Blogger Robert Hubbell analyzes the choices that President Biden had to make to avoid a shutdown of the nation’s rail system and concludes that he made the best decision. Some support—any support—from Republicans would have made it possible to include paid sick days, but Republicans adamantly oppose a perk that they themselves enjoy.
The Republicans know what they are against: anything that helps middle-income people, low-income people. They don’t know what they are FOR. Do you know? Well, tax breaks for the rich and corporations.
Democrats lead the way in the effort to avert a rail strike.
The House passed a bill to avert a rail strike, which passed with broad bipartisan support. The House also passed a separate bill authorizing seven days of paid sick leave for rail workers; Republicans voted in near lockstep against the bill providing for sick leave—221 to 207. Of course, the Republicans who voted to deny sick leave to rail workers have unlimited sick days themselves. See Newsweek, Republicans With Unlimited Sick Days Vote Against Time Off for Rail Workers.
Senate Republicans will vote against the paid sick leave bill but support the bill to end the strike, thereby forcing a contract on rail workers they rejected over the absence of sick leave. In a truly perverse display of GOP deceit, Senator Rubio tweeted that he would “not support a deal that doesn’t have the support of the rail workers.” Of course, if Rubio voted to support the sick leave bill, that would be the “deal” that rail workers want. Rubio gives politicians a bad name—and that is saying a lot!
Many readers sent emails and made comments in support of the rail workers’ demand for paid sick leave. For an explanation of the arguments in favor of allowing a strike over paid sick leave, see Ryan Cooper’s op-ed on MSNBC, Biden picked the wrong side in the rail union strike. As Cooper explains, the refusal to grant sick days will harm the operations of rail carriers and eventually lead to many of the supply chain issues that Biden is seeking to avoid.
Mr. Cooper’s arguments are unassailable, but he describes only one side of the argument. He does not address whether a strike now that would impose $2 billion in daily losses to the economy and cause the loss of 700,000 jobs is an appropriate way to secure a benefit for 115,000 rail workers.
Mr. Cooper could reasonably say, “Yes, the loss of jobs and harm to the economy is worth it because we must draw a line in the sand somewhere” (as one reader said in an email). But simply ignoring the harm to the economy and job losses is hardly fair to President Biden if your thesis is that Biden picked the “wrong” side in the dispute. It was a difficult choice and Biden made a tough call. As with almost every issue, Biden will be blamed for seeking to protect the interests of tens of millions of Americans. It comes with the territory!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If you have told me 10 years ago that I would live to see the day when liberals were cheering for union busting, I would have laughed. Now I’m only crying.
No one is cheering for union busting. Biden administration estimates that a rail strike would cripple the economy and cause hundreds of thousands of layoffs. He had to make a tough decision. He did. He is still pro-union. What do you think Trump would have done?
Thank you for your comment, Diane. So appreciate your “take.”
Trump would have done what Reagan did to air traffic controllers, issued an executive order forcing them back to work and fired thousands who ignored his order. But the real question is not necessarily what President Ex would have done; it’s what would a President Sanders have done. Executive orders forcing companies to fairly compensate employees to end the strike would have been on the table. Instead, the executive branch took the easy way and left it to a divided and therefore feckless legislative branch. It wasn’t union busting, what Biden did. It wasn’t union supporting either.
LeftCoastTeacher
An executive order to do what (either way) . This is private sector commerce . The President can do little other than ensure Public Dollars are used in certain ways. So he can sign an order calling for Project Labor Agreements in the spending of Federal Dollars, or Buy American provisions with those dollars . We see he can not even mandate life saving vaccines using OSHA .
Article 1 section 8 clause 3 . So now envision a strike that lasts 3 weeks into the new Congress . A strike that puts up to 7 million out of work as supply chains snarl and prices soar . Now envision the contract that could be ordered by that Fascist Right Wing House of Congress. A strike would give them a Scott Walker moment they have dreamed of for decades. As the American people spurred on by daily media stories of the pain caused by strikers called for the Guillotines.
The new Congress under the Commerce Clause the only Branch entitled to regulate private Commerce would delivered those Guillotines.
If I were the Railroad CEOs and the Oligarchy I would assure the baskets were in place to catch the heads .
I defer to knowledgeable Joel. I was wrong.
That’s the problem of being an ideologue with little information or experience. All answers are absolute and simple when you have no clue about the real world.
Jimmy Carter did more “union-busting” than Biden did.
I love those Trump/Putin defenders who are always first in line to attack Democrats facing choices where all options are bad.
