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Why America’s Railroads Refuse to Give Their Workers Paid Leave

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Re: Why America’s Railroads Refuse to Give Their Workers Paid Leave

#151

Post by bumby »

tomrod wrote: post #113
bumby wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2004 and will be eligible to retire in 2024 This isn't a push against your overall point, but I think a larger systemic view is necessary. E.g., maybe the idea of retirement after 20 years is outdated. Or maybe the system needs to be re-thought in terms of how to keep that paradigm funded, particularly in economies with declining birth rates.

There are good reasons retirement at 20 years exists. Jobs that wear out your body and have union support tend to pay better. We should keep the 20 year option and pay more, give more sick days, and fully fund insurance. Employees should be agents, not cogs.

There’s a couple issues I have with this. The 20 year rule for jobs that “wear out your body” is a blunt heuristic. The military uses this, but it applies to both infantry and admin while they aren’t equal in terms of physical demands. Same goes for civil servant positions etc. it’s a bad measurement.

Secondly, the idea of retirement is an anomaly in human history. And it’s not clear that it’s particularly healthy for the individual or society.

I think there’s an argument to be had that in a productive society, people shouldn’t feel financially insecure. But I’m not sure giving 2 years of retirement for every 1 year of employment is the best way to do that.

Funding better benefits is certainly an option, but hard to do while also keeping costs down. Unfortunately, it seems like Americans prefer a consumerist economy and are addicted to cheap shit.

My personal opinion is that if rail (or air traffic controllers or whatever) are so vital to the economy, we should be willing to treat the workers as such.

Re: Why America’s Railroads Refuse to Give Their Workers Paid Leave

#152

Post by actionfromafar »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #138
actionfromafar wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that create an incentive to run your employees so hard they develop health issues? No skin off your back, just get a new employee when the first gets permanently broken. I'm cheeky, but I think that is one of the rationales for having sick leave at all.

How would they run you hard if you have sufficient PTO? California requires overtime after 8 hours of work per day and on the 7th consecutive day. If that is not enough, make overtime cost 2x. Lots of ways to ensure employers do not run employees hard without getting into details of sick days and whatnot.

Glad you asked in earnest! I was thinking more about work environment, possibly bullying etc etc, anything harsh on the body and mind. Of course your system could be setup to a working level, but you'd need more of other controls or incentives to rectify the kinds of problems which can lead to work related health issues.

Re: Why America’s Railroads Refuse to Give Their Workers Paid Leave

#153

Post by stephen_g »

mjbeswick wrote: post #26

Rail companies are getting the blame here, but the real problem is that paid leave isn't a statutory employment right protected by law. Here in the UK full time employees are entitled to 28 day paid annual leave, although I have work for companies which offer more, while pay is seperate.

Yeah, coming from a country with strong labour laws, it's mind boggling that this is legal in the US. I think the realist view has to be that the market ain't ever going to fix it, companies are always going to try to get away with as much as they can, and the people have to force the Government to bring in minimum standards.

Re: Why America’s Railroads Refuse to Give Their Workers Paid Leave

#154

Post by lotsofpulp »

JohnFen wrote: post #139
lotsofpulp wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an employee and an employer, I like having only one type of paid leave. It should not matter to the employer why an employee is not working. If the issue is insufficient time off for illnesses, then the negotiation should be for more paid time off (PTO) in general. This eliminates all the resources wasted on catching fraudulent use of sick days.

I agree. My employers over the last couple of decades have just had a general PTO amount. But for that to work, two other things have to go with it: the PTO amount has to be enough time to cover both uses, and there still has to be a mechanism that allows for unplanned time off. The true cruelty of "no sick days" isn't that employees have to burn vacation days, it's that vacation days have to be scheduled in advance…

Perhaps this is solved by requiring all accrued PTO to be paid out, and by requiring a minimum of X number of days where you can call out?

States with sick leave policies have stipulations like these:

https://www.lni.wa.gov/workers-rights/_docs/ReasonableNotice...

Re: Why America’s Railroads Refuse to Give Their Workers Paid Leave

#155

Post by crote »

eecc wrote: post #80
matthewmcg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This approach is taken with regulated utilities and telcos as well--natural gas utilities design their systems with enough capacity to serve all firm customers on the expected coldest day of the year (called a "design day") and circuit switched telephone networks were designed to handle the traffic expected on Mother's Day.

Not in NL. Train schedules regularly go haywire whenever a track switch freezes or -- less funnily -- there's a "person collision". The infrastructure is so congested there's no slack; indeed WFH (or remote, perhaps a local professional setting cowork) would do wonders to reduce commute overhead.

