$30.00hr ish
Reply With Quote
Site Information
About Us
- RonPaulForums.com is an independent grassroots outfit not officially connected to Ron Paul but dedicated to his mission. For more information see our Mission Statement.
$30.00hr ish
BNSF railroad tries to block 17,000 workers from striking
https://www.kxnet.com/news/top-stori...from-striking/
BNSF railroad wants a federal judge to prevent two of its unions from going on strike next month over a new attendance policy that would penalize employees for missing work.
The Fort Worth, Texas-based railroad went to court after the unions that represent nearly half of BNSF’s 35,000 workers threatened to strike over the new policy that is set to go into effect on Feb. 1.
Union officials say the policy violates their contracts and could provide an incentive for workers to show up sick.
But the railroad said a strike would hurt the economy too much, and it shouldn’t be allowed because BNSF believes this is a minor contract issue.
BNSF operates in 28 states including North Dakota.
I wonder if there's not more to this than workers complaining about not being able to miss work. Like with Southwest airlines, it must have been the weather, or anything except vaccine mandates.
A friend of mine submitted both religious and medical vaccine exemptions for Norfolk Southern and is waiting to see if it gets approved. Railroads kind of have the same issue that healthcare does. Too much government strings attached to say they are private. His father worked for the railroad for most of his life and never knew he was considered a federal contractor, but he retired some 10 years ago.
Originally Posted by timosman
This is getting silly.T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." - Plato
We Are Running Out of Time - Mini Me
Going Galt.
I hope they do strike, across the board.
Let the unproductives take a stab at working the jobs that keep modern civilization going.
Us deplorables are sick of it, the stress, the danger and liability, only to be mocked and derided and scorned by the ruling class.
Last edited by Anti Federalist; 01-22-2022 at 07:49 PM.
“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” - Arnold Toynbee
One of the best jobs I ever had was working on the railroad. I didn't work the main line - I was a Locomotive Operator in a steel mill. We worked in one-man crews, so I had a remote control to run the engine and walked the ground to switch, couple and brake. Still miss those days!
But hard work! There was a period of time when we worked 12 hour days 7 days a week. Which really meant every day. Brutal. And through bitterly cold winters. But fun!!! I ran a EMD SW1500. 1500 horse power moving tons of molten steel and scrap. For a young man, I couldn't recommend this life enough!
"And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." - Bastiat
"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." - Voltaire
Oh nice!
What red blooded young man wouldn't love that job?
My first wheelhouse job was mate on a 120 foot scallop dragger.
I was 19 and felt like the king of the world.
“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” - Arnold Toynbee
ok if all the railroads shut down and evil retard biden doesnt allow trucks with drivers from mexico about what percentage of goods in the US will that effect , 20 ? , 45 ?
Do something Danke
If the railroaders strike, what are the chances that Brandon will issue a go back to work order?
100%
Back to work orders are cover for management to twist the work rules to their liking. Management has the upper hand.
Which might make Brandon, and perhaps his party, even less popular in the next election.
Really?
Really?
https://odysee.com/@linguitariste:f/...Lyric-Video):d
Last edited by acptulsa; 01-23-2022 at 11:32 AM.
From another forum I frequent. It all rings true, and you can attest that I know a little something about the topic.
The issue with the coming availability policy is its failure to allow time off for employees in unassigned service.
Employees who work in assigned service, such as in yard jobs or locals, have a regular schedule with assigned days off. It might be a Monday through Friday job with Saturday and Sunday off, but it's far more likely to have less desirable days off like Tuesday and Wednesday. Either way, those employees currently can take one sick day off per month beyond the eight assigned days off.
Employees in unassigned service are on call and do not have assigned days off. The current system expects those employees to be available for work 75% of the time. Weekdays are considered separately from weekend days, so the current system allows an employee to take five weekdays and two weekend days per month.
The new system assigns a point value to days depending on how likely the day is to be taken off. For example a weekend day is more valuable than a weekday and a holiday is more valuable than a weekend day. Employees will start with a certain amount of points and each day taken off will deduct points from the total. Run out of points and the employee is subject to dismissal.
