Unauthorized Disclosure: Kari Lydersen Makes The Case For Nationalizing US Railroads

Kari Lydersen, a Chicago-based reporter, author, and journalist instructor, joins the Unauthorized Disclosure podcast to discuss her feature story for In These Times, “The Case For Nationalizing the Railroads.”

Lydersen has covered labor in Chicago and throughout the United States for many years. In this interview, she shares the experiences of railroad workers who united around a strike to help them win paid sick days in their contract. But President Joe Biden sided with the railroad barons and helped corporate executives stop the strike.

Profit margins for the major railroad companies are staggering. Lydersen highlights the four corporations that control US railroads. She then describes some of the health and safety struggles that railroad workers deal with daily. She talks about why we see around 1,700 train derailments in any given year.

Later in the interview, Lydersen addresses what nationalization of the US railroad system might look like and also why so many shipments of goods are transported by trucks than trains, even though trains are more efficient.

05:00 Why US Freight Railroads Are Important
07:55 Extreme Profit Margins For Railroad Companies
11:05 Conditions For Railroad Workers
17:25 How Safety Problems Are So Easily Disregarded
21:00 Cost-Cutting Measures Fuel Disasters
24:30 Railroad Workers and the Fight For Medicare For All
30:20 Trucks and America’s Culture of Driving
35:10 When Biden Alienated Rail Workers