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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

#171

Post by zopa »

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…

It’s not “from the union’s mouth”! The National Railway Labor Conference represents the railroads, not the workers:

> National Railway Labor Conference (NRLC) is an association of all U.S. Class I freight railroads and many smaller freight and passenger lines.

I can see how you assumed the reverse, given the misleading name, but that tells us something too, doesn’t it?

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

#173

Post by crote »

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 E.g., maybe the idea of retirement after 20 years is outdated.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.

20 years seems very short, though. Retirement age for train drivers in Europe (BE, FR, NL) seems to be around age 60, so that's a good 40 years of work.

Are US railway working conditions really so much worse that people's bodies basically fall apart in half the time?

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

#174

Post by naasking »

next_xibalba wrote: post #79
mauvehaus wrote: post #19

Fuck the shareholders. Strike. Yes, I am absolutely willing to pay more in the short term for things so that people are treated with a little basic human decency. Moreover, I'm more than happy to pay a little more for things in the long term to ensure that there's enough slack in the system to absorb the shocks that periodically come around. We've just spent almost three years slowly killing everyone in healthcare be…

Household debt in the U.S. is at 20 year highs. Household savings levels have completely collapsed. Inflation is still ripping. Clearly the Biden administration understands that these factors, when combined with a huge supply shock caused by a rail strike, would devastate households (the vast majority of which don't earn premium tech salaries - the median household income in the U.S. is $70K). How many millions would…

> Household debt in the U.S. is at 20 year highs. Household savings levels have completely collapsed. Inflation is still ripping.

Inflation is largely caused by the same issues driving this rail strike: corporate profits. Maybe Biden should actually tackle directly that rather than continuing to shit on the working class.

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

#175

Post by lotsofpulp »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #149
lotsofpulp wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defined benefit (DB) pensions are excessively expensive due to the advent of low cost broad market index funds. With a DB pension, you have to add agency risk to the equation. There is no need for that now when you can get a Vanguard/Fidelity/Schwab 401k and pay the same 0.03% expense ratio to get the same investment performance that a pension fund manager would. And you never have to worry about the pension fund man…

>With a DB pension, you have to add agency risk to the equation. There is no need for that now when you can get a Vanguard/Fidelity/Schwab 401k and pay the same 0.03% expense ratio to get the same investment performance that a pension fund manager would. And you never have to worry about the pension fund manager stealing from it, or the politician directing investments to their nephew’s real estate company. >I would…

> But your individual investment has a big risk too - what happens when you turn 80 (90? 100?) and the money runs out? What happens if the market takes a shit the day before you turn 65? Time to start buying Alpo if you're not in a pension.

You can buy target date funds to minimize how much you have to manually reallocate between equities and bonds, and you can buy an annuity from an insurance company to guarantee a certain income.

I do not understand your distinctions between liability and cost of a DB pension.

> The cost of the plan can indeed be gamed, but there's not much point. It's just an actuarial calculation with all the assumptions that entails, and the actuary shows that long term, investment of this amount is sufficient to cover all costs.

There is a point…to contribute less than necessary for the pension plan to have sufficient funds, in order to make benefits appear cheaper today. For private company DB pension recipients, this results in them not being paid, hence strict laws like PPA 2006 and ERISA 1974. For taxpayer funded pensions, politicians just continuously increase taxes, so it is not as apparent of a problem.

For the DB pension recipient, they have the risk that the DB pension sponsor will come up short, either due to incompetence or corruption. That is a cost. Even taxpayer funded DB pension recipients have had their benefits cut when state and local governments could not come up with the cash.

Unless I had a federal government DB pension, I would assume there is nonzero risk of benefits being less than expected. Also, as a US resident, I have no doubt that even CPI adjusted benefits will be cut in real terms due to impending demographic issues and that is just how the game will be played. Feds will bail out equities over and over, and people with fixed incomes will continuously have less purchasing power.

Either way, I would rather own the assets being bailed out directly so that I can gain the most from the bail out, rather than pension fund gaining it and then still giving me a fixed benefit.

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

#176

Post by adolph »

naasking wrote: post #167
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.

Seems fine in theory, but the types of leave are different. Vacation can be anticipated and scheduled but sick days cannot. If you mandate a certain number of paid days off, you still need to require that some percentage of those days can be taken with no notice. In other words, you're still making the distinction between sick days and vacation days, you're just not using those labels, which seems unnecessarily confu…

> When an employee calls out sick, a Special Inspector may be sent to their home to check if they are really sick and at home.

If the label between sick and vacation is meaningful, are "Special Inspectors" needed to ensure people are sick when taking a sick day?

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

#177

Post by pdonis »

treis wrote: post #32
voisin wrote: post #10

Companies want employees rather than contractors in the sense that they want to have a locked in wage rather than negotiate new contract rates for each contract, but companies want contractors rather than employees because employees get benefits in exchange for their relatively slower growing incomes. Here, we see the tug of war and companies trying to have it both ways.

This seems like a place for a union to do something actually economically useful. Take the burden of dealing with malingers and fakers while providing some rostering flexibility for sick workers.

If you mean unions should become actual corporations that sell the service of organized labor to corporations that want it, I completely agree. If workers want to improve their bargaining position, they need to manage the business risks involved with things like workers getting sick themselves instead of relying on employers to do it. Then those risks can be managed in a way that is fair to workers, because they are being managed by the workers, collectively, as a corporation.

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

#178

Post by avidphantasm »

bumby wrote: post #83
avidphantasm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. This is a huge opportunity to reset employment terms, and not just in this industry. Also, allegedly many current railroad workers started in 2004 and will be eligible to retire in 2024. If we don’t fix this now, we’ll be in a worse position in a year or so. All who can will retire, and recruiting new hires will be even harder. Long term, we probably need to bust up the railroads and create a nationalized and…

> 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.

I think the point is, if the current contract without sick time gets pushed through, anyone who can retire soon may hold on until they hit 20 years, even if they’ll still have to work another job. People in the military do this very often. It’s exactly what I would do in their shoes.

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

#179

Post by yardie »

sct202 wrote: post #147
ckolkey wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When an employee calls out sick, a Special Inspector may be sent to their home to check if they are really sick and at home. If the employee doesn't answer the door (They're sleeping and don't hear the door? Doesn't matter), they're charged with falsely calling out sick, and face suspension or termination. I'll never understand why people think it's alright to infantilise other adults like this. If they're sick and…

I've known people (white collar) to call in sick because their days will expire, in places that have lax enforcement policies, so I'm not surprised that some workplaces get draconian especially if it causes someone else to get forced to work to provide coverage.

Sick days aren't part of your compensation, they are more like insurance. So of course they expire. I've had colleagues use a sick day for mental wellness. I've had colleagues use sick days while on vacation, ie food poisoning downroute. I've never had colleagues try and combine sick days with vacation days. That is considered a no-no.

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

#180

Post by kvandy »

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.

I live on the east coast of the US and have only been to the UK twice, but I was blown away at the efficiency and relative cleanliness of the London and surrounding area rail systems.
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