America’s freight rail industry, deregulated by the 1980 Staggers Rail Act, has spent four decades investing private capital to move goods more efficiently across a continent-sized economy. The proposed $71.5 billion merger of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern to create the nation’s first coast-to-coast single-line railroad represents the logical culmination of that progress.
Predictably, some elements of Big Labor oppose it.
Specifically, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters came out against the transaction in December, with General President Sean O’Brien vowing that the union will “do everything in our power to block this harmful merger.” Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern, meanwhile, have responded to labor concerns by offering unionized rail employees an unprecedented guarantee they are calling “Jobs for Life.” Every union employee working at either railroad on the closing date is guaranteed employment for the length of his career, with all merger-related efficiencies achieved solely through attrition rather than layoffs. Six national rail unions, including SMART-TD, the industry’s largest, have already reached “Jobs for Life” agreements and now support the deal.
The Teamsters have not, and the reason deserves some real scrutiny.
As an initial matter, consider the composition of the Teamsters’ 1.3 million members. Somewhere between 45% and 55% work in trucking, parcel, freight, and warehouse operations. Roughly 20% to 25% hold public sector jobs. Airline employees account for 8% to 10%. Manufacturing, healthcare, construction, and sanitation fill in another 15% to 20%. Rail workers? Just 6% to 10% of the total membership.
Put differently, for every Teamster who works on the railroad, there are roughly six who drive a truck, load a parcel or work a warehouse.
Now, the opposition begins to make more sense. It is not really about rail workers at all through this merger. It is about protecting the union’s much larger trucking, parcel, and warehouse divisions from a strengthened rail competitor.
That is precisely the point of the merger. A single-line transcontinental railroad reduces handoffs, cuts transit times, and makes rail meaningfully more competitive against long-haul trucking. American manufacturers, farmers, and consumers benefit when the two dominant modes of surface freight compete on price and service. Locking in a fragmented status quo, in which coast-to-coast shipments require multiple carriers and interchanges, benefits nobody other than the trucking operators absorbing loads that rail cannot economically handle today because of the added costs from those handoffs.
Worse still, the Teamsters’ calculation is not merely protectionist. It is genuinely short-sighted.
The trucking industry, in which the Teamsters are working to insulate from rail competition, happens to be one of the industries most exposed to automation in the entire American economy. In May 2025, Aurora Innovation launched the first commercial driverless heavy-duty trucking service on public roads in the United States, hauling customer loads between Dallas and Houston. Kodiak Robotics, Gatik, and other companies are racing to expand similar operations across the Sun Belt. A University of California, Berkeley Labor Center analysis projects that autonomous trucks could displace as many as 294,000 long-distance drivers, including some of the best-paying positions in the industry. A joint International Transport Forum study estimated that as many as 4.4 million truck-driving jobs across the U.S. and Europe could become redundant by 2030 under a rapid adoption of driverless trucks scenario.
Freight rail work, by contrast, operates in a highly regulated, safety-intensive environment far less exposed to near-term automation. Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern project that they will add roughly 900 net new union rail jobs by year three following the merger to handle expected volume growth. Rail careers already pay approximately $160,000 in average compensation, including benefits, roughly 40% above the national industrial average.
Accordingly, the Teamsters’ choice comes sharply into focus. Union leadership can secure a lifetime employment guarantee, roughly 900 new union positions, and long-term volume growth for the smaller and safer division of its membership. Or it can protect the market share of its larger trucking division from rail competition, temporarily, while driverless technology reshapes that industry, regardless of what happens with the merger.
Teamsters leadership has seemingly chosen the second, shorter-term option.
HOW A COAST-TO-COAST RAILROAD COULD CHANGE AMERICAN LIVES
Rank-and-file rail workers ought to notice. Six national rail unions already have, which is why they signed on. The so-called “Jobs for Life” guarantee is contingent on the deal going through. Block the merger, and the guarantee vanishes. Approve it, and roughly 20,000 Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern workers represented by the BLET and BMWED walk into the most secure employment arrangement any American industrial workforce has been offered in a generation.
That is not solidarity in the labor space. It is a sacrifice, and the wrong Teamsters are being asked to bear the cost.
Tim Lee, senior vice president of legal and public affairs with the Center for Individual Freedom.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