This seems to be happening less and less often, though.

ProRail has pretty aggressively been removing most track switches not in regular use, reducing their chance of failure at the cost of not being able to reroute around any issues that do occur.

At the same time they've been replacing busy railway crossings with tunnels, and closing or protecting the 150 or so remaining unprotected crossings. The total number of accidental collisions is down to less than one a week. There's still about 200 suicides a year, but they are also actively trying to prevent those by adjusting the infrastructure.

There are significant issues at the moment, but most of them are at NS and other transporters. They are critically short on personnel, and recruiting new people isn't going very well. They've had to cut the number of trains by about 10% already!

Re: Why America’s Railroads Refuse to Give Their Workers Paid Leave

#156

Post by p0pcult »

ChrisRR wrote: post #148
p0pcult wrote: post #110

When you design systems so "efficiently" that there is no slack, you increase their working efficiency, but also their fragility. We (in America) saw the costs of this "just in time" slackless logistics in the economic reboot as we rebounded from the first waves of COVID: logjams at the ports. Good system design allows for the absorption of interstitial disruptions. There's a reason tall buildings sway in the wind; i…

I think covid and the silicon shortage has shown us how JIT manufacturing completely falls apart if there's a delay in just one of your components.

When I was in grad school in an analytics program a couple decades ago, JIT was all of the rage among the Ops Management professors. It was gratifying to see one of them actually apologize on social media for the problems wrought in this era by the dissemination of this kind of thinking.

Re: Why America’s Railroads Refuse to Give Their Workers Paid Leave

#157

Post by cool_dude85 »

treis wrote: post #132
cool_dude85 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What's happened is that the unions negotiated higher pay for worse benefits. Now some of them are leaning on friendly politicians to get the benefits they traded away back without having to give up the higher pay. They didn't negotiate anything with the current contract being imposed on them. The contracts have been voted down by membership, hence the union does not agree with the terms. The group who has "leaned on…

Tell me you didn't read my link without telling me you didn't read it.

Make the argument yourself, you're a grown up. How can you describe the negotiations for this contract when the contract has not been agreed upon?

Re: Why America’s Railroads Refuse to Give Their Workers Paid Leave

#158

Post by caseysoftware »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #68
bestcoder69 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed on the strike. Hearing they have 0 sick days (plus penalties for missing) was unbelievable to me. Strike and make it so the rail company shareholders have to live with completely fucking the US economy over their profit margins. And if they do, we all have a duty to point the finger at them.

FYI, many, many millions of people in America that work low paying jobs have zero paid sick days (or paid time off in general). As evidenced by the fact that there is no federal law about it, and only a handful of states required a small number of paid sick days.

I think the rules are shocking because these are NOT low paying jobs. These are "good union jobs."

Re: Why America’s Railroads Refuse to Give Their Workers Paid Leave

#159

Post by Avshalom »

treis wrote: post #106
bestcoder69 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed on the strike. Hearing they have 0 sick days (plus penalties for missing) was unbelievable to me. Strike and make it so the rail company shareholders have to live with completely fucking the US economy over their profit margins. And if they do, we all have a duty to point the finger at them.

This is just a political talking point supported by a friendly media. From the union's mouth: >Q: Why did the railroads reject proposals to add benefits on top of the framework recommended by the PEB? >A: The request for additional benefits made by the few unions that have not ratified tentative agreements is similar to a proposal which was carefully considered and rejected by President Biden’s Presidential Emergency…

Rail Labor Facts is from the NRLC, which is the rail company organization, which is to say that aint from the union's mouth at all.

Re: Why America’s Railroads Refuse to Give Their Workers Paid Leave

#160

Post by ragingrobot »

JohnFen wrote: post #139
lotsofpulp wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an employee and an employer, I like having only one type of paid leave. It should not matter to the employer why an employee is not working. If the issue is insufficient time off for illnesses, then the negotiation should be for more paid time off (PTO) in general. This eliminates all the resources wasted on catching fraudulent use of sick days.

I agree. My employers over the last couple of decades have just had a general PTO amount. But for that to work, two other things have to go with it: the PTO amount has to be enough time to cover both uses, and there still has to be a mechanism that allows for unplanned time off. The true cruelty of "no sick days" isn't that employees have to burn vacation days, it's that vacation days have to be scheduled in advance…

I suppose the employee can opt to take fewer planned vacation days, reserving the balance for unplanned absences. This would require the balance to be rolled over, or the employee compensated at the end of the year or other period, otherwise it would make employees unhappy.

Perhaps a mechanism that allows for unplanned time off, with a little education on how to properly plan PTO to allow for unplanned leave.

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