“Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is”: SMART-TD Challenges CSX to Make Its Current Contract Offer Public

There comes a point in every negotiation when words are no longer enough.

According to SMART-TD General Chairperson Rick Lee of General Committee GO-049, together with his fellow General Chairpersons on CSX’s Southern Region, representing the largest bargaining unit craft on CSX, that point has now arrived.

Negotiations in the railroad industry are never easy. They demand equal parts passion and patience. Lee says SMART-TD’s members have shown plenty of both. But after working without a new agreement for more than a year, he believes it’s time for CSX to stop talking and start showing exactly what it is asking its employees to accept.

His message to the railroad is simple.

“Put your money where your mouth is.”

“We’ve spent enough time listening to talking points, national agreement pattern arguments, and rumors,” Lee said. “If CSX truly believes its on-property proposal is as good as it says it is, then let’s stop the games. Let’s put the offers on the table where the people who actually do the work can see them.”

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 issue: transparency.

The proposal is straightforward.

Both sides would present their current bargaining positions for CSX employees to see. Members could compare the proposals themselves instead of relying on Carrier publications, rumors, social media posts, or secondhand accounts.

“If they’re proud of their current offer in mediation, then show it,” Lee said. “I’m more than prepared to do the same.”

Lee says railroaders at CSX deserve to know why negotiations remain unfinished and exactly where the differences between the two sides still exist.

“Our members have earned that much,” he said.

Members Already Spoke Once

The current dispute did not begin yesterday.

In the fall of 2024, SMART-TD GO-049 General Chairperson Rick Lee and CSX reached a Tentative Agreement (TA) before formal bargaining for the 2025 bargaining round had fully opened. When that agreement was presented to the membership, it was rejected by a decisive margin of 66%. The CSRA SMART-TD General Committees did not reach a TA with CSX in 2024, due to conflicts with CSX’s proposal and their CSRA Agreement.  

The vote under GO-049, and the nearly 2400 members it represents at CSX, sent a clear message.

Members wanted changes.

According to Lee, SMART-TD expected CSX to return to the bargaining table and negotiate. That is the obvious expectation anyone would have, and that the Carrier’s next proposal would move closer to the concerns expressed by the membership. Instead, the offers CSX has presented during negotiations, and continues to present in mediation today, have moved in the opposite direction. “Their proposals have actually been getting worse, not better,” Lee said.

“Our members have already made it clear they are not willing to accept CSX’s initial settlement offer, and, apparently in some form of retaliation against its own employees, the Carrier’s proposals have continued to move further away from an acceptable resolution,” Lee said. “It doesn’t make sense to come back with a proposal the membership views as less valuable. That is not how good faith negotiations work, and it certainly is not how you demonstrate respect for my men and women, who are CSX’s employees.”

Fairness Matters

One of the biggest issues to date involves other on-property negotiated patterns in the 2025 bargaining round. That local pattern at CSX is based on term years and overall value.

The SMART-TD General Committees at CSX were the first T&E transportation service bargaining groups on CSX to negotiate paid sick leave. GO-049 negotiated their paid sick leave agreement in April of 2023. The CSRA paid sick leave agreement came shortly after. That achievement did not come automatically. It was won through bargaining on quid pro quo concepts, and concessions during bargaining were made to secure it.

Since then, engineers represented by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) negotiated paid sick leave in their 2025 on-property agreement during last year’s 2025 bargaining round.

Lee of GO-049, together with the CSRA General Chairpersons, argues that those improvements added significant economic value to the BLET’s 2025 bargaining round settlement. However, because SMART-TD members had already negotiated paid sick leave on other quid pro quo bases, CSX has refused to provide equivalent economic value in SMART-TD’s 2025 on-property bargaining package.

Their position is fundamentally sound. The on-property pattern established during the 2025 bargaining round at CSX is based on the overall economic 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 establish the industry’s paid sick leave pattern.

“Doing the right thing first shouldn’t put you behind everyone else,” Lee said.

The Clock Keeps Ticking

While negotiations continue at a snail’s pace due to the Carrier’s resistance to offer proposals on fair overall value, thousands of SMART-TD members continue moving freight across the CSX system every day, shouldering the significant impacts of sharp inflation.

They remain available around the clock, work on holidays, weekends, and nights, and continue serving customers, all while waiting for a new 2025 agreement.

Lee and the CSRA General Chairpersons reject suggestions that SMART-TD is intentionally delaying the process.

“We have every reason to get this settled,” Lee said. “The people I and my fellow General Chairpersons on the south represent are the ones living without the pay increases since July 1, 2024. Nobody on our side benefits from dragging this out.”

He also emphasized that agreements have been reached, or are progressing, with multiple other railroads represented under Lee’s General Committee.

“That tells me the problem isn’t that SMART-TD isn’t willing to negotiate,” Lee said. “The problem is getting meaningful engagement and movement from CSX. I currently preside over and administer fifteen (15) different rail agreements and have reached on-property settlements with several other Carriers that passed with an overwhelming majority of the affected members. Dealing with CSX, on the other hand, at least these days, is nearly impossible because they do not engage in good faith bargaining. Rather, they want to tell you what they will offer and refuse to negotiate from there. That mentality only serves as a recipe for a stalemate.

That is the reason CSX is trying to put us, by way of denying their employees a fair deal, in the ‘penalty box,’ so to speak. Their tactic is to pressure employees into accepting a deal on CSX’s terms through frustration and duress, while hoping the members will believe it is the Union’s fault. That is why I am very thankful we have such a strong membership. Our members who work at CSX know exactly the games the Carrier likes to play.

At the end of the day, we stand united, and we 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 railroaders who will live under this contract judge the facts for themselves.

For years, railroaders have heard competing claims about who is responsible for the slow pace of bargaining and whether the current proposals are fair.

Lee says there is 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 what items are being bargained on in real time, because in the natural course of negotiations things can change at any time, or items can be traded in quid pro quo exchanges at some point, in order to reach a final deal. The Carrier operates under this same and centralized bargaining logic. However, now they attempt to distribute misinformation on what their current proposal really is.

“CSX has spent plenty of time telling people how good its offer is, and that SMART-TD is the problem standing in the way of a good contract,” Lee said. “Now we’re just asking them to prove it.”

In like fashion, the SMART-TD General Chairpersons on CSX’s Southern Region (CSRA), Joe Bennett, Brian Killough, and Travis Raynes, share the same sentiments as General Chairperson Lee on the Northern Mid Atlantic District. While they are governed by their own CSRA on property Agreement, they indicate that CSX has continued to play the same games with them, and their members likewise remain without a new agreement or pay increases since their last increase on July 1, 2024, under the 2020 bargaining round.

“CSX needs to put its ego aside and come to the bargaining table with a fair deal. While we did not reach a Tentative Agreement in 2024 like GO-049, due to our own issues and conflicts under the CSRA Agreement, CSX has likewise retreated to a childish style of system wide punishment directed at its own workforce. It is time for CSX to offer a proposal that reflects the same overall economic value as other local agreements reached through collective bargaining, just as we are seeking. We join General Chairperson Lee in challenging CSX to discuss the details publicly so the truth is out for everyone to see. Just name the time and place,” Joe Bennett, Brian Killough, and Travis Raynes said.

For SMART-TD, this challenge is about more than one contract.

It is about respect.

It is about transparency.

It is about the fact that railroaders deserve not to be lied to.

And above all, it is about making sure the railroaders who keep CSX moving every single day have the opportunity to see exactly what both sides are asking them to support.

The challenge has been issued.

The next move belongs to CSX.