As far as employees in assigned service are concerned the new system doesn't change things much. But those in unassigned service will no longer have those two weekend days and five weekdays per month. In fact, if an employee in unassigned service observed those same 7 days off in a month almost two-thirds of their points would be gone. Less than two months of taking those 7 days off would put the employee in a position to be dismissed.
The only way to get points back is to work 14 consecutive days and that would only get you one weekend day or two weekdays worth of points back. Take a three-day weekend and you have to work 42 days in a row to get back to the starting point value.
Now you can use paid days off, such as vacation time, and that won't ding the points, but if the last two years are any indication of what the future will be like good luck getting time off approved. They'd sooner cut you a check in January for unused vacation time than approve time off requests throughout the year. Using a paid day off interrupts the 14 consecutive days you need to work to get more points. Also, you can't go over the starting amount of points and you can't bank them if say you were really eager and wanted to work two months straight.
Nobody who has worked for the railroad for any length of time has had an expectation they would work the same kind of hours as regular workers. It becomes clear very quickly that you'll go to work on holidays, at odd hours, during power outages, ice storms and heat waves, that you'll miss birthdays, weddings and recitals. You'll be out of town when friends and family wanted you home. Those who don't figure that out don't last long on the railroad.
And that leaves the people who are still around working on the railroad. They have shown up through each wave of the pandemic, when the schools were closed and kids had to stay home, when the only way to get toilet paper or lysol was to show up at the grocery store and get in line at 7am. They have done their duty as essential workers and have done it proudly, even as their families and marriages have suffered and friends and relatives have passed away because it has to be done to provide for your family. To say this new policy is out of touch misses the mark. It's inhumane to expect your workforce to power through two years of pandemic and time off requests being ignored (all the while creating record profits) to go from 7 days off per month to one or two.
In more than a decade on the railroad I've never had any trouble with attendance. The only things I've ever gotten for attendance have been letters and postcards thanking me for showing up on holidays or during the pandemic. I like railroads and I like my job as an engineer. I like coming to work. But there's no way - even for somebody like me who wants to be here - to work 42 days in a row in exchange for a long weekend.
But what about RSIA? Doesn't that guarantee two days off after working six consecutive starts? It does, but 24 hours and 1 minute between starts resets the count, and that can happen when you're at the away-from-home-terminal in the hotel waiting to be called (I had 21.5 hours in the hotel yesterday). Getting called to deadhead also resets the start count. When these loopholes can be exploited by the company to their advantage they are. I was only able to string together six starts three times in 2020 yet I worked more hours than ever before. Same story in 2021.
A big part of the reason conductor classes aren't filling up like before is the word is out on that job. I would no longer recommend the job to a friend or family member (up to two years ago I would have). I'm not alone on this; traditional railroad towns, where the railroad is a coveted job that you can only get by knowing someone, are having a difficult time filling up conductor classes. There were hundreds of people at the hiring session for my conductor class and only 14 got in, two of whom were alternates for the previous class and one of whom had many years with another class one railroad. If I didn't have family on the railroad I probably wouldn't have gotten the job myself. Well that scene is a distant memory. There aren't enough applications to process to try to put a class together.
Another reason is it's been years since we had a raise and the cost of everything has gone up during that time, and not by just a little. Moreover similar jobs with far better work-life balance have increased their pay to attract employees. Choosing between a conductor job and another outdoor/physical job doesn't mean working for half the pay anymore.
On top of that railroads have made it clear they want to eliminate the conductor position. Why take a job with a marginal pay increase and a terrible work-life balance where you might only have the job a year or two? And now you can't take even one day off per week?
If there's a hiring crisis it is self-inflicted. There are hundreds (thousands?) of furloughed employees across the country who could be called back to work if this was about being short of qualified and trained people. I was furloughed my first year and when I was called back to work I had 30 days to report or I'd forfeit my seniority. These people aren't being called back.
Do more with less is the name of the game now. Double up trains so fewer crews have to be used (nevermind the fact that it takes the equivalent of an extra crew to put the two trains together and break them apart resulting in zero savings). Eliminate carman jobs and have the train crew inspect and air test the trains. Train crews can't diagnose or repair any bad order cars because they don't have the training to do so. Guess what? They are far less likely to catch bad order cars or spot problems with air tests that aren't as obvious as "these brakes don't work." Fewer bad orders means fewer delays in the short run, until something catastrophic happens. When it does rest assured the conductor who performed the air test in a 2am thunderstorm with only the dying light of a lantern* to inspect the train will be who the railroad blames for negligence.