There is a reason that 2/3 of the railway unions voted for this agreement.
If you would have told me 10 years ago that someone who defends right wing authoritarians who hate democracy and encourage racist, xenophobic and anti-LGBTQ hate would be attacking Democrats, I would have said “of course, what else would you expect from someone who believed there is no difference between a Supreme Court with 3 far right Trump justices and a Supreme Court with 3 justices chosen by a Democrat?”
I would have laughed that anyone ever believed that person didn’t hate everything progressives stand for, including public schools and union teachers.
If you would have told me that the same person who did NOT want a Democrat to appoint a Supreme Court justice who would lead a 5-4 pro-worker Supreme Court was suddenly pretending to care about what happens to workers, I would have said “of course, she can’t wait until the Trump justices use the anti-union anger caused by the strike to decimate the union even more”.
With “frenemies” like these, workers are in very big trouble.
Even as a teenager, I wasn’t arrogant enough to hold myself out as a defender of workers with my vote against Jimmy Carter which empowered Ronald Reagan.
And Jimmy Carter had a much bigger Congressional majority than Biden did. Carter had a HUGE Democratic majority in both the House and Senate throughout his entire presidency. And Jimmy Carter was far more anti-union than Biden has been.
Even as a teenager, I was able to see the nuance. Jimmy Carter was a very flawed president who was horrible for unions compared to Biden. But some nuance on Carter’s views is called for. Demonizing Jimmy Carter is childish.
Joel gives a very good fact-base explanation of this deal. The pro-Putin/pro-Trump folks always view Putin and Trump’s most reprehensible actions with a lot of nuance. They always mischaracterize any difficult compromise made by the Democrats as entirely corrupt and in service to evil corporations.
For the record, this is what is known as the “reductio ad absurdum.” Once again, Dienne, great work!
I just knew a gaggle of disingenuous rightwing trolls would rush to spam the bad faith Joe Biden Hates Unions everywhere they could.
I deeply admire and appreciate Robert Hubbell but in all fairness he is not a Railroad worker. He is unconsciously citing with corporate America and denying sickleave to people who do the hard work of keeping America moving. I’m disappointed in him commenting on matters that are outside his legal skill set.
Do I have this right? RR workers are being forced by Biden & Congress to give up both sick leave + right to collective bargaining to protect corporate profit and not make inflation caused in large part by fossil fuel company profiteering worse by strike disruption?
“Senator Rubio tweeted that he would “not support a deal that doesn’t have the support of the rail workers.”
RR workers aren’t being “forced” — 8 out of 12 unions voted to accept the deal. I guess they didn’t have faith that the “deal” that Senator Rubio and the Republican would vote for would be good for them.
Read Joel for some fact-based analysis by someone who is actually on the ground and knows what the choices and implications of various choices were.
Union Leadership understands that one has to pick your fights carefully.
The cause of the workers grievances focuses on forced overtime and being on call far too often with little input in scheduling . This has been caused by efficiency measures that cut nearly 30 % of the workforce. If the gripe is the forced overtime than the answer is to bring back the workers whose dismissal caused the need for that overtime. Not that the employers would be happier with that than the paid sick time .
The contract negotiated between Biden the Union Leadership and the Railroads, back in September does provided for sick days. It provides for scheduled doctors visits . It provided 1 additional paid holiday . It provided a 24 % wage increase retroactively and graduated from 2020 through 2024. It called for more flexibility in scheduling and it froze health insurance premiums, I believe beyond the contract period. Without those PAID sick days it was a damn good contract that the leadership of the 12 unions pushed their members to accept it . 8 of the 12 did. Including the IBEW of which I am a retired member as a construction electrician .
But if grueling working conditions caused by forced overtime and standby status is your beef ,why would being paid for the day off come into play. The answer is it does not . Most like the overtime or they would insist on bringing staffing levels back up to eliminate it . More workers equals less forced overtime for each and less grueling schedules . That proposal was not put on the table to my knowledge. And I understand why . The leadership would have their heads handed to them by the same members asking for paid sick time to alleviate the grueling scheduled.
Been there seen that . In the 70s in a time of high unemployment in NYCs construction industry. Overtime was eliminated by my Union. Accomplished by forcing the worker to take a day off if he worked more than 3hrs OT in that week . That forced the contractor to either not work overtime. Creating work for more members by if anything forcing projects to take longer or hiring additional workers to be able to man the job during regular hours. The unions noble object was to put the unemployed members to work. In the 90s when unemployment returned that was dropped. The leadership decided that it was better to hear 10-15 % gripe about unemployment than the 85% bitch about taking the bread and butter out of their mouths.
