A strike is going to hurt, but I hope they do it. Fuck these corporate fatcats.

"Biden has long proclaimed himself as the most pro-labor president, often
having union members introducing him ahead of speeches"

Then POTUS should start doing a better job of shitting on RR management that doesn't give a crap about the people that actually keep the RRs running.

Another screw is coming loose

The problem is not with Biden it is with OSHA and NTSB regulatory capture. This problem has less to do with the proposal not being labor friendly enough, and a lot more to do with management not taking safety seriously.

Did anyone read it? The original problem was with sick leave. The government made an acceptable compromise. Mangament didn't offer that.

Care to expand on the last bit?

The union that started the strike threat their primary complaint was with being understaffed and over worked creating safety concerns.

"Acceptable" is questionable at best. The original issue was sick leave, the compromise was more pay, sick leave wasn't addressed.

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Isn't it all just all covered by the FRA?

The are going to have to give sick leave, or their workers are going to leave.

My neighbor is a conductor for Union Pacific. In talking to him, he says the pay really isn't the top issue for him and his peers (though they haven't got a pay raise in 4 years during this inflationary time and it's definitely not a non-issue).

He says he gets no sick time and their health care benefits are about to get worse, but for him the big elephant in the room is that the unionized workers have less say about how to do their jobs, they're being encouraged to do things like mount/dismount from moving rail cars to save time (rather than bringing them to a complete stop), and the job has gotten a lot more dangerous than it was 20 years ago.

Yep, sometime around 3rd week of november would be fine with me. Shut this whole country down in 72 hours.

Just take all the rail infrastructure by eminent domain and nationalize it and these workers and give them all good benefits and wages. These greedy companies have already robbed our country of trillions of dollars by underpaying these workers and refusing to build out the infrastructure and maintain it.

Clearly these companies can't be trusted with something so important, a huge portion of our GDP depends on having a well functioning rail system and these companies are just sucking the "short money" out of it and destroying it.

Edit: for clarity

According to the PEB report, the railroads argued that labor from railroad workers does not contribute to their profits. “The Carriers maintain that capital investment and risk are the reasons for their profits, not any contributions from labor,” the PEB report said.

Would you want to work for a company that has this ludicrous ideology?

Hilarious that Biden and his Dems managed to put the strike on pause until after elections. Also hilarious that this strike is brewing (about to break out fully) over poor management decisions on how the workers get sick leave and pay increases.

I say hilarious because if magically the Dems win their election, and magically the RR workers win on all the issues needed, then all that's happened is...the current batch of workers will work just a little bit longer before everything stops anyway.

This is due to the fact that no new hires are coming onto the railroads. With the setup as is, my understanding is that many workers are hoping for a back-paid, retroactively-applied raise to cover cost of living increases from the past 5 years or so...and then they'll quit.

Already one of the more grueling blue collar jobs out there. Already doesn't pay enough to live above poverty. Already told by management that workers efforts don't contribute to actual company earnings.

Time for America's labor force, the true heart and soul of the country, to tell every fucking rich person that it's hard work that makes this country great, not grifting, politicking, managing, entrepreneuring, investing, banking, etc.

Working.

And every worker should have a home to live in, and enough pay to take care of his needs, along with a little bit of pocket money. And sick leave and vacations around 6 weeks per year.

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Wasn’t expecting such a biased title from NPR.

The Union leadership expected it to fall but threw Biden a bone to push the strike back to after the election.

You must not be aware that the conservative Supreme Court is about to completely gut unions' ability to strike.

Having seen a few of the workers interviewed about their sick pay and personal time, it’s atrocious. They should strike.

Not biased it's the truth. You have to read the article for the nuance.

Ruin Christmas. Make people pay attention.

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I can see that first part happening, not so much the second part...

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I'm feeling that even if that event were to take place, there's no way that even a socialized, publicly-owned railroad could entice new workers to take on work at these railroads. (I'd read that new hires rates are dropping drastically, just because working conditions and compensations are soooo bad.)

So even if the profits are shared, and the employees are state or federal workers, with compensation packages in line with other govt workers, the work is grueling enough that recruitments have been drastically reducing since before COVID.

This is all hearsay, of course, but I'd bet with cost of living going through the ceiling, if the railroads tried to adjust salaries accordingly, just to get new hires, it'd cause all kinds of havoc with the already-employed, as they've been gutted for years.

I don't see any good solution for RR mgmt or the govt from this situation, which means good news for American workers, even if there's some hardship in buying things.

The media outlets were very loud about Biden’s deal saving the country in the 11th hour. Hardly a mention now that it is essentially going to mean nothing.

Truth is the management failed to offer what was needed. The wording of the title is open to biased interpretation that could be anti-Union or anti-Biden depending on what side of the fence the reader falls on. The title sets the reader’s frame of mind so they won’t get the nuance even after reading the article unless they have the intelligence to take the title with skepticism before reading.

I guess the strike won't inconvenience them in the slightest then. Sounds like the trains drive themselves. /s

But seriously, profit comes only and entirely from labor. It's only because class consciousness has been so thoroughly repressed in this country that the fatcats can even say things like that without being laughed out of the room.

