From NBC News: Rail union rejects labor deal brokered by Biden administration, raising possibility of strike
The country’s third-largest freight rail workers union rejected a temporary agreement brokered by the Biden administration to avert a potentially crippling nationwide railroad strike, raising the possibility that one could occur next month.
In a statement Monday, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division of the Teamsters said 56% of its more than 11,000 workers had voted against the tentative agreement. Some of the provisions would allow workers to avoid attendance penalties for routine medical visits and hospitalizations, and the proposal included the biggest wage increases in more than four decades.
However, the deal did not address the number of unpaid sick days for which workers would now be eligible, among other issues that were left to be negotiated in the future.
Now don’t worry about it being political and stuff.
“The Associated Press reported that the union will delay any strike until five days after Congress reconvenes in mid-November to allow time for additional negotiations.”Report
Union thinks a team Blue Prez and Congress will lean on the company.Report
It’s important to take good care of one’s pets.Report
The locomotive engineers will likely follow suit.
And to be clear this is about scheduling and the slashing of the railroad workforce by a third over the last decade. They money offered so far is definitely a plus but it doesn’t make up for the scheduling issues.Report
That’s what I’ve been told by someone at work whose husband is an engineer. I couldn’t even imagine how they have a life outside of work with the scheduling rules currently in place.Report
They don’t. Divorce rates, heart attack rates, depression rates all through the roof. They get penalized for taking time to go to the DR; they get penalized for taking time to go to funerals.Report
well, frick. I wonder if Amtrak will refund fares for Thanksgiving if my trip is a no-go due to a strike. I don’t love the idea of another solo Thanksgiving but there’s no easy way to make alternate plans now. (Too far to drive, I loathe flying and it’s very hard for me to get to an airport where I live)Report
Both the Maintenance of Way and Signalmans unions have rejected the contract. That just leaves the engineers, and it doesn’t look like their vote will turn out much differently:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/26/business/railroad-strike-threatReport
Proving that neoliberals are NOT labor friendly, the Biden Administration has asked Congress to force a contract onto railroad workers:
Make no mistake – this is a win for the railroads and a loss for labor. Should Congress actually pass a cram down I suspect a lot of senior railroad employees will retire, exacerbating a labor shortage that is self inflicted on the railroads.
After that, look for railroads to begin agitating for single person crews on extra long road freights. Because they want to make railroads into automated money makers, and further eroding labor costs are the only way to do so.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/29/business/rail-strike-threat-recedes/index.htmlReport
The House has passed two bills – one implementing the agreement just voted on by the unions, and a second to add 7 paid sick days to the pot. The first is most assuredly going to pass the Senate – perhaps with some grandstanding, perhaps not. The second likely won’t. Remains to be seen how rank and file will react to the cram down:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/30/politics/congress-rail-vote-house/index.html
Modify messageReport
Looks like the one with sick days has officially failed.
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What a disgrace.Report
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-reaches-deal-vote-avert-rail-strike-rcna59600
It feels a little weird, but good for Braun, Cruz, Graham, Hawley, Kennedy, and Rubio, the latter five of whom usually rank fairly low on my esteem list. Were the remaining holdouts (Manchin + 42 Republicans) really willing to filibuster over that? Apparently so or we wouldn’t be looking at Sanders needing 60 votes!
After nearly 200 years, the railroads still own the Federal government.Report
Heh. John Cornyn did a quick about face when the chips were on the table, according to his Twitter feed.
One would think that a week’s worth of sick days wouldn’t be a bone of contention in 2022.Report
I’m so naive that I thought child labor wasn’t a bone of contention.
But here we are.
In one example, a 14-year-old worked through the night “cleaning machines ‘used to cut meat’ while attending Walnut Middle School.” A report cited in the lawsuit detailed this child “falling asleep in class and missing class as a result and suffering injuries from chemical burns.”
https://slate.com/business/2022/11/packers-sanitation-child-labor-department-hyundai-chipotle.htmlReport
It’s not a bone of contention. No one is advocating a return to child labor. We have laws against that. We enforce them. In a nation with 300+ million people we’re going to find corner cases and things that make good headlines.
