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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

#181

Post by Workaccount2 »

soupfordummies wrote: post #140
thathndude wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the sentiment of your post. I can absorb a 10% bump in prices without really blinking. But the bottom 50% of Americans cannot. I wish it was as cut and dry as telling them to just strike, but I don’t think it’s that simple.

I haven't followed this super closely (as an aside, it's also really discouraging how little I've seen this story talked about. Buried in the newspapers, etc) but am I off base in thinking that gov't could have just sided with the workers and req'd the railroads to give sick days rather than just siding with the RRs and saying "no sick days"? Wow what a run-on sentence! :P

The trade off seemed to come down to "sick days for workers" vs. "lower costs for consumers"

The government went with "lower costs for consumers"

Why "mandate on-call employees to cover sick employees" wasn't an option, I don't know.

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

#182

Post by naasking »

bumby wrote: post #103
chii wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is not the worker's responsibility to sacrifice their own interests for the interests of the wider society (such as lowering inflationary pressure by not striking).

By that same logic, it's not the shareholders responsibility to sacrifice their own interests for the interests of larger society. Taking that approach is a prisoners dilemma.

You're right, it's not their responsibility to give up their cushy profits, it's the government's responsibility to ensure its citizens rights are protected, such as their right to strike.

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

#183

Post by outside1234 »

bestcoder69 wrote: post #71
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.

Another possible causal factor is just that labor is weak in the US, and thus is unable to win sick days from their employers AND is unable to convince congress to pass universal sick days either. If that’s the case (I’m biased to say yes) these rail workers really need to strike. Voting for blues obviously isn’t cutting it.

Well, all of the blues voted yes, so its hard to say that red is the solution for these workers

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

#185

Post by bombcar »

mikewarot wrote: post #51
cainxinth wrote: post #17

> ”The answer, in short, is “P.S.R.” — or precision-scheduled railroading. P.S.R. is an operational strategy that aims to minimize the ratio between railroads’ operating costs and their revenues through various cost-cutting and (ostensibly) efficiency-increasing measures. The basic idea is to transport more freight using fewer workers and railcars.” That’s a long-winded way of saying: ‘We’d rather make more money tha…

My understanding of the FIRST big problem with PSR is that it creates trains longer than the system is designed to handle, thus all the sidings that used to allow trains to pass in single tracked areas are unavailable, which increases fragility of the system in general. This makes precision scheduling impossible... what this really is, is let's make all the workers wait (for free!) while we figure out how we can fina…

I don't really have a problem with "on-call" workers (after all, everyone on a ship is perpetually "on-call" during the tour) but it needs to be compensated and handled correctly.

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

#186

Post by fineIllregister »

soupfordummies wrote: post #140
thathndude wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the sentiment of your post. I can absorb a 10% bump in prices without really blinking. But the bottom 50% of Americans cannot. I wish it was as cut and dry as telling them to just strike, but I don’t think it’s that simple.

I haven't followed this super closely (as an aside, it's also really discouraging how little I've seen this story talked about. Buried in the newspapers, etc) but am I off base in thinking that gov't could have just sided with the workers and req'd the railroads to give sick days rather than just siding with the RRs and saying "no sick days"? Wow what a run-on sentence! :P

Short answer: yes.

Longer answer: It is within the federal govt's authority to write the labor agreement from scratch. They could have used the workers' preferred agreement.

In fact, the bill the House of Reps passed did include the seven sick days. The Senate held a vote on whether to include the sick days in the deal; it received a majority of the votes but due to Senate rules (filibuster) that was not enough, and thus the provision failed.

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

#187

Post by treis »

Avshalom wrote: post #159
treis wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah, they caught me. But really it was just the most convenient cite. The facts are true and can easily be verified from other sources. Most of the rail unions have approved the contract and these machinations are a last ditched effort to get a better deal.

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

#188

Post by KptMarchewa »

p0pcult wrote: post #136
bestcoder69 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another possible causal factor is just that labor is weak in the US, and thus is unable to win sick days from their employers AND is unable to convince congress to pass universal sick days either. If that’s the case (I’m biased to say yes) these rail workers really need to strike. Voting for blues obviously isn’t cutting it.

>Voting for blues obviously isn’t cutting it. Agree, and furthermore, I'd argue that the blue "Third Way"[1] ushered in by Bill Clinton in the US is what hugely screwed labor, and 20 years later leads to the election of DJT. Why can't Biden/congress make the agreement that the unions want and ratify that ? There are multiple ways to avoid the strike; I don't understand why this has to be on ownership's terms. Long te…

> Long term, (or at least in 2024, which is about as long term as we get in American politics anymore) this is going to let team Red claim to be the pro-worker team.

but they are those who are voting those proposals down.

>Why can't Biden/congress make the agreement that the unions want and ratify that?

because they need 60 votes in senate and obviously don't have them.

I just don't understand how you can rationally reconcile party A voting against those proposals, blaming party B for not passing it, and claiming that party A is for those proposals. It's some weird doublethink.

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

#189

Post by EFreethought »

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.

I thought everybody learned that JIT is bad after 9/11.

It seems like the More Bad Advice crowd wants to keep living in a fantasy world.

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

#190

Post by adolph »

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…

> Fuck the shareholders. Strike.

It might not remain legal to strike (for this set of workers on this occasion).

On several occasions, Congress has intervened to delay or prohibit strikes. For example, in 1994, Congress passed P.L. 103-380, which extended the final cooling-off period by four months to allow the United Transportation Union and the Soo Line Railroad to continue negotiations. In 1970, P.L. 91-226 imposed a tentative agreement ratified by three unions but rejected by a fourth, similar to H.J.Res. 100.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN11966

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