The Biden administration is pressuring three major rail companies to provide their workers with paid sick days, aiming to expand the benefit into an industrywide norm.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su urged the railroads to reach agreements “immediately” with their employees’ unions to provide paid sick leave, without waiting for renegotiation of their broader collective bargaining agreements. The request came in the form of letters sent on September 25 to the chief executives of CSX Corp., Canadian National Railway Co., and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. 

“In an industry where workers’ constant attention is required to keep themselves and others safe, not providing workers sick days presents unnecessary risk that your company can fix,” the Cabinet members wrote in the letters seen by Bloomberg News.

Canadian National Railway didn’t immediately comment in response to an inquiry.

A CPKC spokesperson said that it has made offers on sick days to a number of its unions, and some of its union contracts already include them. In a response to Buttigieg and Su, CSX Chief Executive Officer Joe Hinrichs wrote that his company has offered paid sick leave terms to all of its unions, most of which have already accepted them. 

“We are disappointed that two unions have not agreed to the same basic terms that all the other unions agreed to on paid sick leave,” Hinrichs said in the message, which was shared by the company. “CSX is not the problem.”

Around 80% of union employees at CSX now have access to some form of paid sick leave following agreements reached last year, the company has said.

The AFL-CIO welcomed the additional push.

“Pressuring these rail companies to provide sick days has been an all-hands effort, from the workers and their unions to these federal agencies,” Greg Regan, the head of the union federation’s transportation trades department, said in an emailed statement. “Sick or injured railroaders should not be forced to work on miles-long freight trains that travel through populated communities.”

Railroad workers’ sick days have been a hot-button issue in recent years, with members of some major unions voting in 2022 to reject contract deals reached by union leaders because they failed to guarantee them. 

After Congress and President Biden enacted legislation that year imposing a contract deal and preventing workers from mounting what could’ve been a 115,000-employee strike, labor advocates, lawmakers and the Biden administration have continued pressuring railroads to address the matter. 

Over the past two years, the share of Class I freight railroad employees who are provided paid sick days surged from 5% to 90%, according to the Department of Transportation.

“While we applaud this success, it’s cold comfort for the 10% of railroaders who still do not have paid sick leave,” Buttigieg and Su said in their letters.