For example my 15 year old is campaigning for a job. I’m a fan of my teenagers getting terrible min wage jobs. It showcases what not to do in the future. Balancing that against school is the issue.
It’s not like she needs to get one or she won’t eat, but if she does get one then anything that happens to her can be spun into an interesting headline.Report
And yet weirdly, we don’t seem to see blaring headlines about the “OUTTACONTROL CRIME WAVE” of child labor, do we?
How many segments on Fox News are there about shoplifting and street crime in San Francisco, versus violations of child labor laws? Would I be wrong to say about a thousand, versus none?
How many viral videos or tweets have been posted to Ordinary Times of guys shoplifting versus videos of children working on farms? At least a couple, versus none?
How many people have been elected on a campaign promise of cleaning up the OUTTACONTROL CRIME WAVE of child labor lawbreakers?
How many handwringing think pieces do we see in major media about how the OUTTACONTROL CRIME WAVE of child labor lawbreakers just naturally causes people to vote for socialism or whatever to put an end to it?
As I mentioned in the comments about wage theft, show me your budget, I’ll show you your priorities.
Shoplifting is a priority and will kill a political career; Wage theft and labor law violations are accepted and tolerated.Report
From a pair of quick google checks, it seems one is a measurable problem and the other isn’t.
Shoplifting is estimated to cost the gov $15B in lost taxes (which means the retail value is a lot higher). Child labor levels in the US round to zero.
Those child headlines seem cherry picked and many could apply to my kid if she had a job (which she wants). The rules violations also doesn’t seem organized.
If organized crime were enslaving dozens of children a pop and putting them to work somehow, then you’d have something comparable to organized crime running mass shoplifting sprees.
And yes, we’d have amazing levels of pressure put on the political establishment to DO SOMETHING.Report
How about some facts:
Estimates by the Association of Farmworker Opportunity programs, based on figures gathered by the Department of Labor, suggest that there are approximately 500,000 child farmworkers in the United States. Many of these children start working as young as age 8, and 72-hour work weeks (more than 10 hours per day) are not uncommon.
Wage theft is estimated to be in the neighborhood of 15 Billion per year, about the same as shoplifting. About 70%of low wage workers have been cheated of wages or breaks.
The number of pretty young white girls who go missing “rounds to zero”, but media run endless stories about them.Report
If memory serves, the vast bulk of these are working for their parents. Your sources are commingling legal “child labor” with illegal, probably because the illegal kind is rare to the point it rounds to zero.
This hits the radar as attempting to jin up statistics inappropriately, unless the desire is to outlaw children working for their parents. If that’s the agenda then they need to be more open and honest about it.
My wages were stolen, the people involved eventually ended up behind bars. Given that they had to put their names on the company documents, finding them was presumably easy.
It’s a problem. Having said that, it’s also likely to largely vanish if we improve enforcement a tick given the people involved aren’t striking from shadows.Report
What difference does it make if an 8 year old is working 70 hours a week in the fields, if they are working with their parents?Report
The gov, in 2021, found 2,819 minors employed in violation of the law (note that includes “children” who are 16).
https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20220729
If you’re seriously trying to claim the problem is 200 times larger than what the gov believes the size is, i.e. that 2% of all children in the US (including the very young) are illegally being forced to work, then you’ve got your work cut out for you proving it.
If you’re right and that’s a description of reality then we’ve got a serious problem. Way more likely imho it’s a fiction created by someone with a political addenda.Report
Where did I say that those children are being employed in violation of the law?
You realize that an 8 year old child may LEGALLY be employed for up to 8 weeks at a stretch. This isn’t a violation of the law, its perfectly legal.
At 12, they can be employed on a farm without a minimum wage.
Again, legally.
What you’re doing here is proving my point, that many people have an a priori conviction that child labor and wage theft are not problems and will vigorously object to any facts otherwise.
