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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

#191

Post by yourusername »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #141
eecc wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine, in Italy you get a visit from the "Medico Fiscale". It's confrontational for sure, so you just go to your GP, get a certificate with the prescribed days of rest and attach that to your sick leave notification. Easy

Next door in Austria I've seen employment contracts (from local Mittlestand family owned companies in the automotive sector) where it was specified that "in case of sick leave, the employee agrees to health checks by the company's own GP at the company's expense, even if you already have been written off sick by your own GP." I've never been more disgusted. Then again, I've also read in the news here of employers hir…

>Next door in Austria I've seen employment contracts (from local Mittlestand family owned companies in the automotive sector) where it was specified that "in case of sick leave, the employee agrees to health checks by the company's own GP at the company's expense". I've never been more disgusted.

In Dutch employment contracts this doesn't even have to be specified, this is a general condition applying to all employment contracts. Most companies won't actually send a doctor over until you've been sick some time but they always have the right if you want to continue to receive sick pay.

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

#192

Post by robertlagrant »

stephen_g wrote: post #153
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.

There's no market for natural monopolies.

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

#193

Post by luddit3 »

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…

This is like blaming the abused wife for not helping her husband to stop abusing her.

Party of voting against the majority self interests will continue to vote against the majority's self interests.

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

#194

Post by JohnFen »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #154
JohnFen wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Where I've worked, this was addressed somewhat loosely. You have PTO. You commit to scheduling time off in advance to the greatest degree you can. The employer commits to accommodating those requests to the greatest degree they can.

If you need to miss work unexpectedly, you do so. The employer just trusts your judgement that it's necessary. If it's going to be more than a day or two, you are expected to talk with your employer and explain what's up -- mostly so the employer can adjust assignments and schedules with a better understanding of what to expect.

Do some employees abuse that? Sure. But, in my experience, that's rare and the people doing it are usually poor workers anyway. They can be handled through whatever the normal review mechanisms are.

This is my most common experience. I don't know how common it actually is, and I'm sure other situations would require different, perhaps more formal, procedures. But it's worked well in the places I've worked.

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

#195

Post by fineIllregister »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #181
soupfordummies wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

It doesn't have to raise prices. The costs imposed by the sick days (millions) are absolutely dwarfed by annual profits (billions).

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

#196

Post by dbpatterson »

zopa wrote: post #150
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.

The proposal to add seven sick days passed the House and got a majority in the Senate, mostly (though not quite exclusively) ‘blues’. It’s not who unions are voting for that’s the problem, it’s the filibuster.

The "blues" created the legislation & forced the workers to accept a shitty contract with no sick days. They could easily have refused to vote for it and let the strike happen w/o real sick days.

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

#197

Post by smcl »

bumby wrote: post #151
tomrod wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

Sounds like you think they should do a job-body-difficulty based means testing on the retirement the unions have fought and won for their members. That would be an excellent way for the bosses to divide-and-conquer the rail workers, diminishing the negotiating power of the unions and ultimately for them to end up with even worse pay and conditions in the future.

Sorry if that sounded too harsh, but I take a dim view of the idea that we - in our well-paid industry with all of the benefits that come with it - have any business suggesting that workers who probably already have less than us will need to make do with less pay/holidays/healthcare/retirement or anything like that

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

#198

Post by standardUser »

kylecordes wrote: post #162
standardUser wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The businesses keep making large profits, perhaps a tiny sliver less." Absolutely unacceptable (to them). They will fight tooth and nail to prevent any federal action that could harm their bottom line. It's one of the most predictable plays in American politics.

I don’t think that’s necessarily the driver here though, from reading the linked article and others. Rather the dynamic is that these railroads have incredibly dispersed ownership, almost entirely by purely financial owners. Management has very little stake. If any of them operates at a slightly less margin than the others, activist investors will pop up and easily get support to replace the management. But if they a…

Tolerate? Sure, if they have no choice in the matter. Support, almost never. These things are almost always imposed on business by government regulations, or come as the result of capitulation to stave off impending regulation. Yes, we can look at the peculiarities of this industry(which arguably should just be nationalized), but we can't ignore the overwhelming trends in American politics at play here.

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

#199

Post by Workaccount2 »

naasking wrote: post #174
next_xibalba wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Corporate profits

In the social media circle-jerk, yeah. In economist circles that include the advisors consulting on policy, no. Corporations are/have always tried to maximise cost and profits. They didn't suddenly decide to get greedy 18 months ago. "Blaming inflation on corporate profits is like blaming gravity for a plane crash, technically right but totally misguided." Remember, gravity is always trying to crash a plane.

Frankly I will always side with expert opinion over karma farming social media commentary. I know it feels good to blame the shadowy cabal of fat men with a top hats and eye pieces, but it's just not what is going on.

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