Solidarity With Railroad Workers
On December 2nd, 2022 President Joe Biden signed legislation into law forcing railroad workers to accept the tentative agreement which had been put forward by the Presidential Emergency Board. This averted what would have been the first work stoppage in United States freight rail in thirty years. Railroad workers have shown since the strikes of 1992 that their work is crucial to the maintenance of our national infrastructure, and yet the corporations that operate our country's railways continue to exploit the labor of these workers in an everlasting search for profit. Railroad labor had been without a contract for three years, and they deserve much more than what's in the contract that they’ve been forced to accept.
In July, two of the twelve rail unions voted down the contract put forward by management. In most union contract negotiations this could have triggered a work stoppage immediately, but railways aren't governed by the same rules as other American unions. Railroad workers are governed by the Railway Labor Act as opposed to the National Labor Relations Act, and this difference creates additional roadblocks to prevent workers from striking. After labor’s rejection of the tentative agreement from management, President Biden convened a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) that initiated a thirty-day “cooling off period” which disallowed any strikes or lock-outs from August 16th to September 16th.
On September 15th, the Biden administration put forward a new tentative agreement, but it failed to address the real material needs of rail workers, and the workers are acutely aware of this. That's why more of the unions voted down the second than the first. This time four of the twelve refused to ratify the contract.
The first point of contention is sick leave, which many railroad workers currently do not receive. The first proposed contract didn’t address this at all, and the second would give workers with no leave exactly one day of sick leave. To deny the essential workers who kept the trains running during the COVID-19 pandemic any meaningful amount of sick leave for themselves is insulting and deeply immoral. Some workers are eligible for sick leave under the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act but there’s a waiting period before it can be used. Functionally, it’s short-term disability coverage for on-the-job injuries and unavailable in most situations, so it can’t be used like typical sick leave to stay at home and look after a sick child.
The second point of contention is bad and worsening work conditions over the past several decades. Since the’90s, railways have been pivoting from constantly running freight on schedules to Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR). Rail corporations implemented PSR under the guise of “modernizing” the railways, but these changes merely drive down labor costs while degrading the quality of freight service. Since PSR became ubiquitous in the 2000s, not only have over 20,000 railroad workers been laid off (as of 2019) but service for shippers has also gotten worse. Before PSR, freight ran fairly consistently on schedules. Shippers could reliably know when their product would arrive at its destination. It was also better for workers because they could know when their shifts would be. Now, trains only leave the yard once they are full, which has brought about the rise of what some in the industry call “monster trains.” PSR has turned the trains into three mile long behemoths that the existing infrastructure is not designed for. These “monster trains” don’t fit in the existing rail yards and they regularly block roadways and impede passenger rail. Instead of having a consistent work schedule, many rail workers are now defacto “on call.” They might get a call in the early morning telling them that the three-mile-long train has finally been loaded up with enough cargo to move and they need to be ready and available within 90 minutes. This ties into the issue of sick leave as well. How can workers schedule a doctor's appointment if they have no idea what part of the country they’ll be in on any given day of the year? All that rail “modernization” has done is bring some of the worst outcomes of the gig economy to the railroads.
Neither of the proposed tentative agreements address either of these specific issues, and the workers have rightfully rejected them. They’ve been offered meager pay raises but they deserve more. They deserve dignity and to be able to live their lives like the rest of us. To quote Railroad Workers United (RWU) General Secretary Jason Doering, “The PEB did not address any quality of work-life issues important to many workers of the various crafts… RWU consistently stated that unless and until these issues are adequately addressed in a Tentative Agreement (TA), the organization cannot support it." Furthermore, RWU Co-Chair Ross Grooters said this about the effect of PSR on the workforce: “Thanks to deep cuts in the workforce exacerbated by the widespread adoption of “Precision Scheduled Railroading” in recent years, inadequate staffing levels are at the root of this rank and file rebellion… Railroad workers are not just fighting for quality of life, we’re fighting for the future of freight railroads.”
Cincinnati Socialists stand in solidarity with railroad workers, whether on the picket line or at the bargaining table. Workers deserve a better contract than what’s been offered but these contracts cannot properly address the needs of the workers. We support the RWU in calling for the nationalization of American railways. This is not an unprecedented demand. American railways were briefly nationalized during WWI because competing private entities could not serve the interests of the workers or the shippers and passengers who used their services. The inefficiency of anarchic competition only serves to increase the profits that the owners of these private institutions hoard. To quote RWU from their press release published on November 21st, “Regardless of what becomes the end result of this bargaining round, ultimately, we are facing an uphill struggle… We urge railroad workers, shippers, passenger train advocates, and others to get behind the effort to end the scourge of share buy-backs and remove the rail infrastructure from private hands. The railroads should be operated in the interest of the public and the businesses that rely on efficient transportation, similar to how the highways, airports, seaports, and inland waterways are in the U.S. This would align with how the rail system is run in most countries.”