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These companies are seeing profit margins approaching 50%, billions in profits every year. It is one of the most profitable rackets in the country. These greedy companies are just refusing to maintain the system and comply with these demands out of pure greed.

We could easily afford to make improvements, do maintenance and give these workers everything they deserve and still have a ton of money left over. Also having a national rail system would be very good indeed for the economy and for the country.

You mean the cement truck case?

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Also having union leaders introduce you is fine and all but doesnt mean anything if you cant show me what you have or are doing for workers.

Do you think a strike affecting Christmas is going to make people support the union? Or will it only make them pay attention enough to vote against union actions in the future?

> Yep, sometime around 3rd week of november

No, they'll do it right before midterms For Some Reason.

Give FOX News some time to work with it.

Well fortunately there is no way for them to vote against the union. They could support the hiring of scab labor if pushed by the GOP but that would very much damage current republican talking points on various subjects to include border security

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Good for them. Biden is desperately trying to keep the economy from tanking before elections.

This is what happens when companies successfully lobby to loosen regulations and restrictions. Now… not ALL regulation is good, I get that (though I might vehemently disagree). But anything concerning the safety and well-being of ANY job should be protected, no matter the expense to the company. Especially staffing and sick pay/leave/benefits.

The RR companies have decided they have enough congressmen in their pockets that they feel no need to even pretend to care anymore - including Buffett’s own BNSF.

Are you implying they even attempt to be consistent? The only thing that'll enter the average voter's head is "union made Christmas bad. So unions are bad." And vote for whatever anti-union props or candidates are on the ballot.

Why is the president thinking he can run a real union lol he is truly nuts

Yeah maybe people will find love in their families Instead of Chinese gifts

Well then it will be time to resurrect my grandfather's method of unionizing. He was a labor organizer for coal mines and wasn't above beating people to death or blowing shit up.

Yes he did time for those activities, but was taken care of by the union.

Money like that is hard to replace, not many could afford to leave I’m thinking, we will see

What if my family is Chinese..?

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I have to laugh at the idea that they think they make any capital investment. The US freight railroads fiercely resist spending anything on capital investments and typically force the government/other companies (see Brightline) to finally improve their decrepit infrastructure.

NTSB can't really do anything except issue reports and recommendations. The DC Metro ran railcars the NTSB told them to pull from service for 7 years after a major crash because they didn't want to reduce service and basically just told the NTSB "nah".

American corporate speak and institutions all do this.

There are major disadvantages to our model where senior management is selected solely on a Board's assessment of stock prices and shareholder dividends. Something that should matter immensely, namely worker conditions and feedback, matters not a fig in Board meetings.

It's a weird system we made to dominate our economic lives in the 'free world'.

The capture of most businesses by Capital over Labor has hit morale and objectively harmed worker conditions in a host of industries. This is why labor unions, socialist parties, and worker coops arose in the first place. I will restate my prior point. Work conditions and employee well-being don't matter at Board meetings unless labor unrest or push back makes them pay attention.

These workers are lucky they have one institutional lever to push back against a flawed system.

Biden appointed the board that drafted the terms that were presented in the tentative agreement. It seems they were totally out of touch with what membership wanted.

My wife hated unions, saying, "They're always striking for money." As a unionized employee when we met, I had to keep reminding her that strikes are almost never about money alone. Money is always a factor because employers never want to keep up with inflation, but it's almost always about something more than money: working conditions of one form or another are almost always the bigger factor.

Oh yeah that's how you get people to join or support your cause. Terrorism and murder.

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You're getting downvoted, which makes perfect sense when you consider how pro union the GOP has never ever been.

You forget that the republican strategy is to make people feel angry so they forget how powerless and afraid they are.

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Tell me you have no idea what you are talking about without telling me.

Have a regional office of the fra blocks away from the railyard see them at hooters for lunch once in a while.

They look the other way pretty much unless someone gets injured

Whoever said that needs to have everything they own stripped from them, except for an amount totaling the annual salary/income of the average American, and never let that shithead go above that for the rest of their lives until they realize how fucking wrong they are. Make them live by their own labor until they realize that companies live and die off of labor.

While I am hoping they come to a resolution prior to striking, if they go on strike I am 100% behind them. And the upcoming shopping season would be crushing to the rail industry if they chose to strike.

Give these people time off, sick days, vacations, etc.

This is pretty much spot on from the trainmen side of things. On bnsf we have gone to a points based system for time off. To earn 4 points, you have to stay marked up (available and on call 24/7) for 14 days straight. I took a day yesterday and it cost me 8 points, meaning I had to be available 28 days straight before I earned the right to take a day off to go to the doctor without penalty. I hit 160 hours for the month on the 21st, while taking all the rest I am allowed. I know other people that were over 200 3 days ago on the 22nd.

Nobody talks about the raise because it is essentially a cola increase, tied to inflation.

Metro isn’t regulated by the FRA.

Then you're one another's gifts?

Fuckit, I'll take it. That sounds wholesome.

