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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

#281

Post by lazide »

haswell wrote: post #260
UncleMeat wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switching jobs is hard for a ton of reasons. We also do need people to operate the rail system. "Everybody just leaves and becomes a software engineer" isn't good for society.

I think working in the tech bubble has really created some misunderstandings about the average worker’s ability to just up and leave when things get bad. With that said, I don’t think this is about everyone leaving as much as it is about forcing the rail industry to capitulate. But for the aforementioned reasons, this is unlikely to happen, and rail companies know that. It’s a really sad state of affairs, and I’m not…

This has been going on for decades. The changes to the industry were in 94.

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

#282

Post by lazide »

UncleMeat wrote: post #245
lazide wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don’t get is why folks don’t just quit and go to an industry with less abusive labor practices - hell even construction laborers get days off.

Switching jobs is hard for a ton of reasons. We also do need people to operate the rail system. "Everybody just leaves and becomes a software engineer" isn't good for society.

One thing I learned a long time ago in ops is that if it doesn’t break (because someone sacrifices they’re well-being), then it won’t get fixed.

The managers and leaders keep pushing things because they can.

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

#283

Post by Throwawayaerlei »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #249
dbpatterson wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> They could easily have refused to vote for it and let the strike happen w/o real sick days. No they could not. That would lead to economic catastrophe worse than march/april 2020. Dems would get swept next election and the workers wouldn't even win because dems would be forced to pass this exact law within a week of the strike starting. The government can't let 100,000 unrelated people lose their jobs, and they rea…

Do they not have the option of forcing the railroads to give in on the sick leave issue? Did not "Team Blue" as in the Biden administration arrange this set of trade offs in the first place in the agreement which some of the most affected (screwed) workers are rejecting?

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

#284

Post by HDThoreaun »

Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #283
HDThoreaun wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They could easily have refused to vote for it and let the strike happen w/o real sick days. No they could not. That would lead to economic catastrophe worse than march/april 2020. Dems would get swept next election and the workers wouldn't even win because dems would be forced to pass this exact law within a week of the strike starting. The government can't let 100,000 unrelated people lose their jobs, and they rea…

Do they not have the option of forcing the railroads to give in on the sick leave issue? Did not "Team Blue" as in the Biden administration arrange this set of trade offs in the first place in the agreement which some of the most affected (screwed) workers are rejecting?

The bill that would give the workers 7 sick days only got 52 votes in the senate. Needs 60 to overcome the filibuster

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

#285

Post by notch656a »

yamtaddle wrote: post #278
notch656a wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking forward to the general strike. It will open up some great position for scabs. I'll be moonlighting in your job; sure I'll probably be shit at it but they'll be desperate to fill the seat.

Careful. Not so safe to be a scab if labor gets serious about keeping capital from fucking it so hard.

Sweet the risk will command an even higher premium for the labor. Not the first time I've been shot at.

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

#286

Post by cnelsenmilt »

lazide wrote: post #282
UncleMeat wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switching jobs is hard for a ton of reasons. We also do need people to operate the rail system. "Everybody just leaves and becomes a software engineer" isn't good for society.

One thing I learned a long time ago in ops is that if it doesn’t break (because someone sacrifices they’re well-being), then it won’t get fixed. The managers and leaders keep pushing things because they can .

Absolutely. And union negotiations, and then a strike, are some ways that the workers can make it break.

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

#287

Post by Throwawayaerlei »

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 going to let team Red claim to be the pro-worker team"

Nobody sane will believe them; while I believe the start of this was when the New Left captured "Team Blue" in the 1970s and blue collar workers famously became part of the Reagan coalition (and worked with him against the Soviet Union, particularly in Poland), the GOP establishment hates this part of its base.

Repeating part of another comment which in general is a repeat of all of this:

A great deal of Trump's otherwise inexplicable popularity is that he's a 1970s NYC Democrat just like Reagan in the 1980s was a self-described FDR Democrat and he doesn't hate these people. Doesn't care or do much for them, but this is a palpable difference from the GOPe.

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

#288

Post by dpkirchner »

sillystuff wrote: post #227
mjbeswick wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's seem like such a far reaching issue that I'm surprised it hasn't triggered a general strike.

A general strike is illegal in the United States. The US government, under the control of wealthy capitalists, has ensured that capital's interests are protected in law to the detriment of the workers who actually create value. > Among the practices prohibited by the Taft–Hartley act are jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing, closed…

> A general strike is illegal in the United States.

What're they going to do, imprison the masses? Illegal doesn't mean much without realistic consequences.

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

#289

Post by Throwawayaerlei »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #284
Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they not have the option of forcing the railroads to give in on the sick leave issue? Did not "Team Blue" as in the Biden administration arrange this set of trade offs in the first place in the agreement which some of the most affected (screwed) workers are rejecting?

The bill that would give the workers 7 sick days only got 52 votes in the senate. Needs 60 to overcome the filibuster

How convenient Team Pelosi split the issues into two bills. This result is to no credit of either party; as I've been commenting elsewhere, both hate this segment of the population.

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

#290

Post by TheCoelacanth »

sillystuff wrote: post #227
mjbeswick wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's seem like such a far reaching issue that I'm surprised it hasn't triggered a general strike.

A general strike is illegal in the United States. The US government, under the control of wealthy capitalists, has ensured that capital's interests are protected in law to the detriment of the workers who actually create value. > Among the practices prohibited by the Taft–Hartley act are jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing, closed…

That seems like an obvious First Amendment violation given the economic activity = speech precedent from Citizen's United.
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