T he chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure agrees with labor unions: The chief regulator of railroads should have more power. The agency itself, staring down a possible massive rail strike, isn't convinced.

Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-OR), who is retiring in January after 36 years in the House, is a key supporter of the Freight Rail Shipping Fair Market Act, introduced on Aug. 2.

The legislation would “hold the freight rail industry accountable for their appalling service to shippers and ultimately help American families burdened by the increased price of goods,” DeFazio said in a statement accompanying the bill’s introduction.

DeFazio complained about “consolidation and Wall Street pressures” on the railroads. The congressman, representing the lower half or so of Oregon's coastline, predicted that the bill would finally “level the playing field” for the little guy.

DeFazio also boasted that the proposal would “give the tools and guidance the Surface Transportation Board needs to fulfill its mandate and better regulate disputes among Class I railroads and their customers, weed out unfair practices, and incentivize efficient operations.”

Yet the head of the Surface Transportation Board has signaled politely that his agency doesn’t want the powers and responsibilities the bill would confer. The independent federal agency is charged with economic regulation of various modes of surface transportation.

In May, STB Chairman Martin Oberman testified to the House Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials and effectively rejected calls for more power for his agency.

“While the problems facing the rail industry today are significant, in my view, the board can use its existing authority to mitigate those problems in a meaningful way,” Oberman said.

The bill would, among other things, give the STB more authority to intervene in rate disputes between shippers and railroads and allow the board to prohibit rate hikes in the event of worker strikes. It would provide the agency with $256 million over five years and mandate several studies about how to intervene in freight commerce.

On Aug. 8, speaking remotely to the annual meeting of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, or SMART, Oberman gave some rhetorical ground to railroad unions but held firm in his rejection of more regulatory muscle for his agency.

“Class I railroads just way overdid it in cutting the workforce” in response to COVID-19, Oberman admitted, according to the union’s own account of the address. And as a result, they have “all been struggling to have sufficient people and sufficient crews.”

Oberman said, however, that the Freight Rail Shipping Fair Market Act is not something that the board could get behind on a partisan basis.

“We don’t have, fortunately, on the board the kind of polarization and tribalism that you see too much in Washington,” Oberman told the union members. “I am determined to keep that from happening on the board.”

The House would likely take the bill up in September at about the same time that rail unions are legally allowed to strike.

President Joe Biden has appointed a Presidential Emergency Board to try to broker a compromise between the railroads and 12 unions that are threatening to strike, which could have major negative ramifications for an America already facing significant supply chain problems.

The emergency board’s duration expires in mid-August, and the mandatory “cooling off” period is up in mid-September.

“The bill now has no Republican support, but passage in the traditional manner isn’t its objective,” observed Frank Wilner, a contributing editor for Railway Age. Wilner also served as vice president at the Association of American Railroads and was the chief of staff at the STB and a onetime union official.

Wilner said he believes, rather, that what we’re seeing is “the oldest trick in the legislative handbook.”

Wilner predicted Congress will intervene instead of allowing a huge strike with the midterm elections looming. He called the likely back-to-work order a “must-pass” bill that even “Republicans will have difficulty opposing.”

Wilner further predicted that large swaths of the Freight Rail Shipping Fair Market Act will find their way into that strike-averting bill, no matter what the STB has to say about it.