There comes a point in every negotiation when words are no longer enough.
That point has now been reached, according to SMART-TD General Chair Rick Lee of General Committee GO-049 and his fellow CSX South Region General Chairs, who represent CSX’s largest bargaining unit.
Negotiations in the railway industry are never easy. They require equal amounts of passion and patience. Lee says SMART-TD members have demonstrated both in abundance. But after more than a year of operating without a new agreement, he believes it’s time for CSX to stop talking and start showing exactly what it wants from its employees.
His message to the railroad is simple.
“Put your money where your mouth is.”
“We have spent enough time listening to talking points, arguments for national agreements and rumors,” Lee said. “If CSX really believes its local offering is as good as it claims, then let’s stop gaming. Let’s put the offerings on the table where the people who are actually doing the work can see them.”
Table of Contents
A public challenge
Lee is calling on CSX Labor Relations to join SMART-TD on neutral ground for a public town hall focused on one topic: Transparency.
The suggestion is straightforward.
Both sides would present their current negotiating positions to CSX employees. Members could compare suggestions themselves rather than relying on carrier publications, rumors, social media posts or second-hand reports.
“If you’re proud of your current offering in mediation, show it,” Lee said. “I’m more than willing to do the same.”
Lee said CSX railroaders deserve to know why negotiations are still ongoing and where exactly differences remain between the two sides.
“Our members deserve so much,” he said.
Members have already spoken once
The current dispute did not just start yesterday.
In the fall of 2024, SMART-TD GO-049 General Chairman Rick Lee and CSX agreed to a tentative agreement (TA) before formal negotiations for the 2025 round of negotiations were fully opened. When this agreement was presented to members, it was rejected by a decisive majority of 66%. Due to conflicts with CSX’s proposal and their CSRA agreement, the CSRA SMART-TD General Committees did not enter into an agreement with CSX in 2024.
The vote under GO-049 and the nearly 2,400 members it represents at CSX sent a clear message.
The members wanted changes.
According to Lee, SMART-TD expected CSX to return to the bargaining table and negotiate. That is the obvious expectation that everyone would have and that the airline’s next proposal would be closer to the concerns raised by members. Instead, the offers CSX made during negotiations and continues to make in mediation today have moved in the opposite direction. “Their proposals actually got worse, not better,” Lee said.
“Our members have already made it clear that they are unwilling to accept CSX’s original settlement offer, and in apparent retaliation against its own employees, the carrier’s proposals have moved further and further away from an acceptable solution,” Lee said. “It makes no sense to come back with a proposal that members consider less valuable. That’s not how good faith negotiations work, and that’s certainly not how you show my respect for my men and women who are CSX employees.”
Fairness is important
One of the biggest issues to date concerns other locally negotiated patterns in the 2025 bargaining round. This local pattern at CSX is based on semester years and total value.
The SMART-TD General Committees at CSX were the first T&E transportation bargaining groups at CSX to negotiate paid sick leave. GO-049 negotiated its paid sick leave agreement in April 2023. The CSRA paid sick leave agreement came soon after. This success did not come automatically. It was won through negotiations over quid pro quo concepts, and concessions were made during negotiations to secure it.
Since then, engineers represented by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) negotiated paid sick leave in their 2025 land agreement during last year’s 2025 round of negotiations.
GO-049’s Lee, along with the CSRA general chairs, argues that these improvements provide significant economic value to the 2025 BLET negotiation round agreement. However, because SMART-TD members had already negotiated paid sick leave based on other considerations, CSX refused to provide equivalent economic value in the 2025 SMART-TD bargaining package on the property.
Your position is fundamentally sound. The on-site pattern established during the 2025 CSX bargaining round is based on the macroeconomic value of the settlement, and our members should not receive less value simply because SMART-TD successfully negotiated paid sick leave through quid pro quo exchanges in 2023, helping to establish the paid sick leave pattern in the industry.
