Rail workers are both “essential” and “expendable.” Now, Joe Biden wants Congress to make them slaves. Forced into a strike by unfair working conditions, Congress seems willing to shove the bargain they rejected down their throats and make them keep working anyway. It will be interesting to see how hard disgruntled railway workers actually work if that happens. Expect a whole bunch of “accidents,” too.
Rail workers or slaves?
On Tuesday, November 29, one top rail labor official proclaimed that “that their union does not want to go on strike but just wants fair treatment.” Nancy Pelosi wants docile slaves. On Monday, she declared Congress “would try to pass legislation to avert a national strike that could cripple supply chains.”
They can force workers to accept the deal Biden made for them, whether they like it or not. So what if they keep dying on the job? It’s a whole lot cheaper to hire replacements as they drop than hire enough relief crews. Nobody is asking the workers how they feel about Congress stepping in.
“We don’t want to strike. We want what’s just,” Matt Weaver explains. He’s legislative director for Ohio at the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees. They really aren’t that close to walking out, they just aren’t ready to accept the Biden deal.
🧵"The big rail carriers have already made it clear that they only care about making massive profits, not the safety & health of workers. Why should #rail execs & members of Congress have paid sick time, but rail workers don’t get a single paid sick day?"
– #Teamsters Gen. Pres. https://t.co/ui5Jjmfe4Q— Teamsters (@Teamsters) November 29, 2022
The big sticking point is more paid sick days. Rail workers are literally dying to see a doctor. If that could be worked out, the rest of their gripes are easier to swallow with the money management threw at them. Without an agreement, a strike could begin on December 9.
Rail workers already got a wage raise of 14 percent. Along with “boost medical care for workers whose pay has been frozen.” They still aren’t allowed time off to see a doctor.
Even if they take the day off unpaid, it puts their whole job at jeopardy and they never hear the end of it from management. Biden is really freaking out that they might just shut down the nation over it.
Biden issues a warning about the potential rail strike, calls on Congress to "pass legislation immediately" and says "a rail shutdown would devastate our economy." Marty Walsh, Tom Vilsack & Pete Buttigieg "believe there is no path to resolve the dispute at the bargaining table."
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) November 28, 2022
Congress moves in
Congress is already frantically working behind the scenes to round up the votes they need to pass something. They don’t want the first rail strike in 30 years to happen on their watch, even though they did nothing to help prevent it sooner.
For once, socialist Senator Bernie Sanders is on the right side of the issue. On Monday, he slammed the deal which “does not go far enough in supporting workers.”
According to Matt Weaver, “rail workers seem to be both ‘essential‘ and ‘expendable‘” at the same time. Biden “should impose paid sick days into the tentative agreement.”
The railways & workers should go back & negotiate a deal that the workers,not just the union bosses,will accept
But if Congress is forced to do it,I will not vote to impose a deal that doesn’t have the support of the rail workers
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 29, 2022
He should, but he won’t. He’ll simply order Congress to proclaim railroad slavery. They’ll take the deal and do the work if they have to, progressives in Congress believe.
The slaves who are grumbling now for paid sick days won’t be all that willing to go the extra mile for the company. They’ll give a brand new meaning to the phrase “quiet quitting.”
A whole lot of sand will be falling into delicate machinery. Equipment won’t be getting quite the level of maintenance required. Things will fail, break, and snarl from one end of the rail network to the other but all of them will be working.