So I suspect the dynamic is similar.
That said what are the down side risks for the economy , the Democrats ,the workers, the employers and the Unions .
This is not a Cheerios factory closing down .This is not Air travel shutting down as in 1980 . A strike that lasts as little as a week will effect vast portions of the economy . It will cause a huge spike in prices and unemployment . A total no win for Biden and Democrats that will hang around their neck like an albatross. The workers may or may not get what they are getting now if Congress is forced to step in after Economic Armageddon sets in. The Employers: if I were the employer knowing how quickly Americans turn against other workers or any policy that calls for personnel sacrifice. I would stretch this out till Public Sentiment turned massively against the Unions and the Administration. The Republicans were so concerned about the working conditions that only 3 in the House and 6 ? in the Senate voted for the additional sick days . Both the Employers and the Republicans would salivate at opportunity to drive Democrats from power drive a stake in the heart of organized labor. And you can be sure the oligarchy who owns the media would be all over it.
Sitting in front of the Taliban 6 in the SCOTUS ; is a case that could bankrupt almost every Union that chose to strike. It would allow employers to sue for loses caused by the strike. For example: A supermarket chain could sue for lost produce , dairy ,meats … I don’t hold much hope out for them not supporting the employers in this case. A rail strike not only will give them cover to do so but will have a huge majority of the American Public supporting them.
A wave of strikes in 1947 allowed Republicans and Dixiecrat’s to gut the NLRA with Taft Hartley . That was when Unions were 31 or 32 % of the workforce.
After Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers setting an example that led to an orgy of Union busting when Unions were 22% of the workforce . The American people overwhelmingly re elected Reagan in a race against one of the most pro labor Senators in the Country. Sending Democrats into the wilderness until they became under Clinton and Obama, Eisenhower Republicans at best. All but abandoning the New Deal and Great Society as well as relegating Labor to lip service. While passing Trade agreements that decimated American Labor worse than anything Reagan did .
A rail strike would make the media frenzy about Inflation . The Media frenzy about Crime and Afghanistan look like a practice run. Organized Labor would take the hit opening us up to the effective repeal of all union rights in the NLRA .
And the 25- 30 year assault on Americas Public School Union teachers should be all you need to prove to you who would take the blame for the strike. Teachers who are blamed for failing to correct in the classroom what economic inequality caused by oligarchs, major and minor has created .
My mother’s younger brother and her father both worked for the railroad.
I was born on Uncle Lloyd’s birthday so my mother named me after her younger brother. Uncle Lloyd (born 1912 in Nebraska) worked for the railroad. His father (also my mother’s father – born 1885 in Kansas) also worked for the railroad.
Uncle Lloyd told me a story about what it was like to work for the railroads before the labor unions.
These are not Uncle Lloyd’s exact words but they are close enough to earn quotation marks.
“Every morning several hundred men without jobs showed up at the rail-yard and waited to find out if they’d have a job for the day that paid pennies on the dollar.”
The job was manually loading or unloading the boxcars.
Uncle Lloyd continued: “We stood there in the bitter cold in winter (since they lived in Deadwood, South Dakota at the time, you may be able to imagine how cold it was) waiting. Then the guy in charge of those workers showed up, climbed into a boxcar and tossed out chips for how many workers they needed that day. Most of the time, there were several hundred men waiting but only a dozen chips. No one waiting in line. It was a mob. The chips rained down and the men grabbed or fought for them.”
There were no benefits, no lunch break, no medical, no retirement, no nothing. My Uncle Lloyd was a teenager maybe 14 or 16 when this became his routine. The Great Depression was still on, and the country was still mostly controlled by what is now known in the history books as the Robber Barons who had total control over just about everything until the people elected a majority of progressives and moderates to Congress and voted FDR into the White House, and they voted for legislation that supported labor unions, enacted Social Security, then Medicare, et al.
Since the 1960s at the earliest, the modern want-to-be all powerful robber barons, today’s billionaires and multi millionaires have been fighting, lying, manipulating, fooling voters, et al, to get back that world where they’d rule the country just like those robber barons from the late 19th and early 20th centuries did that are responsible for the U.S. a poverty rate of more than 40% of the population in 1900, no job security, no medical care, no retirement plans, no child labor laws, no women vote, no Social Security, no labor unions, nothing.
