Why America’s Railroads Refuse to Give Their Workers Paid Leave • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by dpkirchner » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 5:07 PM UTC

KptMarchewa wrote: post #188

p0pcult wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> 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.

It's exactly the same right-wing doublethink that spurs budget cuts and justifies the cuts by pointing out how ineffective government is. Anyone promulgating such notions is either a sucker or dishonest.

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

#292

Post by Avshalom » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 5:07 PM UTC

semiquaver wrote: post #273

mikewarot wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The SECOND problem is that slashing the labor pool, and thus reducing the labor cost Just to clarify, did you mean slashing a given company’s jobs? The labor pool is the group of people in the job market available to perform a function. Slashing _that_ would drive salaries and thus labor costs up, not down.

No, slashing the labor pool is supposed to increase the leverage labor has allowing labor to demand higher salaries. It doesn't just make salaries go up on their own. But as long as you can ignore the demands of that labor pool it doesn't necessarily do anything.

That said they slash jobs, but because it's specifically-skilled labor slashing jobs also slashes the labor pool, when there's no jobs people either never develop the skills/experience or they leave the field --and don't come back-- when they get laid off.

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

#293

Post by HDThoreaun » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 5:16 PM UTC

Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #289

HDThoreaun wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

it wouldn't have passed if it was just one bill. Republicans have no problem allowing a strike since democrats will take the blame for the economic fallout.

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

#294

Post by supercheetah » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 5:16 PM UTC

Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #233

ChrisRR wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem is that the opposite of JIT can also "completely fall apart" with potentially even longer delays, plus loss of money. One thing people don't generally know is that as developed in Japan it's a quality control system. If a jig at a supplier gets out of alignment and parts made with it are out of spec and not noticed until assembly, you're better off with a feedback loop measured in hours instead of months.…

Not being JIT doesn't preclude a supply chain from being fast, though. A fast, but non-JIT supply chain would probably create a lot of excess, but it might be worth it to overcome any bumps in the process.

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

#295

Post by AnimalMuppet » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 5:18 PM UTC

t-3 wrote: post #231

outside1234 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The blues also put forward the paid sick leave as a separate bill rather than putting them together. That's no coincidence, but a political strategy.

If I understand correctly, the blues also had some hand in negotiating the one-sick-day contract that the union members rejected. Biden at least claimed some credit for that, IIRC.

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

#296

Post by Throwawayaerlei » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 5:22 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #224

adolph wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What the freight railroads are doing here is forcing the employees to use their vacation pay when they are sick to discourage them from calling out sick at all, in effect penalizing them for calling out sick. That vacation you had planned with the family? Either lose a day (which may require you to cancel altogether), or come to work sick. If they have paid sick leave, they'd use it when sick rather than showing up…

The problem is the scheduling side of things, not the PTO side. For "knowledge workers" as most of HN is, they can just not show up today and then do today's work tomorrow. But something like a railroad ceases to function at some point and that has severe repercussions. Now likely the "railroad" problem could be solved with some work, imagine a nation-wide company that handles railroad staffing emergencies, with on-d…

I'm not sure your staffing problem can solve the whole problem, because there's domain knowledge in how to handle trains in particular sections of track. Speed maximums are probably easy although they do get screwed up in notorious incidents, but there's also things like how to deal with inclines.

Compare to knowledge workers like programmers needing to know the code base.

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

#297

Post by Throwawayaerlei » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 5:24 PM UTC

HDThoreaun wrote: post #293

Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

it wouldn't have passed if it was just one bill. Republicans have no problem allowing a strike since democrats will take the blame for the economic fallout.

You know this how? And somehow the House couldn't have first tried a bill with both, then split them out?

Your claim would be more useful if you pointed out the vote was 52-43; with no great effort six Republicans voted for it, five Democrats are AWOL and Manchin for some reason I can't imagine voted against it.

The Senate also voted 26-69 against 60 more days of negotiations.

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

#298

Post by bumby » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 5:25 PM UTC

notch656a wrote: post #276

naasking wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Total comp by class 1 rail employees is $130k a year [0]. I support their right to strike. It should not be impeded in any form. I also support the right for society to take back all the land they freely gave for use of the railroads, and then to rent it back by imposing a tax against the paycheck of railroad workers equal to whatever gains they made by shutting down freight to the US. [0] https://raillaborfacts.org/…

Note that is "total compensation" and not salary. That means it's factoring in fringe benefits, like health insurance, time off, retirement, relocation benefits, etc. I'm not saying it should be disregarded, just that it's important to note that distinction for comparison's sake. By comparison, there's some sites online touting $400k average total compensation for SV computer scientists.

More to your point, why would you tax the employees rather than the company that actually has the land easement? The former seems to absolve the shareholders while the latter would likely affect both the shareholders and the employees.

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

#299

Post by retrac » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #265

stephen_g wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The market is perfectly capable of fixing the problem. The employees should quit, strike, or slowdown work until their employers give them what they want.

> should quit, strike, or slowdown work

I'm not sure how it goes down in the USA, but here in Canada, federal transport workers are de facto prohibited from striking or other job action. Every time they go on strike, the next day the government passes legislation declaring the strike illegal because they are essential workers and a disruption poses a threat to infrastructure of national interest, and a new binding labour contract is imposed on the workers. The only legal option is to quit. (But you can't even encourage your coworkers to quit, too. That amounts to illegal labour agitation.) Air traffic control, port workers, railway workers, etc. get this treatment. They have no right to strike, in practice.

Edit: a quick Google search suggests it's same situation in the USA:

> The House has passed a resolution 290-137 that would force unions to accept a tentative agreement reached earlier this year between railroad managers and their workers and make an imminent strike illegal.

https://www.npr.org/2022/11/30/1139876084/congress-house-rai...

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

#300

Post by danaris » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #268

danaris wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should absolutely strike. And they're in a good position to do so: my understanding is that, unlike, say, the air traffic controllers' strike in the '80s, there's no supply of trained rail operators ready to be brought in as scabs to keep things going. If they strike, the trains just won't run.

I think the thing congress is worried about is how quickly the entire country devolves to anarchy if the trains stop. We cancelled all flights in the USA for two days after 9/11 and it really didn't do much of anything major, but Walmart turns over all stock every month or so, and groceries are turned over much faster. Trains also provide a significant amount of coal still used to fuel power plants.

Well, then, maybe Congress should mandate paid sick leave for the people running those trains, rather than mandating that those workers should just shut up and deal with it.