This is why I was naive to assume that child labor isn’t still a bone of contention, but here we are.Report
What is the context here? You seem to be talking about what parents are doing to their children. Something like 2% of the country.
It’s a big deal to be passing laws to redefine/outlaw parts of that relationship. We’re going to need to enforce those laws. Those laws may not be followed or those cultural practices may exist for good reason, but we’re still going to need to enforce those laws.
Given that it is a big deal, you need to be very honest and open about what you’re trying to stop, why it’s happening, and how the result (which will include using law enforcement to rip apart families that don’t toe the line) will be an improvement.
Thus far you’re not even close to presenting that level of detail.
What part of “my wages were stolen” or “it’s a problem” weren’t clear?
Presumably it decrease with somewhat better enforcement simply because we are dealing with people who are easily identified. Also there are some counter balancing forces because of churn and freedom of movement in the labor market. For example I quit and got a better paying job which didn’t have criminal management.Report
I’m saying that having 8 year old children working in the fields is bad.
This, in 2022 America, is a controversial idea.Report
Without context, I can’t tell if we’re talking about…
1) Slavery
2) Child abuse
3) Cultural habits
4) Religion
5) Entrepreneurship
If it’s legal then hopefully it’s not #1 or #2, so you might be in the process of proclaiming that the Amish shouldn’t have children.Report
Calling it “cultural habits” or “religion” or “entrepreneurship” doesn’t justify it, it just gives it a name.
And the whole point of slavery and child abuse is that it IS legal in many parts of the world and has been for millennia.Report
RE: “cultural habits”
If we’re going to decide the Amish need to be destroyed or totally restructured, then that needs to be a deliberate choice.
RE: entrepreneurship
The big questions are who is getting paid and what else is going on.
I bought a dog as a pet who’d been raised on a farm by a kid. My youngest has raised exotic pets starting at age… 11? She wasn’t that far away from from doing the same.
Both of them were/are also going to school and presumably headed for a middle/upper class future.
IMHO the big dividing line between “this is probably a problem” and “this is clearly not a problem” is whether they’re also going to school.
A 8 year old working 72 hours a week is a problem but I expect that’s illegal and an extreme outlier.
This is like talking about teenage pregnancy where we group together 13 year olds and married 19 year olds. You’ve categorized clearly different groups as the same thing. IMHO there’s a strong element of mont bailey here.Report
Yes, 14 year olds falling asleep in class because they were working all night in a hazardous meatpacking plant was my example of a problem.
Which is why I rewind to my original point.
A story of a guy snatching some chips and soda at Walgreens becomes a viral sensation, even here at Ordinary Times.
It is considered a shocking breach of the social order. It is an issue that tips elections and can topple administrations.
A story of illegal child labor or wage theft doesn’t even make the news because it IS the social order.Report
My kids have fallen asleep in class without working.
Your own numbers suggest this is an issue for 2% of the population. Jumping from 2% to “it is the social order” is a big leap.
Further, 2% is enough of an outlier that we shouldn’t trust institution to understand what is going on. We don’t have enough definition to make judgements here.
If you want to see them as slaving away in fields and not getting an education then you can assume that.
However if my kid has a job, pulls an all nighter to complete a project, and then falls asleep the next day then she’d fit nicely in your statistics. That example suggests strongly these stats are grouping in kids they shouldn’t.
Your argument is big on moral outrage but thin on data.Report
looks like Congress has decided to settle this. The House and Senate have passed a Resolution imposing the Tentative Agreement, over the no votes of four of the 12 unions. Once signed by the President, the resolution and its underlying agreement become law, meaning an strike or work stoppage will be illegal.
So much for being pro-labor.
https://www.railwayage.com/regulatory/strike-averting-legislation-now-under-way/Report
It’s not like they have a Police Union.Report
Shutting down vast transportation networks is extremely painful for the entire country. It’s probably a few steps beyond parking tractors on highways or putting a line of “protestors” across a highway.
