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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

#331

Post by SQueeeeeL »

vannevar wrote: post #324
bcrosby95 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking with one of these on call workers working for BNSF, and calling it on call doesn't do the terribleness justice. They are 8 hours on, and 8 hours off. The on call call is also 90 minutes ahead of time. So more like 6.5 hours off. Many end up sleeping in the parking lot. There's an alarm that rings every minute on the train - a dead man's switch. Oftentimes this is the only thing keeping them awake. To to…

>Congress backing these companies in any way is absolutely disgusting. Just to be clear, Congress is not backing them, the Republican Party is.

This is blatantly wrong. The Democrats have been EXTREMELY compliant in this destruction of workers rights, from Biden pushing through the contract to all members of the squad turning their back on them. The Republicans are dogshit because they want 14 year old girls to have to get coat hanger abortions, but almost every establishment Democrat does not give a single fuck about the working class/poor. (You should still vote Dem tho, having weird religious nut jobs who praise German leaders running the country is worse than a bunch of neo-liberals)

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

#332

Post by zimpenfish »

raydev wrote: post #326
vannevar wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Congress backing these companies in any way is absolutely disgusting. Just to be clear, Congress is not backing them, the Republican Party is.

Then why did the bill, without paid sick leave, pass both the House and Senate with bipartisan support?

> Then why did the bill, without paid sick leave, pass both the House and Senate with bipartisan support?

As I understand it, all but one Democrats (Manchin) voted for the 7 days paid sick leave amendment giving it 52-43 but it needed 60 votes.

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

#333

Post by [deleted] »

lazide wrote: post #318
cnelsenmilt wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Except when, as in this case, they are forbidden from striking by law. Which is a legislative form of ‘keep working your field peasant, or else.’

[deleted]

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

#334

Post by bumby »

notch656a wrote: post #328
bumby wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Labor is neither perfectly elastic nor perfectly in-elastic. Therefore it is fallacious to presume it would absolve the shareholders. Taxes on employment, taxed against the employee, actually get split between the employer and employee as the employer competes on the labor market and is forced to repay some of the tax in the form of elevated pre-tax wages. That is the tax is only nominally only on the employee.

Rail is a near monopoly * (or at least a cartel), so it doesn’t have the same market forces to make that thesis work. There are enormous barriers to entry that prevent much competition, so employees have little market from which to choose. Meaning it shifts the power away from the employee in favor of the employer.

* this is one of the reasons Warren Buffet invested in rail a decade or so ago.

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

#335

Post by notch656a »

bumby wrote: post #334
notch656a wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labor is neither perfectly elastic nor perfectly in-elastic. Therefore it is fallacious to presume it would absolve the shareholders. Taxes on employment, taxed against the employee, actually get split between the employer and employee as the employer competes on the labor market and is forced to repay some of the tax in the form of elevated pre-tax wages. That is the tax is only nominally only on the employee.

Rail is a near monopoly * (or at least a cartel), so it doesn’t have the same market forces to make that thesis work. There are enormous barriers to entry that prevent much competition, so employees have little market from which to choose. Meaning it shifts the power away from the employee in favor of the employer. * this is one of the reasons Warren Buffet invested in rail a decade or so ago.

If the workers are so specialized in rail that substitutions from rail to not rail are so poor as to not have an external market as you say, then in turn the workers also have a monopoly as external workers are unable to replace them. If what you say is true I am totally unsympathetic of argumetns against damages being sought from monopolizers who are involved in the shutting down of the rail network for which society gave up its lands.

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

#336

Post by lamontcg »

Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #287
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…

"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…

> Nobody sane will believe them

Those blue collar Reagan Democrats that you're talking about are the ones that believe that. Same people more or less.

That is why Trump did well, he appeared to them to be a pro-worker Republican in the 2016 campaign and they voted for him.

While anti-communism may have been more impactful in the 70s, the Democrats being solid pro-big-business for the past 30 years has convinced a lot of people to vote Republican since they'll get low taxes and the freedom to do whatever they want personally. You may claim they're not sane or they're stupid, but that doesn't win their votes, and they're not interested in long-winded explanations of what Democrats are providing for them at the margins while yelling at them that they're racist/sexist/homophobic/etc.

If the Democrats were more pro-labor across the board and the message was simply "here is universal health care / child care / college and strong labor regulations for everyone" then there would be a real blue wave.

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

#337

Post by vannevar »

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #331
vannevar wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Congress backing these companies in any way is absolutely disgusting. Just to be clear, Congress is not backing them, the Republican Party is.

This is blatantly wrong. The Democrats have been EXTREMELY compliant in this destruction of workers rights, from Biden pushing through the contract to all members of the squad turning their back on them. The Republicans are dogshit because they want 14 year old girls to have to get coat hanger abortions, but almost every establishment Democrat does not give a single fuck about the working class/poor. (You should stil…

It is not blatantly wrong. Virtually all Democrats supported paid leave for rail workers, and virtually no Republicans did.

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

#338

Post by naasking »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #199
naasking wrote: post #174

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. 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 cras…

> Corporations are/have always tried to maximise cost and profits. They didn't suddenly decide to get greedy 18 months ago.

Actually they did:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai6B8e-C8k8#t=10m46s

They exploited the supply chain disruptions to justified price increases that weren't warranted. The data is pretty clear on this point so I don't know what "experts" you're listening to.

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

#339

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

pdonis wrote: post #177
treis wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't quite get how this is expected to work. Does this somehow avoid a management level of this proposed corporation who are going to be trying to maximize profits at the expense of the employees who are ostensibly in a worse bargaining position? At that point, the decision for the worker is only whether they're working directly for the end-exploiters or just the middle-exploiter.

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

#340

Post by naasking »

notch656a wrote: post #335
bumby wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rail is a near monopoly * (or at least a cartel), so it doesn’t have the same market forces to make that thesis work. There are enormous barriers to entry that prevent much competition, so employees have little market from which to choose. Meaning it shifts the power away from the employee in favor of the employer. * this is one of the reasons Warren Buffet invested in rail a decade or so ago.

If the workers are so specialized in rail that substitutions from rail to not rail are so poor as to not have an external market as you say, then in turn the workers also have a monopoly as external workers are unable to replace them. If what you say is true I am totally unsympathetic of argumetns against damages being sought from monopolizers who are involved in the shutting down of the rail network for which societ…

> If what you say is true I am totally unsympathetic of argumetns against damages being sought from monopolizers who are involved in the shutting down of the rail network for which society gave up its lands.

Great, since the shareholders of these companies are also involved in shutting down the rail network since they refuse to give a humane employment contract, you should be equally unsympathetic to their side. Since all else is equal on who should be blamed for shutting down rail or the economic impact this will have, then should we not be preferring the side that has the better ethical claim?

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