Attribution: Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Dülmen, Börnste, Eisenbahnlinie Dortmund-Enschede — 2015 — 9918” / CC BY-SA 4.0
Featuring the Fabulous Dadbots: Mark M., Dave S., Mark O., Dennis C., Paul C., and Geoff Carter
Joe Biden considers himself to be a huge backer of organized labor. For example, he was very vocal in support of the failed effort to certify a union at the Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama.
Yet today, at his urging, Congress just passed a bill that will force US railroad unions to accept contract terms which have been rejected by a majority of the rank-and-file members of several large unions. So what gives?
Quick background. (You can get this directly from the NYT if desired.). The rail industry has consolidated into about a half dozen major lines. Under shareholder pressure, all have adopted PSR -Precision Rail Scheduling. It basically amounts to longer, more efficient trains, run with fewer employees. The unusual aspect is that rail employees, unlike those in virtually every other industry, do not get paid sick leave. They have to take sick days as vacation. This includes doctor visits. Want to go to the doctor? You need a vacation day. Getting sick? Better plan ahead and get it on the schedule.
The union workers are fed up. They feel they’re being treated like a piece of rolling stock or railroad track, not like a human being. So, despite winning a 24% pay increase over the next two years, as well as an $11,000 cash payout, the workers have rejected these settlements.
So, at Biden’s urging, Democrats and Republicans together have passed a bill to force the workers to accept these terms. (Congress has a history of getting involved in these railroad conflicts. This is not all that unusual.).
Many Dems are very unhappy to be jackin’ the workers this way. (Bernie is apoplectic. And Liz Warren must be demanding to see the manager!) A separate bill passed the House, with mostly Dem support, establishing 7 days paid sick leave. Republicans were not so much in favor of that, so that bill died in the Senate (couldn’t get the 60 votes needed to break filibuster).
My thoughts:
1. Mainstream Democrats are choosing the overall economy over the desires of this set of union workers. A rail shutdown could be pretty painful for the overall economy.
2. But it seems pretty ruthless of them to throw this understandable desire of the union workers under the train. So much for supporting working families.
3. On the other hand, the Dems don’t want to be undermined by militant unions. That has never worked out well for the Labor Party in Britain.
4. Bottom line is that both Democrats and Republicans are beholden to their corporate masters. Unions are irrelevant in the power structure at this point. (Joe Biden makes the claim that “too many working families” are dependent on the railroads running. Sounds like something a Republican would say!)
5. This move by the Dems could be used as Exhibit A in their argument that, no, we really are NOT Socialists. But it’s an “accomplishment” they will never bring up— because they are not proud of it. So we can expect the “Socialist” accusation to continue as an evergreen right wing tactic.
–Mark M.
“The most pro-labor President since FDR”! Well, as long as it is politically convenient. I don’t believe he, the Dems, or the Republicans for that matter, have any principled pro-labor sentiments or values.
–MarkO
Reminiscent of Reagan firing all the union air-traffic controllers in 1981–though not nearly as extreme. The original union buster.
–G
I knoooww. Right? No paid sick leave when you’re workin’ on the railroad all the live long day? That struck me as odd when I first read about the looming strike. Also odd that Railroad Inc. wouldn’t budge on the zero paid sick leave issue, but were willing to give the workers a pretty sweet wage increase. Is there some deeper issue about sick leave and railroads that I’m not seeing here?
DC
Me too. Asking that question, a friend informs me that railroad workers have historically not bargained for sick days. She does not know why. Higher pay has always been their main negotiating focus and they did pretty well in this settlement as Dennis mentioned. At least on the surface—24% increase over 2020-2024 (not sure how the 2020 and 2021 figure into that), they also received an extra day of PTO. Googling states the average RR worker PTO is 25-29 days/year depending on craft and 37-39 for the most senior.