“If you do the right thing first, you shouldn’t fall behind everyone else,” Lee said.
The clock keeps ticking
While negotiations continue at a snail’s pace as the carrier refuses to propose a fair total value, thousands of SMART-TD members continue to move freight through the CSX system daily, bearing the significant impact of severe inflation.
They remain available 24/7, work holidays, weekends and nights and continue to serve customers while waiting for a new agreement for 2025.
Lee and the CSRA general chairmen reject suggestions that SMART-TD is intentionally delaying the process.
“We have every reason to settle this matter,” Lee said. “The people I and my fellow leaders represent in the South are the people who have been living without pay rises since July 1, 2024. No one on our side benefits from this being delayed.”
He also emphasized that agreements have been reached or progress is being made with several other railroads represented on Lee’s general committee.
“This shows me that the problem is not that SMART-TD is unwilling to negotiate,” Lee said. “The problem is getting meaningful commitment and movement from CSX. I currently manage and manage fifteen (15) different rail contracts and have reached local settlements with several other carriers that have been accepted by an overwhelming majority of affected members. Dealing with CSX, on the other hand, is nearly impossible, at least these days, because they do not negotiate in good faith. Rather, they want to tell you what they are going to offer and refuse to negotiate from there. This mentality only serves as a recipe for a stalemate.
This is why CSX is trying to put us in the “punishment box,” so to speak, by denying its employees a fair deal. Their tactic is to use frustration and coercion to pressure employees into accepting a deal on CSX’s terms, while hoping that members believe the union is to blame. Therefore I am very grateful that we have such a strong membership. Our members who work at CSX know exactly what games the carrier likes to play.
At the end of the day, we stand united and are all in this together until we get a fair deal. Period.”
Time for the truth
Lee believes the quickest way to end speculation is for both sides to let the railroad workers who will live under this contract judge the facts for themselves.
For years, rail workers have heard conflicting claims about who is responsible for the slow pace of negotiations and whether the current proposals are fair.
Lee says there’s a simple solution.
Release the offers.
Let the men and women whose lives are directly affected see what is actually on the table. In contract negotiations, the parties typically cannot disclose in real time what items are being negotiated, as things can change at any time in the natural course of negotiations or items may be traded in return at some point to reach a final agreement. The carrier works according to the same centralized negotiation logic. However, now they are trying to spread misinformation about what their current proposal really is.
“CSX has spent a lot of time explaining to people how good its offer is and that SMART-TD is the problem standing in the way of a good contract,” Lee said. “Now all we ask is that they prove it.”
Similarly, SMART-TD General Chairmen for CSX’s Southern Region (CSRA), Joe Bennett, Brian Killough and Travis Raynes, share the same views as General Chairman Lee for the Northern Mid Atlantic District. While they are subject to their own CSRA ownership agreement, they say CSX continues to play the same games with them and their members have also not received a new agreement or raise since their last raise on July 1, 2024 as part of the 2020 round of negotiations.
“CSX must put its ego aside and come to the bargaining table with a fair deal. While we have not reached a tentative agreement like GO-049 in 2024 due to our own issues and conflicts under the CSRA, CSX has also resorted to a childish form of system-wide punishment directed at its own workforce. It is time for CSX to come forward with a proposal that reflects the same overall economic value as other local ones achieved through collective bargaining “We join General Chairman Lee in calling on CSX to discuss the details publicly so the truth can be seen by all,” said Joe Bennett, Brian Killough and Travis Raynes.
For SMART-TD, this challenge is about more than a contract.
It’s about respect.
It’s about transparency.
The point is that railway workers deserve not to be lied to.
And most importantly, it’s about making sure the railroad workers who keep CSX moving every day have the opportunity to see exactly what both sides are asking of them.
The challenge has been issued.
The next step belongs to CSX.
https://www.smart-union.org/put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is-smart-td-challenges-csx-to-make-its-current-contract-offer-public/
