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Rail workers oust union president who backed labor deal
- caned 4y ago> For months, the BLET and other unions had pushed for fifteen paid sick days for rail workers. Currently, railroaders get none. In those final hours before their strike deadline on September 15, the union agreed instead to accept three unpaid sick days, with thirty days notice, to be taken on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. In other words, be sure to plan your sickness well in advance.
- Tostino 4y agoAnd that is just a pathetic amount of time to have off to begin with. Realistically, how much would it eat into profits to properly staff these companies?
- toomuchtodo 4y agoHalf a day's worth of Warren Buffett's gains (roughly $321M, less than 2% of annual profits). A full day's worth gets 15 paid sick days. Rail companies spent $25.5B on stock buybacks and dividends in 2022. BNSF is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/dec/08/bernie-sanders/bernie-sanders-correct-railroads-net-billions-vast/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/dec/08/bernie-san...
- wahern 4y agoThe nominal cost in days off is not even close to real cost to rail roads bottom line. There reason why they push back so hard is because the rail roads 1) run extremely tight schedules, and 2) employ only barely enough employees to keep the network operating. In many cases there aren't enough employees to cover unscheduled absences, which can cause havoc with schedules. So the real cost is hiring more full-time employees; and you need a not insignificant number as they need to be scattered around the country. Moreover, because employee utilization rates are extremely high (from the rail workers perspective perhaps even over 100% on account of on-call time), adding extra employees will obliterate utilization rates and thus profit margins, at least from the perspective of CFOs and investors who will cry that, for example, a utilization rate dropping from 98% to 90% is a 400% increase in inefficiency. I'm not trying to defend the rail roads. But if you're a CFO or investor myopically focused on abstruse metrics, the impact would look intolerable.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoIf you can’t survive as a business without causing punishing suffering to your workers, you don’t have a right to exist as a business. Subjectively, I’d like to see how far things need to be pushed until it breaks. Is it illegal strikes? Is it derailments? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ status quo is unsustainable considering demographics and labor supply shortages. As executive leadership or an investor, I would be concerned of what happens to critical infrastructure in the event of impacts to national logistics. Losses would be $2B/day. The US government will step in at some point, and there’s nowhere near enough military reserves for them to run a railroad on no notice (150k rail workers, 25k-30k prime movers).
- HDThoreaun 4y ago> If you can’t survive as a business without causing punishing suffering to your workers, you don’t have a right to exist as a business. It's not that they can't afford it, it's that they really don't want to and they know that the government will never allow the workers to strike so there's no reason for them to negotiate on this in good faith. The problem with illegal strikes from the workers perspective is that they won't just lose their job, but also their pension that many have been contributing to for a decade plus.
- AnthonyMouse 4y ago> If you can’t survive as a business without causing punishing suffering to your workers, you don’t have a right to exist as a business. Typically if you cause punishing suffering to your workers, they'll quit. The problem here is the unions have structural incentives to negotiate for unusual things (e.g. seniority rules, pensions) when in most open markets workers will prefer higher pay to any of that. But then the company's incentive is to get people to quit before they're eligible for what the union demanded, which is an extremely perverse incentive. Meanwhile the worker's incentive is to not quit before they're eligible, even when it sucks.
- duskwuff 4y ago> Typically if you cause punishing suffering to your workers, they'll quit. The problem is... No, that isn't the problem. The problem is that railroad workers have very few choices of employer. There are only five major freight railroads in the US (BNSF, CSX, Kansas City, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific), and they're all fairly regional. A railroad worker who's fed up with their employer's policies will often only have one other company they could work for without moving across the country -- and the other company will often have very similar policies anyway.
- humanlion87 4y agoAnd people keep praising Warren as if he is so well intentioned. He is just another billionaire who is intent on maximizing $$$ and has a great PR team.
