I don’t think that’s necessarily the driver here though, from reading the linked article and others. Rather the dynamic is that these railroads have incredibly dispersed ownership, almost entirely by purely financial owners. Management has very little stake. If any of them operates at a slightly less margin than the others, activist investors will pop up and easily get support to replace the management.

But if they all operated at slightly less margin, this dynamic would not occur; and the vast bulk of investors are not going to flee from an otherwise stable and long-term profitable asset class because it becomes a tiny (perhaps not even noticed) increment less lucrative. The vast bulk of investors are not going to march with (financial) pitchforks to Washington about this.

Think of the alternative: that no stockholder in any business would ever tolerate companies offering reasonable sick day policies. That is obviously not true; in most industries, at most companies, there is some kind of sick policy. So we should look at what is unique about this industry for the cause.