Compare to what I’ve always thought of as the norm for Joe office desk jockey: Entry: (6) Holidays plus 2 weeks starting vacay—which is 10 days (not 14 days), so total 16 for entry. And 5 days sick and you get 21 total. The downside with sick is if you don’t use them, you usually lose them. So, one might look at it as follows: RR are more than entry level office (25 vs 21) but have no risk of losing sick days (potentially 25 vs 16). Thus, their PTO covers sick days.
Which is not to say that many of their constituents were not arguing for it now.
So… I don’t have a strong opinion on this just trying to get objective data. A while back—one of our earlier bot posts we discussed the abuses of unions that has eroded them so badly in the last few decades. Are we at a new era, led by those bold Baristas and the Amazon forklift truck drivers? Or will it be a trend that quickly subsides? Does immigration help or hurt union strength? I would guess a more liberal view on immigration would then in turn give business the option they are looking for, plenty of non-union willing workers, thereby making open borders a pro-business platform.
Calls in to border governors DeSantis & Abbot and Senators Rubio & Cruz on that right now. Will report back straight away.
–Dave.
Dave, silly you. Only woke corporations want open borders. Particularly for immigrants using they/them pronouns.
Before I went ahead & read your latest, DS, I was going to state that I don’t know that we can definitively say whether Big Railroad is being fair, or not. After all, hasn’t most of corporate America scrapped “sick leave” and replaced it with Paid Time Off (PTO)? So, it’s not necessarily the act of an outlier robber baron to impose a PTO model. Sick days get abused. It’s just a fact. It does sound like Big Rail is going overboard somewhat, but I agree that we’re not necessarily getting the full story.
What’s most interesting to me is how Unca Joe Biden wasted no time in spending some of his newly earned midterm political capital. He strong armed his own party into jamming this settlement down the unions’ collective craw.
It reminds me of Bill Clinton and “triangulation”. Ol’ Bill was forever sticking it to his black supporters: welfare reform, for example, or ripping the face off of Sistah Souljah right in front of a Jesse Jackson crowd; or leaving the campaign trail to sign the death warrant (as Arkansas governor) of some black dude on death row. His obvious logic then was, where are they gonna go politically? Black voters won’t vote Republican no matter how badly I treat them. Biden is basically doing the same thing to Organized Labor.
My cesspool of a memory also recalls George W. Bush, after winning his re-elect, gloating that “I got me some political capital, and I’m gonna spend it.” First of all, why would you SAY that? And then, the cause he chose? Privatization of Social Security. Basically, the only thing he did that was less popular than his Hurricane Katrina flyover.
Back to Biden: instead of the usual “Dems in Disarray” headline, we will be seeing “Republicans in Crisis” for the next : years. Sometimes guys like Joe just get lucky in the enemy that fate provides.
–Mark M.
I think the railroad companies are so averse to paid sick leave because those absences occur spontaneously. Nobody plans on getting sick. Trust me, I’m sick as a dog right now and this definitely was not in my plans. And yes, faked sickness occurs spontaneously too, from the boss’s standpoint. PTO can be planned and managed from a workforce standpoint. The railroads plan is to run all their trains with two human riders, and then eventually just one. An unplanned absence in such a scenario might mean that that train won’t be able to run, a big snag in the logistics framework. They would much rather have a sick human rider than none. Of course, they could have a surplus pool of employees scattered around the country for these unexpected absences, but that would be expensive. So no. All this labor stuff is only an interim headache for the railroads until their dream of totally automated trains (no human riders) becomes a reality.
MarkO
Re: the railroad workers getting railroaded by the Dems. Yeah, I agree with MO about the political gamespersonship skillfully played by the Dems to avert the strike at the expense of the workers. Sure, the party tent of the Democrats is large. But unions are kinda getting shoved into the back corner of the tent where there’s a quarter barrel of Budweiser to appease them. They huddle around the quarter barrel with their plastic cups telling dirty jokes that hopefully Karen over at the Progressive vegan buffet doesn’t overhear…
–Dennis C.