- labcomputer 4y agoProbably more than you’d expect. It has to do with pensions (which are very generous). Due to how pension benefits vest (by years worked, not hours), the railroad would rather have 0.5x workers working for 2x hours. Railroads also save money if they can burn out workers (and have them leave voluntarily) before they fully vest.
- vkou 4y agoWhat's maddening is that the legislature was ready to force them back to work, because railroad workers are nationally-critical, but not so critical that they can't be treated like dirt.
- jethro_tell 4y agoWe've seen this 'split the bill' trick too many times of late. Put all the concessions for business in the first bill and then bring up a second bill with concessions for workers. For some reason, the first is always bipartisan and the second is a bipartisan failure. There was a bill that required the rail to have enough staffing to give sick days (not 15 but real sick days non-the-less) and required that the workers keep at it. Then the bill got split into, workers go back to work, and workers get real sick days. Obviously, only one passed. The argument I guess is that they couldn't pass the first bill that included sick days for workers, so they should have stayed out of it. Rail workers didn't actually need the legislature to give them sick days, just get out of their way and let them cost the business enough that it's worth paying them what they are worth. Pretty fucked up.
- HDThoreaun 4y agoThe issue with "get out of the way" is that railroads would shut down which would basically close the economy after a week or two. Power plants would be forced to shut down and there would be blackouts because they can't get their coal. Grocery stores would have empty shelves. Allowing that isn't a political reality, and the opposition party knows it, so there's no reason for them to give any concessions to the ruling party.
- jethro_tell 4y agoSo, either these people are important enough to pay or they aren't, so let the opposition party shut the country down? Its either a mandated compromise or left alone. The railroad doesn't negotiate in good faith because they always get bailed out by Congress. Change that dynamic and you won't have this problem again. Doing the right thing is hard and this is no exception. The fact is, you are too soft to stomach a minor inconvenience that we'd rather take it out of someone else's Christmas than be patient for two weeks and give everyone a better life. And with that, we turn into Russia where everyone hates the ruling class but would rather play the game against each other because it's easier.
- wefarrell 4y agoI’m amazed that 21 years after September 11th we are still taking our shoes off to get on airplanes. Meanwhile we still do not have federally mandated sick days despite having a recent pandemic with a death toll of several hundred more people. I say this as the son of someone who almost died of Covid in march of 2020 because a coworker decided to keep coming into work when their spouse was in the hospital with a confirmed case.
- laweijfmvo 4y agonit pick, but this actually wasn't a direct result of 9-11, rather it occurred a few months later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid He failed to detonate his shoes and no one was killed/injured from this incident (unlike 9-11).
- Mechanical9 4y agoThe majority of US law / government process is pretty much off-limits to change due to political gridlock. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridlock_(politics)#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridlock_(politics)#United_Sta...
- brianwawok 4y agoCan leave your shoes on if you do precheck. Takes you back to 2000 level security. No body scan or taking laptops out of bags either.
- Cyberdog 4y ago
- legitster 4y agoIs there a particular reason they have to be so byzantine with sick time? Paid or not 30 days heads up seems useless. Is there that much of a logistical issue replacing missing operators?
- rtkwe 4y agoRailways like the airlines need people in particular places at given times to drive their trains. Having any slack requires having slack and fast transport to get on call replacements into position. That costs money so they run as tight as inhumanly possible to squeeze more profitable work out of their employees at their expense.
- legitster 4y agoIt doesn't seem that expensive to just always have an extra staffer scheduled on routes. Ocean shippers are just as profit-seeking as train companies and they don't mind keeping lots of extra crew around. Are there artificial barriers to hiring that train companies have to deal with?
- rtkwe 4y agoThe issue is you could need the spare people at a lot more locations that are far more geographically dispersed than a cargo ship and they're all better paid than your generic seaman, a lot of workers on ships are from much lower COL countries and get paid less accordingly.
