US freight railroads and unions have reached a tentative agreement at the last minute to avert a strike that would have slammed supply chains in the country.
The National Carriers’ Conference Committee, which represents employers in collective bargaining in the sector, announced on Thursday that it reached agreements with unions Brotherhood of Railway Signalmen, SMART-TD and BLET.
“What a barn burner!” wrote Benjamin Nolan, an analyst covering rail and ocean shipping investment bank Stifel.
While the deals are not finalised and other matters remain to be ironed out, the analyst expects unions to report to work on Friday.
“These agreements represent a big win as a national freight shutdown is all but averted for the end of the week, and likely indefinitely,” he said.
If railroads had gone on strike if no deal was reached by the Friday deadline, it was expected to have fallout for ocean shipping, particularly for the container sector.
Though negotiations have been underway for months, SMART-TD and BLET had been holding out for better attendance policies.
As TradeWinds has reported, railroads had already begun to shut down their networks.
“The tentative agreement reached tonight is an important win for our economy and the American people,” said US President Joe Biden, whose term in the White House has been dogged by supply chain problems and related inflationary woes that the rail strike threatened to reignite.
“For the American people, the hard work done to reach this tentative agreement means that our economy can avert the significant damage any shutdown would have brought.”
