As I understood it the issue with the infrastructure is not so much that electrified switched fail, but that there is not enough personal to man the monitoring

As I understood it the issue with the infrastructure is not so much that electrified switched fail, but that there is not enough personal to man the monitoring and control stations for those switches. Which results in tracks getting blocked for traffic, as there is no-one who could monitor the system. So the issue is not really about unions blocking automation. Now, the recent union win about the 4 day week is not going to help with that. But generally, the problem seems to be more with infrastructure management/investment and less with the people or the unions.