- mike50 4y agoThat's because they can employ workers from various low income nations (especially if English speaking) for cheap. No pesky environmental regulations for the fuel quality and resulting pollution either. Compare the labor costs of shipping from one us port direct to another us port (requires a us crew) and a foreign port to a us port.
- shagie 4y agoAs I understand it... they are the industry is trying to run as close to 100% workforce utilization as possible. There are about 115,000 people that are part of the freight rail unions. Additionally, a number of these systems require a certain number of people to be able to go. It doesn't do much good to have one person show up to move stock around if the other people needed are out for some reason. Picture the challenge of "ok, we want to go from 7 sick days a year to 14". That's 7 more days, which means that it needs to hire 4% more staff which amounts to hiring another 5000 people. In today's labor market, this is hard. Additionally, that's still running the 100% work utilization. Lets put some slack into that... now instead of 5000 more people you need, you need 15,000 more people. Parts of this industry are licensed - you can't just go hire people off the street to fill those spots. They need between three months and year of on the job training and then some spots are under the licensure of the Federal Railroad Administration.
- rayiner 4y agoThe labor movement is in the most dire straits it has been since the 1920s. They have no support from anybody with power. Their longtime ally, the Democrats, are now solidly the party of management, of companies operating global supply chains, and of knowledge workers who want their Amazon packages delivered on time. As a result Biden will face no meaningful backlash from his party for knifing railroad workers in the back: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/01/joe-biden-rail-strike-labor-unions https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/01/joe-bi.... At the same time, the GOP's support of its growing working class base is merely lip service. There's lots of fluff pieces about "the New Right" and moving beyond zombie Reaganism, but the fact is that the party is structurally incapable of achieving any policy wins for those voters. Indeed, the GOP elite would love nothing more than to ditch rail workers in Ohio and win back upscale suburbanites in Westchester or Arizona or Georgia.
- nemo44x 4y agoUnions are for losers unfortunately. That idea just doesn’t work in a modern globalized economy any longer. It’s a relic of a short period of time.
- maybelsyrup 4y agoI mean you’re right — that’s why Amazon and Starbucks aren’t fighting unionization drives that hard, or why US police departments have famously weak unions of their own, or why the Pinkertons still exist after over a century, or why reactionaries still make regular targets of schoolteachers, or why this very HN thread only exists because unionized rail workers pose such a threat to American money and security that the federal government writes laws prohibiting them from striking.
- no_wizard 4y agoThe police don't have weak unions though. Evidence suggests otherwise, see my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33991186#33992777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33991186#33992777
- a_shovel 4y ago53% is pretty close. I recall that the rail unions were divided when they voted on the last deal as well.
- akiselev 4y agoFirst thing I thought when I read the title was that Mick Lynch [1] got replaced in the UK RMT workers union, who are currently fighting the railway companies (along with, it seems, almost every other union on the island). Should have realized Labour was spelled incorrectly :-) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mick_Lynch_(trade_unionist) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mick_Lynch_(trade_unionist)
- rr888 4y agoI'm all for sick days but not if you can save them up. The cops in my town used to retire with a career's worth of sick days saved which they get paid out in cash (at their final salary). Now I think they get paid annually instead. https://www.nj.com/news/local/2009/12/parsippany_officers_retiring_w.html https://www.nj.com/news/local/2009/12/parsippany_officers_re...
- kelnos 4y agoThat's weird; why should workers get paid for sick days? I get the idea of being paid out for unused vacation days, but sick days? Makes no sense to me.
- undersuit 4y agoIf I don't get to cash out my sick days(my employer offers a 4:1 cash out option when I leave employment) I might as well use them. Getting rid of that incentive would be a reason to call in sick more often.
- calcifer 4y ago> why should workers get paid for sick days? This is such an American thing to say. The question wouldn't even occur to most European folk.
- zamadatix 4y agoTo be clear they are referring to the "being paid for sick days not actually taken" not the general concept of "still being paid while you are sick". It's a reasonable question IMO, you should be incentivised to use your sick days not try to bank them for a cash out at the end. They are as much for your fellow workers as you.