Make no mistake about it: most if not all of the billionaires and multi millionaires of today want that 19th-20th century world back, and President Biden did what he could when he’s dealing with a small majority in the House that is controlled by those want-to-be Robber Barons of today. If the House and Senate had a Democratic majority large enough to not need the votes of Manchin and Sinema (both corporate minions), the outcome would have been different.
Who gave us the Congress we have today?
People that vote, and without Traitor Trump and his MAGA RINO deplorable lunatics, it might have turned out a lot worse with the Theofascist Republican Party controlled by those want-to-be modern day Robber Barons having a significant majority in both Houses of Congress instead of a slim one in the House of Representatives.
Manchin voted with the Republicans to deny sick leave to rail workers. He’s a multimillionaire and as a Senator, he has unlimited sick days.
Schumer could have removed Manchin from committee assignments or threaten other actions for defying the party’s “leadership.” Instead, the Democrats—as per usual—point fingers at their designated villains as an excuse for not passing progressive legislation. Military contractors, Big Pharma, the insurance industry, and Wall Street get what they want, but working class Americans get bupkis from Democrats. Democrats fail on purpose.
James,
I wish that sick days were part of the deal. But when you have only 50 votes in the Senate, every vote is a squeaker. To pass progressive legislation, as FDR and LBJ did, the Dems must have a filibuster proof majority. The Republicans oppose all progressive legislation, and they have 50 votes.
Every day is a sick day for Manchin.
He’s one sick fellow.
It’s kind of funny that Democrats made a big deal about “keeping the majority” in the Senate.
But they don’t really have a majority with Manchin and sinema sabotaging their bills and refusing to throw out the filibuster.
Some Democratic leaders are a big deal of how the recent election was a rebuke of Trump and Republican extremists, but the reality is that it was nothing for Democrats o write home about. That’s for sure.
James Eales
“Schumer could have removed Manchin from committee assignments or threaten other actions for defying the party’s “leadership.”
And then he could be Minority Leader Chuck
Chuck already acts like a minority leader.
And Mitch acts like the Majority leader.
It’s amazing how much difference attitude can make.
Family Values @ Work Action!
Says STOP & Think Big Picture!
1/3 of Workers in service, construction, extraction and farming occupations.
Have NO PAID SICK LEAVE.
1/2 of part-time workers lack the benefit.
33 Million USA workers have no paid sick days!
It Ain’t Just The Railroaders.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/01/success/railroad-workers-sick-days/index.html
And even for those who have sick pay it tends to vary with their wage levels. The highest paid workers having the best package and the lowest the least compensation.
Will the American people side with the Railroad workers I doubt it .
Sorry, I disagree. Biden just reaffirmed his identity as a pro-corporate democrat. He took side with Railroad executives who deliberately removed PAID SICK LEAVE from the bill as if that was unimportant. The Railroad workers requested 14 days sick leave. That was exactly what they really wanted most. It was suddenly changed into NOTHING. The workers voted ‘no,’ and the Congress bulldozed the revised bill(inserting 7 days sick leave in a ‘pathetic’ separated bill, which didn’t pass due to 60-vote rule). All House Democrats voted yes. All Senate Democrats and some Republicans voted yes.
I don’t need Red/Blue talking points on this anymore. They just formed the anti-Railroad Workers Union (with Purple color). What a farce!
https://www.levernews.com/biden-is-breaking-his-sick-leave-promise-to-crush-rail-workers/
Sick days we’re in a separate bill guaranteed to fail. Sick days should have been included in the original bill. The Democrats wanted a deal with or without sick days. Congress should have let unions do their jobs. By passing this legislation, owners win and workers lose.
Workers did not lose . What happened is far more complicated . Paid sick days were never the issue. They were a band aid thrown into negotiations to cover the real grievance. The contract was good regardless.
The real issue has one solution that neither side wanted. Neither the employers nor the disgruntled workers who rejected the contract over the recommendations of Union Leadership wanted a real solution. Nor did Union leadership put it on the table in the 3 years since the contract expired. The reason for this “CROCODILE TEARS ”
Although there are some workers who object to excessive overtime, my experience as a Union foreman on jobs(coincidentally railroad Construction) with excessive overtime, is that most workers “live to work” and want that overtime. The few who turn it down are the exception certainly not enough to have turned down this contract.
Paid sick days was a smoke screen. The new contract ensured workers could take those sick days without pay for illness or well care visits and not be penalized. So here is the question. Would you give up 15 hrs a week in premium time at 1.5 or 2 times your hourly rate for 7 or 8 hrs of straight time wages even for 15 sick days.