It’s appropriate for Congress to step in.
8 of the 12 unions voted in favor of the agreement, I don’t have details on what the other four disliked.Report
No paid sick leave.Report
The BNSF has started bringing their rolling stock back into the local rail yard from wherever they stashed it while the strike was still threatened.Report
We gonna get a wildcat strike?
These guys *SHOULD* get sick days. It feels absurd just typing that out.Report
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Back in the day I negotiated for no sick days and no vacation because I didn’t want to pay for them. So… is that what happened here in the past?
I wanted pure cash because I didn’t trust management to not screw around with our benefits. I was correct. Another group of people went with a high benefits package and when all of us were forced to the one-size-fits-all benefits package they effectively got a pay reduction while I effectively got an increase. The new benefits were terrible but still more than what I’d had before.Report
*I* get sick days. I don’t consider them to be free lunches.
If there are wildcat strikes, we will quickly find ourselves wondering where our lunches are and complaining that the shelves don’t have as many lunch ingredients as we’d like.Report
Organized labor taking the economy hostage seems like a high risk strategy. Especially with most of the unions involved being in favor of the deal that was just signed off on.Report
Sure, but I don’t know who will have the stomach for taking the side of the railroad bosses. I mean, other than a handful of the usual suspects.
“Just give them some sick days!” strikes me as something more likely that people would say.Report
Yes. Seems like a trivial thing to get held up in a huge labor contract so I doubt the sound bite is the full story.
Let’s see… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_labor_dispute
The House’s version has 7 days of sick leave and the Senate 1 so that will need to be reconciled (which also means we’ve got political theater here). Union wants 15.Report
That’s the difference between 1 and 15, isn’t it?
Because I could see the argument that 1 freakin’ sick day AT THE TAIL END OF A GOLDANGED GLOBAL PANDEMIC is nowhere near enough.
7 strikes me as somewhere around a good number. 7-10. Like, 10 sick days would have me saying “they’re striking to get more than two weeks of sick time?”
But 1 day would have me saying “just give them some sick days!”
And we’re back here.Report
The thing about sick days is that you need people to cover them, which is how you get those snarky news stories about rooms full of guys paid to hang around and not work.Report
That’s something that we had to explain to management a couple of times. “Sure, you can only hire one guy, but he will get sick from time to time. He may even go on vacation occasionally. You’ll need a second guy.”
The discussion then turned to whether it’d be possible to take one of the other guys on site and spin him up enough to cover stuff like sick days and vacation.
“Perhaps, if you hadn’t done the same dang thing to all of the other guys on site.”Report
A great many things to unpack here:
– The unions that voted in favor of the tentative agreements are the folks who work at or from fixed bases of operations. They generally work shifts and are home with their families every night. They have always had less stressful work and usually no problem taking days when needed.
– The unions voting No to the agreement are the folks who work across the railroad system, meaning they travel and are on call. They generally have to be available to work within a couple of hours of being called in, and if they don’t respond or have previously scheduled days off, they get docked under points systems. Which then means they slide down the call sheet regardless of seniority and into disciplinary territory very fast. They have testified to Congress and the Surface Transportation Board that his has resulted in going to work sick – including with Covid; missing family funerals; missing important events for their kids; working sleep deprived.
– the Railroad actively cut this part of their work force between 30 and 33% over the last ten years.
– Two resolutions came out of the House – one a straight imposition of the contract and the other adding the sick days. The Senate only passed the imposition not the sick day add on, so that’s what’s going to the president.
– My friends in railroading tell me there isn’t going to be a strike since it would now be illegal, but they expect a significant wave of retirements. They also say this plays into the hands of management as railroads want to cut road crews to a single person form the two they now have to further lower costs and boost profits.Report
Sounds like a time bomb for the US economy.Report
like many economic things these days, it probably is. Also like many economic things these days, railroads are run by business school graduates who have promised share holders ever growing profits. Which means that when the only cost you can control is labor, that’s where you exert your “downward pressure.”Report