- Rebelgecko 4y agoAre you allowed to cash out your sick days in Europe? It seems actually anti-worker in a way, giving people a financial incentive to go into work anyways when they're sick.
- nemo44x 4y agoWhy not just fire all the train operators and hire non-union labor? The job is easily trainable and you can offer salaries that would get 500k smart guys lived up to earn. We learned in the 80’s when all the air traffic control union members were fired that transportation unions have no power. Fire them all.
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoThey don't want to offer salaries that would get 500k smart guys. Or benefits, which was one of the major issues.
- mter 4y agoThe job is boring, the hours are terrible, they spend a lot of time away from family and they get no sick days. They are well paid if they are based in a cheap COL area, but it's a chore to work your way up to a good route. This would not be a job where it's easy to replace people. It's really, really boring and you can't be check your phone while driving a train.
- dluan 4y agoYou should look up what's happening with the situation first before spouting nonsense. Rail industry has been cutting the workforce and trying extract as much profit as they can knowing that it's in an unsustainable death spiral. And it's not just engineers, but also maintenance, loaders, shipping, etc. All of this has been in terrible shape over the past decade, but it's been timely in that industry can wrap it all up in "COVID caused supply chain issues leading to inflation". It's not that at all, its a purposeful gutting of a vital industry.
- OkayPhysicist 4y agoThis a remarkably ignorant take. If they were willing to pay more for labor, then the unions wouldn't be threatening to strike.
- hgfdhgdfhgdfh 4y agoThey already pay $93,000 on average, twice the salary of the avg American worker. How much more is enough?
- apstats 4y agoModern unions have no spine and their leaders are in the game to enrich themselves it seems most times. This seems great for the rail union.
- scoofy 4y agoThe principal-agent problem is literally the most counter-intuitive problem to have. I suspect, ironically, it would be best to overpay leaders and combine that with term limits. If you're set for life after working for a group for 5-10 years, you have little reason not to do your job well. Every time i see US house members sleeping in their offices because they get paid so little for so much power, i shake my head at the utter obvious expectedness of the causal corruption that happens in Washington.
- legitster 4y ago> Modern unions What's your definition of "modern"? It seems like most unions these days are doing a much better job than, say, Jimmy Hoffa's time.
- OkayPhysicist 4y agoInterestingly, the intermingling of organized crime and organized labor was a pretty symbiotic relationship. Crime Syndicates need an above-the-board way of targeting people and companies that step out of line, which the unions provided by stopping work. The unions need an under-the-table way of dealing with scabs, strikebreakers, and uncooperative management, which the mob provided with violence. Unions seeking out parallel power structures separate from the dominant government is a direct consequence of the government actively siding against labor at every turn.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoI saw the headline and though that somehow David Heinemeier Hansson lost control of RoR.
- legitster 4y agoThis seems pretty drastic given how close the White House was to using an executive action to force the union to work. It's not clear how a more aggressive union president could have done better.
- roody15 4y agoIt’s amazing how Bidens work on this is just excused and rationalized. In His career he has always modeled himself as the representative for the working class and pro union. His direct involvement is the most anti union action in three decades.
- legitster 4y agoIt seems like a particularly unique situation though. Regardless of your stance on unions, a national railroad strike would be an egregiously unacceptable outcome. Nearly every other person in America would be negatively impacted by quite a severe degree. You don't have to love it to understand it.
- detaro 4y agoSince the government action here enforces a specific deal to be "made", it could've prevented the strike and followed some of the demands and added sickdays though?
- toomuchtodo 4y agoIndeed. They could've voted to enforce the pro-union deal. They didn't. They specifically voted to prevent a strike and not provide the sick day benefits.