The real problem is efficiency measures taken by the Rail Roads have cut 30% of the work force through attrition . This has caused the excessive overtime and the excessive on call work. Nowhere has restoring staffing levels been brought up as a contract demand. The above dynamic I described is the reason. The workers jobs are not threatened or they would have walked long ago. They are not being terminated. Open positions are not being filled. This means that tasks are being completed by fewer workers creating the need for overtime.
The sick day issue boils down to . You are making my life miserable with all this forced overtime; BUT if you give me an extra week or two VACATION (sick days ). I can live with it.
But whatever you do don’t eliminate that overtime by restoring staffing levels.
But don’t take my word, the link I am posting is the head of the leading Union dissident group in the industry discussing the issues. He is both critical of the Leadership and the membership. The leadership gets the membership it deserves and the membership the leadership, the apathy is beyond the pale. Yet as a union friend pointed out last night , good leaders inspire workers .
He tacitly acknowledges that a large scale shut down was not the answer. Not unless your goal is to turn the Union movement back to the 1920s before the NLRA .
The Airlines as well are actually regulated under the Railway Labor Act . Sara Nelson President of the Airline Stewardess Association has been extremely effective in negotiating her way around the The Railway Labor Act. Her Union causing enough pain to carriers to force them to meet Union demands without triggering a National Strike. A strike that that could force Congressional action and Public Backlash .
https://labornotes.org/2022/12/what-would-it-take-rail-workers-win?fbclid=IwAR3EoH1x7-d0Ad8AD-aE92r17hqhsmREnVTyXn9yyHdsSZF8IK0Tf9_a6Hg
Every worker should be entitled to sick pay leave. Republicans in Congress are showing their true colors. Why does anyone vote Republican? They only want more money for the wealthy and corporations.
…………………………..
“The proposal to give workers seven days of sick leave, which was championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and other liberal lawmakers, failed to pick up enough Republican support to overcome a 60-vote threshold set for adopting the measure and fell in a 52-43 vote (The Hill).”
There’s some great writing on here.
Maybe I missed it, but I wonder what people think about the contracts teachers are signing vs.what the railroad workers are looking at?
(Important note: in places where teachers can and do actually collectively bargain!)
The rate of inflation, the amount of compensation and benefits different types of workers receive …and the huge payouts made to corporate bigwigs and the usual, everyday appalling avarice that greases the wheels of a modern, capitalist engine…all fertile ground for discussion.
Here in New York State, teachers have been hemmed in by the so-called tax cap, a legacy of disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo, who is now living under a rock somewhere.
Prolly under the Brooklyn bridge.
As a troll.
With Chris Christie, who is an expert at controlling traffic on bridges.
SDP, since you mentioned Chris Christie, I was reminded of his Bridge fiasco. That was when he was running for re-election and pressured mayors across the state to endorse him. The mayor of Fort Lee, a Democrat, refused to endorse him. Fort Lee is the access point for the George Washington bridge, a major artery between NJ and NYC. Christie’s secretary, Bridget Kelly, sent a message to one of Christie’s apoointees saying that it was time for some traffic problems in fort Lee. Some of the bridge’s lanes were closed for “repairs,” and there were massive traffic jams that lasted for days. In the recriminations and investigations that followed, Christie insisted he knew nothing about it and blamed Bridget Kelly, a single mother of four. She spent years fighting in court and was eventually exonerated. But if you read her Wikipedia entry, she was understandably bitter towards others who refused to be held responsible. Christie, one assumes.
That was what I was referring to with the controlling bridges comment.
Although I guess it’s spelled controlling.
controlling
In thought the railroaders were supposed to be doing the railroading.
Another example of shafting the essential workers. Without their contributions; it all comes to a halt.
Biden can grant the railworkers the sick days with the stroke of his pen — with an executive order, which requires no Congressional approval.
Obama actually did so for those working for companies doing federal contracts , but exempted otherwise qualified rail workers — for some strange reason. Because as we all know, Obama loves workers and even promised to march with them, but couldn’t, unfortunately, because he couldnt locate his comfy shoes (which Michelle had apparently donated to Goodwill just the day before the march)
I don’t think Biden can grant sick days with the stroke of a pen. They are not public employees.
He can do it for workers employed on federal contracts, which wouldn’t cover all rail workers but some would be better than nothing.
Read tomorrow’s 9 am post.