4 ms·

"Awesome, the Internet's down, best day of the year, thanks Baby Jesus, may it never come back". Though, sure, a few days of that and we'd not be happy. Mostly

"Awesome, the Internet's down, best day of the year, thanks Baby Jesus, may it never come back". Though, sure, a few days of that and we'd not be happy. Mostly for heating-related and food-spoilage reasons. All the more reason for Congress to force the railroads to cave—which is to say, to behave halfway reasonably. But, instead they screwed the workers. I'm curious how hiring's going to go for them, as they start to run out of workers with a bunch of money in the pension system who can't afford to leave, and now that everyone knows what abusive employers they are. I suppose eventually they'll have to relent and go back to pre-Covid staffing levels, or something like it. Guessing they'll fund that by ditching the pensions entirely, or at least scaling them way back. Great excuse to do that, that they've created for themselves.

ethbr0 4y ago
Can they ditch the pension system? Last I checked (job surfing), they had the RRB, which predated social security [0]. I believe it's been mostly homogenized with SS at this point, so distinct in name only, but I expect there are still active laws on the books from the 30s and 40s that govern it? [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Retirement_Board https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Retirement_Board
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Ah, perhaps not. I figured they had a bit more control over it, like some other opt-out systems when SS got set up originally, but it looks like they don't.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    I honestly don't know, and at this point it would be digging through almost 100 years of legislative patches to find the current state. From what I read, they'd basically converged its cost of living and payouts to be Social Security-equivalent (and tied to it for the future), but I believe it's still a distinct program (that just happens to pay the same amount). There were also some oddities with porting between the two systems (railroad work -> social security work, or vice versa). It stuck in my mind because the idea of a government-backed retirement system before social security seemed such a weird historical quirk!

ethbr0 4y ago

Can they ditch the pension system? Last I checked (job surfing), they had the RRB, which predated social security [0]. I believe it's been mostly homogenized with SS at this point, so distinct in name only, but I expect there are still active laws on the books from the 30s and 40s that govern it? [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Retirement_Board https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Retirement_Board

yamtaddle 4y ago
Ah, perhaps not. I figured they had a bit more control over it, like some other opt-out systems when SS got set up originally, but it looks like they don't.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  I honestly don't know, and at this point it would be digging through almost 100 years of legislative patches to find the current state. From what I read, they'd basically converged its cost of living and payouts to be Social Security-equivalent (and tied to it for the future), but I believe it's still a distinct program (that just happens to pay the same amount). There were also some oddities with porting between the two systems (railroad work -> social security work, or vice versa). It stuck in my mind because the idea of a government-backed retirement system before social security seemed such a weird historical quirk!