Even if it was just about money who cares? If companies are making profits that means there’s an opportunity to raise wages. People seem to think unions are the problem because employees want more wages, but the fact is that employees want more wages and companies want more profits and because a company will never decrease profits any time workers win it’s seen as a loss for the consumer, which is insane the only people who always look good are the investors who are putting in zero effort towards the company

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Well said.

>To earn 4 points, you have to stay marked up (available and on call 24/7) for 14 days straight. I took a day yesterday and it cost me 8 points, meaning I had to be available 28 days straight before I earned the right to take a day off to go to the doctor without penalty.

That's fucking disgusting.

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I've been a NYC construction worker for 25 years now, and this has always pissed me off. Yes, the Republicans are our enemies, but the Democrats are NOT our friends, no matter how much lip service they give. Maybe if we stopped pretending they were so wonderful for us and actually made them earn our votes, then some politician might actually give a shit.

Infucking sane considering how much they have not reinvested commercial train infrastructure. That type of shit would make me flip a table.

Not just reducing or belittling someone's value. But actively trying to reduce their value down to zero. Full well knowing they need every minute of labor and that's exactly why they give them so little time off. These people are vampires.

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If labor didn’t contribute to profits, why do they have any labor at all? Just think of how much more money would they make with no workers!

Yeah, it's frustrating because this used to be a great job, and the changes that have led to this were all pushed through by the companies in the pursuit of the highest possible margins.

In the past we had a choice between a few jobs, boards that were known to work a lot, but you made a lot accordingly, or you could give up some of that to work a more predictable job. If you took a day off from that predictable job there was a large disincentive because you were effectively cutting your paycheck for that period by 1/4. Now that everyone works all the time as soon as they are available, that disincentive went away and people took more time for their mental and personal health, so the companies pushed these policies through to severely limit our ability to manage our time.

They can't keep new employees, a huge portion are lost during training, and the few that make it through usually don't last a year, when it used to be a career position.

If they reverted policies to those that were in place 5 or 6 years ago, all of this strike shit would go away.

Which has got nothing to do with the NTSB

That’s some Gilded Age BS, and requires Pullman Strike levels of union fury.

It fucking got us the unions we have.

The conservatives would be happy to take care of that pesky union problem for you

Where i work for my local county we get 4hr every 2 weeks. Makes me wonder how often yall get called in while being on call? Is it very frequent? And what r the hours? Ive been debating getting into the railroad industry but this is the 1 thing keeping me from pulling the trigger and applying.

Exactly! I heard a story of Starbucks turning on mobile ordering at a closed store on strike. So when people arrived at the store to pick up their orders, they were mad at the people on strike.

Congress could vote to prohibit a strike and force the unions to accept the deal that Biden has brokered.

Yeah, it's an incredibly common union busting tactic. Make the employees on strike feel like they're losing popular support and tank morale, make dissolving the strike the path of least resistance. After a couple of days getting screamed at by members of their community for inconveniencing them then the strike, and union efforts, will buckle.

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There are no hours, it's 24/7, no scheduled days off. You are on call to go out of town for a minimum of 36 hours. You are guaranteed 10 hours of uninterrupted rest at your home after a shift, but you are fair game after that, and for the past few years it is not uncommon to work on your rest.

Paycheck is great, rest of the job can be good, but has had most of the good parts worn away over the years.

It's also utterly idiotic, because it's precisely that sort of "work em until they drop" culture that led to fatal crashes like Hinton.

I know from personal experience that fatigue is just something we are expected to work through now. I had a call this week while I was in the hotel where when I got in I was showing to work on my rest. Got some good sleep, ready to go, check the boards, it fell back 3 hours. Ok, that's fine. Check the board 3 hours later, it fell back 5 hours. Hmm, better get a nap. Woke up from my nap and it had fallen back 9 more. I was all slept out so I stayed up and would try to get another nap later before I was called. 6 hours later right as I closed my eyes, the phone rang. But I got more than 10 hours off, so I was "rested."

> Yep, sometime around 3rd week of november

No, they'll do it right before midterms For Some Reason.

Give FOX News some time to work with it.

Everything is politics. The union is just as political as anything else.

> A strike is going to hurt

... the Democrats in the midterms, yes, that's the point.

Reached a tentative agreement to push it to middle of November past midterms comes up right away anywhere you read/look

Operative word being "tentative" but go off.

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Tentative that pushes to middle of November nothing will happen before midterms and your precious fox has nothing to report lol

You're the one cheering on the Republican op.

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To me this is insane. To worry about pinching pennies when you already have the most efficient means of transporting freight. If I was in charge, I’d just sit back and enjoy the paycheck.

Why would they change anything if people are complacent? They are making fat stacks ,who cares about the workers, people in general certainly don't care enough(yet or maybe never will) to fight it.

My point is why are they trying to squeeze more out of their workers(at the cost of safety) when they’re already collecting a fat check?

Because they don't function like normal people, would be my guess. Profit must go up.

I feel like this will turn into the Blair mountain of our era.

It has worked for MAGA. The time for playing softball ended a while ago.