- HDThoreaun 4y agoThe democrats did. The republicans didnt
- 4y ago
- kepler1 4y agoI hesitate to speak an unpopular (in many senses of the word) position, but there is a stark truth if you are a scientific/economic/objective observer that as long as people are willing to sign up for jobs under these conditions, you cannot greatly escape the truth the employers will continue to offer those conditions. Be outraged as much as you want, and claim that this is so anti-labor and immoral / unfair, but it is a truth you can see play out in many similar spheres. You keep accepting conditions, and there is no incentive to change. And trying to put in rules to prevent it artificially is simply protecting some workers from what the market will bear. It went the other way for workers because of mass shifts in unwillingness to work under certain conditions -- see the wage rises during Covid and up to today. Things do change if people are unwilling to take the jobs. We unfortunately have too many people willing to take these jobs at the pay and benefits / conditions offered. Until that changes, you're fighting a fight against market forces. Unions, for all the good they done at times in the past, are trying to escape competitive market forces. As are we all, I admit.
- rqtwteye 4y agoYou can't always excuse bad things with "market forces". We have prohibited child labor. Otherwise "market forces" would also motivate poor children to work in coal mines. We could mandate reasonable sick day and vacation policies. We shouldn't accept exploitation of people who are willing to take a job.
- kepler1 4y agoAgain, at the risk of sounding coldly analytical about it, while I'm grateful child labor laws were put in place, I don't think they actually did much to alleviate the underlying reasons and experiences of why children were put to work (by their parents or exploiters or themselves) in those days. Suddenly outlawing children from working didn't miraculously make their lives better or lift them out of poverty. Stopping people from taking those jobs merely stopped them from making their desperation visible (and of course obviously yes, from dying in horrible conditions they probably had no idea they were signing up for). It was other efforts and initiatives improving the standard of living that made the difference. I do think such laws have a very good and important role to play where people don't fully know what they've agreed to. If someone wants to get a job by offering their labor for less than his next competitor and is going into it with full information, I don't think we should act like we're doing him a favor by stopping him from doing so. Stopping someone from taking a less than minimum wage job has not alleviated their situation. Again, just dispassionate observation -- mandating whatever number of sick days per year may be a humane gesture, but it doesn't change the underlying fact that there is a surplus of willing labor in this country willing to take jobs at these pay rates that even don't have any such benefits. Efforts by unions to say that their political power and striking/etc led to change in our standard of living are conveniently mixed up with the rising general demand for labor and wages because we were a growing country willing to pay for relatively scarce labor at the time. Those conditions are not the same now.
- dluan 4y agoOne of the big issues was that in this multi year negotiation process, union leaders were banking on Biden to support them favorably and so did not pursue any other backup plans or offers. They could have had a Plan B in place to strike or at least secure a shorter term deal with sick days in place, with the rank and file ready to walk out, but the union leadership didn't want to. When Biden admin basically walked away, the union leadership were left with zero other options. Gross negligence from the leadership. So this is not surprising at all. There's a lot of low level organizing and shaking up at each of the rail unions, but they've got a lot of work ahead.
- HDThoreaun 4y agoThe unions knew the government wouldn't let them strike. So did the railroads. That's the problem.
- dluan 4y agoThe consensus within the progressive arm of the unions is that there should have been a walkout date for a shorter term agreement to keep negotiations going. The leadership only had one card to play and they burned it with terrible strategy. It's why this particular union president was replaced.
- lapcat 4y agoMeanwhile, "Union Pacific Corporation Declares Fourth Quarter 2022 Dividend" December 9, 2022 https://www.up.com/media/releases/4q22-dividend-announcement-nr-221209.htm https://www.up.com/media/releases/4q22-dividend-announcement...
- whycome 4y agoMaking sick people go into work is bad. Allowing infectious people to cross the country is even worse. Is this not how pandemics accelerate?
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y agoLink is dead. Archive: https://archive.ph/Mh1J5 https://archive.ph/Mh1J5