like they want to do,” Foust said. “BNSF, we’re being told right now, immediately, that there will only be cuts to brakeman position on locals.”
That means a train that went from say Cheyenne to Sheridan could get rid of the brakeman on a three-person crew.
Foust said railroad companies have long been trying to automateand downsize to one-man crews. In 1998, they started trying to get rid of conductors. That ran into stiff opposition the last 25 years.
Although conductor positions are protected under the latest agreement, Foust still sees these latest changes as a continued movement toward the goal of one-man crews.
Safety Out the Window
Foust believes one-man crews will not do anything good for railroad safety and points to recent derailments, like the one in East Palestine, Ohio, last year, as an example of why the idea itself is problematic.
In that accident, a train loaded with chemicals jumped the track, rupturing rail cars and fueling chemical fire at the foothills of the Appalachians. The accident forced evacuations a mile around the accident, and toxins ultimately spread to 16 states.
Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, who is now the vice president-elect, sponsored the Railway Safety Act, which would have strengthened rail safety requirements, improved train inspections, boosted support for first responders and increased penalties on rail companies for wrongdoing. The bill didn’t make it through the legislature, but Foust said there are plans to try again.
“The safety aspect of it is, you have a guy out there running a remote-control engine in the yard, and he’s switching out up to 100 cars at a time and doing all this work with no help,” Foust said. “In my book, efficiency and safety has got to be out the door because nobody’s working with them. If something happens, I hope he’s able, the employee, is able to get to a radio.”
Foust said SMART-TD will continue to lobby for changes, including a two-man crew requirement, so that there is at least some redundancy with train cars when there’s an emergency.
Wyoming lawmakers have previously considered similar legislation, Rep. Clarence Styvar, R-Cheyenne, told Cowboy State Daily.
“We’ve had that two-man train crew bill a couple of times,” he said. “I’ve always voted conflict because I worked for the railroad. But this year, I don’t have to. If somebody brings it, I’ll vote to keep the two-man crew.”
Styvar sees it as common sense.
“We don’t send just one person down to a mine,” he said. “They’re required to be paired up. And we already require that for commercial airlines. There’s a pilot and a co-pilot.”
The BNSF Railway yard in Cheyenne, Wyoming. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
The BNSF Railway yard in Cheyenne, Wyoming. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily)
December Is Furlough Time
December is a timeframe where furloughs are commonplace, Styvar said.
“Around this timeframe every year they do go in and do layoffs and shut gangs down, and then they will start them all back up in the January February timeframe,” he said.
More cuts on top of those furloughs will leave crews that are already stretched thin even thinner, Foust said, and there’s a safety aspect to that for both employees and the community at large.
Foust worked for the railroad for 20 years and said he “can’t even imagine now walking an entire train, out there switching in the middle of the night by myself.”
There’s “no one out there with me and the nearest member of my crew being a mile and a half away,” Foust said, adding that, “If railroads cared about safety they wouldn’t be cutting more jobs.”
After Union Pacific’s collective bargaining agreement similar to BNSF’s was reached, Foust recalls the company trying to put conductors into trucks that would follow alongside trains to do work — similar to plans he’s heard floated for BNSF.
But there aren’t roads along all the train tracks and, in states like Wyoming, there is winter to contend with, he said.
“(Union Pacific) went out and bought all these trucks that cost $150,000 and retrofitted them with all these tools and stuff,” Foust said. “And then we’re like, how are you going to do this in the middle of winter? Like we’ve got guys who, in Wyoming, they can’t even get to work, the roads are shut down.
“But you want this guy to go along a train? What if you can’t get there because of snow or ice or whatever if the roads are shut down?”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
