5 ms·

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

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 top it off, no sick leave. And these people are overseeing fucking trains. Congress backing these companies in any way is absolutely disgusting.

vannevar 4y ago
>Congress backing these companies in any way is absolutely disgusting. Just to be clear, Congress is not backing them, the Republican Party is.
- raydev 4y ago
  Then why did the bill, without paid sick leave, pass both the House and Senate with bipartisan support?
  - zimpenfish 4y ago
    > 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.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Throwawayaerlei 4y ago
      Do the math on the raw numbers, 5 Democrats simply did not vote on these measures, Manchin voted against, 6 Republicans voted for it. The question is why did Team Pelosi not first try a bill with both measures, that's how you get something "hard" passed, bundling it with something "essential."
- SQueeeeeL 4y ago
  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)
  - vannevar 4y ago
    It is not blatantly wrong. Virtually all Democrats supported paid leave for rail workers, and virtually no Republicans did.
    - inferiorhuman 4y ago
      It's very easy to vote for something you know won't pass. I've nothing civil to say about the republican party but the democrats absolutely dropped the ball here. The rank hypocrisy from Pete the choo choo secretary who had the benefit of months of paid family leave. The so-called squad who are all being curiously silent… It's pretty damning that the only politicians making noise about how awful this legislation is are the republicans looking to find a wedge issue and Bernie Sanders.
    - SQueeeeeL 4y ago
      When push came to shove and actual stakes were on the line, we saw they were willing to strike break. If you don't view that as performative, then we collectively as Americans deserve to be under the boot of those currently in power.
- ohiovr 4y ago
  thank you talking points memo
sheepybloke 4y ago
That's why my bro-in-law left being a train engineer. As the new guy, he had no control of his schedule and was constantly on call. He couldn't plan any time off with us or his friends, and it caused too much stress in his life. Something as simple as a consistent schedule would have done wonders for his mental health and allowed him to continue doing something that he had wanted to do for so long.
- Throwawayaerlei 4y ago
  This is why "Precision" is Newspeak in so called Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR). All but a few engineers and conductors for whom trains can be reliability scheduled are on-call as a train is built up to the arbitrary number of 150 cars or whatever. Whenever it's of the "precise" size it goes, unless one of those two are unavailable. And since no one can predict when a substitute might be needed, it would take many more spare engineers and conductors to cover for those out on a sick day. This has to be why the railroads are fighting so hard against this apparently trivial benefit, despite the bad optics etc.

vannevar 4y ago

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

raydev 4y ago
Then why did the bill, without paid sick leave, pass both the House and Senate with bipartisan support?
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  > 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.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Throwawayaerlei 4y ago
    Do the math on the raw numbers, 5 Democrats simply did not vote on these measures, Manchin voted against, 6 Republicans voted for it. The question is why did Team Pelosi not first try a bill with both measures, that's how you get something "hard" passed, bundling it with something "essential."
SQueeeeeL 4y ago
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)
- vannevar 4y ago
  It is not blatantly wrong. Virtually all Democrats supported paid leave for rail workers, and virtually no Republicans did.
  - inferiorhuman 4y ago
    It's very easy to vote for something you know won't pass. I've nothing civil to say about the republican party but the democrats absolutely dropped the ball here. The rank hypocrisy from Pete the choo choo secretary who had the benefit of months of paid family leave. The so-called squad who are all being curiously silent… It's pretty damning that the only politicians making noise about how awful this legislation is are the republicans looking to find a wedge issue and Bernie Sanders.
  - SQueeeeeL 4y ago
    When push came to shove and actual stakes were on the line, we saw they were willing to strike break. If you don't view that as performative, then we collectively as Americans deserve to be under the boot of those currently in power.
ohiovr 4y ago
thank you talking points memo

sheepybloke 4y ago

That's why my bro-in-law left being a train engineer. As the new guy, he had no control of his schedule and was constantly on call. He couldn't plan any time off with us or his friends, and it caused too much stress in his life. Something as simple as a consistent schedule would have done wonders for his mental health and allowed him to continue doing something that he had wanted to do for so long.

Throwawayaerlei 4y ago
This is why "Precision" is Newspeak in so called Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR). All but a few engineers and conductors for whom trains can be reliability scheduled are on-call as a train is built up to the arbitrary number of 150 cars or whatever. Whenever it's of the "precise" size it goes, unless one of those two are unavailable. And since no one can predict when a substitute might be needed, it would take many more spare engineers and conductors to cover for those out on a sick day. This has to be why the railroads are fighting so hard against this apparently trivial benefit, despite the bad optics etc.