Freight rail engineers vote in favor of new contract

Members of the Independence, Ohio-based Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) union have voted in favor of a new national collective bargaining agreement with 10 freight railroads in the United States.

According to the BLET, 70 percent of its more than 12,000 members voted approved the five-year agreement. The union says the contract addresses rates of pay and other issues and that there were no concessions or work rule changes in the new agreement.

The contract covers BLET employees with major freight railroads, including Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, Norfolk Southern Railway Co. (NS) and Canadian National.

The agreement comes at a time when two of the largest freight rail companies—NS and Union Pacific Corp. (UP)—are engaged in a process for UP to acquire NS.

The sector may also be in the midst of a slump, according to tracking activity undertaken by the Association of American Railroads (AAR) and reported on by FreightWaves.

Freight rail traffic on U.S. railroads totaled about 487,000 carloads and intermodal units in the week ending Dec. 20, 2025, according to AAR, representing a 7 percent decrease compared with the same period one year earlier.

A FreightWaves report cites coal and forest products as commodities whose freight volumes dropped by 15 percent and 7 percent respectively year on year in late December.

The report does not break down volumes for the comparatively smaller recycled materials and solid waste shipping segments, although carloads in the “metallic ores and metals” category dropped by 6.7 percent in the third week of December compared with one year earlier.

The BLET union says highlights of its contract include general wage increases of 18.8 percent during the span of the agreement and improvements to vacation accrual, allowing BLET members to earn additional weeks of vacation at an accelerated rate. Members also will experience no increase in out-of-pocket costs for health care insurance during the span of the contract.

In the past two months, since a tentative agreement was reached in late October between the union and employers acting under an umbrella organization called the National Carriers Conference Committee (NCCC), the BLET says its national officers and bargaining team members held an extensive series of meetings from coast to coast to discuss the terms of the agreement and to provide members an opportunity to ask questions and make comments.

“This is a democratic union; accepting or rejecting this agreement was solely our members’ decision,” BLET national President Mark Wallace says. “The feedback we received as we traveled the nation showed us that our members knew exactly how tough the national pattern was and voted with a clear understanding of what was at stake. Against that backdrop, this agreement delivers real gains, protects our work rules and avoids concessions.”

The BLET was the last of a group of 12 rail unions that negotiate with the NCCC to have reached a tentative agreement.