During two consecutive days last week, members of the Surface Transportation Board heard scores of arguments from unsatisfied shipping companies and exasperated labor representatives and employees regarding the troubled and mismanaged Class 1 freight railroads. The public slam of railroad management had been long overdue.
Indoctrination into “Precision Scheduled Railroading,” the brainchild of the late modern-day robber baron Hunter Harrison, and a constant desire to satisfy Wall Street has left the railroads in the lurch. Rich Edelman, General Counsel to the NCFO and longtime fierce advocate for rail labor, laid it all out on Thursday.
We encourage you to listen to the testimony and subsequent Q&A (25:29). It is hard to imagine a better way to demonstrate how Brother Edelman described the mismanagement and greed of the freight carriers and how their singular focus on shareholder’s limitless greed has led them to fail to meet the needs of their customers and leave them without the manpower and expertise to pull themselves out of their self-inflicted jam.
