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Union Pacific, the biggest freight railroad in the United States by revenue, announced on Tuesday that it had agreed to acquire Norfolk Southern, another Class I railroad. The deal is worth $85 billion and would create the first transnational railroad in the US.

The announcement marks a new stage in the monopolization of the already heavily concentrated freight rail industry. It also underscores the treacherous character of the bureaucrats in the railroad unions, who have almost certainly hidden knowledge about this for months while negotiating sellout contracts with the major carriers.

The new company would be called Union Pacific. Its rail network would span 50,000 miles across 43 states. The company would control about 43 percent of rail freight and have, initially, more than 50,000 employees.

Six major freight railroads currently operate in the US (down from seven after the 2023 merger between Kansas City Southern and Canadian Pacific), and the merger would reduce this number to five. But most of the freight is carried by four companies: Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, CSX and BNSF.

Shortly after merger talks between Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern were reported, it emerged that BNSF and CSX had also begun merger talks. Representatives of these companies have declined to comment on their plans. But if these two mergers were to be consummated, which some industry observers say is likely, then nearly 90 percent of rail freight would be controlled by two companies.

Before it can be completed, the announced merger between Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern must be reviewed by the Surface Transportation Board (STB), a federal regulatory body. Officially, the board must consider whether a proposed merger would undermine competition. But in practice, the administration of President Donald Trump has been promoting deregulation of the rail industry, and every other industry.

“They’ll approve this, we’re very confident of this, or we wouldn’t have taken this step,” Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena told the New York Times. The two companies have announced that they intend to complete the merger in early 2027.

If the deal is completed, then one of the first orders of business for the new Union Pacific will be to seek “efficiencies” that would reduce the company’s costs and increase its profits. Job cuts will be on the agenda, and this initiative would be consistent with a decades-long trend in the industry.

In recent years, the carriers have used so-called “Precision Scheduled Railroading” technology as a justification for workforce reductions. According to STB figures, employment at the Class I railroads decreased from 160,000 in January of 2012 to 118,000 in June of 2025.

Now, the Association of American Railroads (AAR), a trade group representing the freight carriers, is working to abolish the federal two-person crew rule.

As part of its search for “efficiencies,” the new Union Pacific would also cut spending on rail safety and relax safety standards. The AAR is already seeking to reduce the frequency of required visual track inspections from twice per week to twice per month. In addition, railroads are required to remedy newly identified track defects immediately, but the AAR seeks to extend the time they are allowed to three days.

Implementing automated track inspection technology will justify the relaxation of these rules, according to the organization. In fact, this technology may not detect several of the faults that human inspectors do, and reducing the frequency of visual inspections would significantly increase the risk that defects go unaddressed.

Moreover, lengthening the time in which the railroads are required to address these defects would increase the risk of accidents and derailments, which could result in explosions or environmental contamination when trains are carrying hazardous materials.

Norfolk Southern is notorious for its safety record. The company is responsible for the infamous derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals, including the highly carcinogenic vinyl chloride, in East Palestine, Ohio, in February 2023. A mechanical problem on one of the railcar’s trucks caused the accident.

A few days after the derailment, Norfolk Southern performed a controlled release and burn of five tanks of vinyl chloride, allegedly to prevent an explosion. This unnecessary operation released phosgene, which was used as a chemical weapon in World War I, and other toxic chemicals into the air. These toxic chemicals polluted the air over 16 states, or 14 percent of the country, according to the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “We basically nuked a town with chemicals so we could get a railroad open,” said hazardous materials expert Sil Caggiano.

The announcement of the merger also further exposes the union bureaucracy. Mergers of this magnitude do not result from casual, last-minute decisions. Both companies engaged in a long period of discussions and planning before making their announcement.

They understand that the success of the deal requires support from the trade unions. Though the union bureaucrats had to have known that this merger was in the works, they hid this information from their members to forestall rank-and-file opposition to the deal.

Significantly, only two smaller unions have reached an agreement with Union Pacific; talks are not taking place between UP and any other union. They have isolated the Union Pacific workers to weaken them in any eventual fight against the merger.

The announcement of the merger also vindicates the warnings that the World Socialist Web Site made about the current round of negotiations. Departing from long-established tradition, the rail unions negotiated agreements with individual railroads instead of negotiating through the National Carriers’ Conference Committee.

This is a divide-and-conquer strategy, motivated by the unions’ desperate need to prevent another rebellion like the one in 2022, where workers voted down a White-House backed contract and pushed for a national strike. The union bureaucrats avoided this only by stalling for time until Congress was able to pass legislation pre-emptively banning a strike and imposing the deal workers rejected.

SMART-TD, the largest rail workers’ union, is making a public show of opposing the merger. In a statement, the union cited concerns over Union Pacific’s labor practices, as well as the carrier’s “troubling safety record.” But the SMART-TD leadership’s plan is not to mobilize its members against the merger, but to make a statement during the STB’s open comment period. This strategy is equivalent to talking to the wind.

The STB is led by Patrick Fuchs, a Trump appointee. In late July, Fuchs announced plans to establish a regulatory framework “that is driven by market forces” and supports “entrepreneurship.” Among Fuchs’s goals are to speed decision-making and “break down regulatory barriers.” In plain English, Fuchs plans to prioritize the needs of corporate and financial capital above all other considerations.

The SMART-TD bureaucracy knows full well that appealing to Fuchs and the STB to stop the merger is futile. This is why they are trying to divert workers into this dead end.

The rail unions’ silence about Union Pacific’s pending merger with Norfolk Southern, as well as their actions during this round of negotiations, provides further evidence that workers must organize a rebellion against the union bureaucracy. At each step, the bureaucrats seek to suppress workers’ struggles and enforce the requirements of the carriers.

Opposition to Union Pacific’s merger with Norfolk Southern cannot take the form of appeals to the STB, nor will it be led by the union bureaucrats. Instead, a response by the rank and file, organized independently of the unions, must unite all rail workers, regardless of carrier and craft, in a fight against capital.

The Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee, which was founded in 2022 and played a central role in the fight for a national strike, must be expanded and established as the organizing center of a fight against both management and the union bureaucracy.