Norfolk Southern is working with our labor unions to deliver safe, reliable, and resilient service. Labor is critical to the operational success of NS, with over 80 percent of our workforce represented by a collective bargaining agreement.

Last May, NS President and CEO Alan Shaw and leaders of 12 NS labor unions sent a joint letter underscoring their shared goal of partnering together to drive continuous improvement in rail safety. The following month, NS appointed AtkinsRéalis US Nuclear (AtkinsRéalis ) as our independent safety consultant to conduct a comprehensive safety assessment.

In 2023, AtkinsRéalis officials engaged local and general chairman from all 13 of our labor unions during field visits to 26 locations across the NS system. Feedback from labor played a key role in developing opportunities for improvement, which were incorporated into the firm’s initial report outlining opportunities to enhance NS safety policies and procedures.

“From the very beginning, labor has played a critical role in identifying meaningful opportunities to help NS be a safer railroad,” said Elmer Naples, Chairman of the AtkinsRéalis Independent Performance Assessment Team. “We’ve incorporated feedback from labor throughout our recommendations for how NS can improve its safety culture. The feedback we’ve received has been invaluable to our work.”

NS is implementing a range of positive changes related to how we engage our workforce based on input from labor. These efforts include enhanced conductor training, improving local safety and service committees at our yards and terminals, and recalibrating the forms of accountability by shifting away from some punitive discipline in favor of more coaching, teaching, training, and learning.

“There’s been a major shift for the better with how we are collaborating with our labor partners,” said John Fleps, VP Safety. “We are coming together with labor to do things differently. This new approach is already helping us to affect a shift away from a compliance safety mindset (“have to”) towards a commitment safety attitude (“want to”). This powerful safety culture transition is going to take time as we build trust, but it’s absolutely a force multiplier for safety outcomes. A commitment attitude is contagious, and it affects everything we do, from the smallest obligation to the biggest job.”

Over the coming months, NS and AtkinsRéalis officials will circle back to engage with labor leaders on all six of NS’ divisions, assessing progress toward implementing the initial report’s recommendations.