Morale is in the toilet and most people are afraid of losing their jobs. The railroad isn't the kind of place where people work for a year or two. People out here have decades of service. Computers in the workplace had Windows 98 installed and there might be one computer in an office connected to the internet when many railroaders left their last regular job to start out switching cars in the yard. The fear of losing your job is only slightly less than the fear of having to find a new job in the social media hellscape where your skills are so outdated they're unrecognizable. Nothing good comes from living and working in fear like that. If you've always got one eye looking over your shoulder you have one less eye to do your job. And with the backstops that used to be there to catch mistakes all but removed, from yard jobs to hostlers to carmen and machinists, to yardmasters and even train masters, even a little doubt or distraction can spiral out of control quickly. Nobody can be perfect 100% of the time, which is why we've always placed such importance on communicating with each other and looking out for each other. Even if you had a regular, predictable schedule, it would be exhausting to work like that all the time. Well we don't have a regular, predictable schedule. It is exhausting. And it's going to be very difficult to keep up with it for a fortnight at a time.
* You can't get replacement batteries for the lantern at the depot now because we've outsourced that to a contact company. Each employee has to register with them and order their supplies from the contractor. Too bad everything is on backorder because of supply chain problems.
Railroad purposely puts themselves in a bind. Government purposely sabotages supply chain. Judge uses that as an excuse to issue injunction...
https://biztoc.com/p/8m55xmvr
We wind up with individual men trying to safely move 30,000,000 pound strings of steel and goods (including oil, ammonia, chlorine...) across the countryside at speeds of up to eighty mph single-handedly.
What would we do without government protecting BNSF stockholders from those awful unions?
Yeah, the problem here is that the union officials are political actors. If it were up to the union membership, they'd strike over this and defy the federal injunction. But their union bosses don't care about the workers as much as they care about their own careers.
With all of these Federal overreaches, I really think there's an opening for a dramatic shift in political allegiances. Many of these blue-collar unions (as opposed to government employee unions) are leaning more and more right. They are the first to feel the impacts of these so-called "progressive" policies. If they can throw off enough of their current union bosses, the new bosses will see the writing on the wall.
"And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." - Bastiat
"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." - Voltaire
Norfolk Southern will stop accepting intermodal shipments and automobiles this week. I believe they have already stopped accepting hazardous materials, which they definitely don't want sitting around their rail yards indefinitely.
The main drivers of this one man crew idiocy are BNSF and CSX. The latter is the road that has been handing customers to its main competition (NS) by selling off so much infrastructure that it can no longer handle the amount of traffic it used to haul.
Last edited by acptulsa; 09-12-2022 at 07:10 AM.
Here we go...
That same business model, if you can call it that, is what killed off the operation I worked for, for 25 years.The latter is the road that has been handing customers to its main competition (NS) by selling off so much infrastructure that it can no longer handle the amount of traffic it used to haul
They went, as a shipmate of mine once remarked, from a boat company that had an office, to an office company that begrudgingly had some boats.
When they moved the corporate offices from NOLA to Houston, they sent out a memo prohibiting us filthy sailors from actually entering the hallowed office ground.
You had to schedule an appointment on your off time, and wear a suit and tie.
“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” - Arnold Toynbee
I owe you a rep...a hundred reps actually.
I have been screaming this for years...there is no reason that working class people should not have a "natural" home on the right as opposed to the left.
If the idiot GOP actually wanted to win and govern, they would be reaching out to them every day.
Especially now, since the left has abandoned the working folks, and gone full retard with identity Marxism.
“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” - Arnold Toynbee
Buffett is a shill. Pay up, Warren.
"When Sombart says: "Capitalism is born from the money-loan", I should like to add to this: Capitalism actually exists only in the money-loan;" - Theodor Fritsch
There's no sound reasons why these wildly profitable corporations need to cut crew sizes of these mile-long, incredibly complex vehicles down to one. If the public knew that's what this is about, they'd overwhelmingly side with crews. They actually think these things still run with crews of half a dozen.
Rail moves over a third of grain exports and some three quarters of fertilizer shipments in this country. Either this huge fight to reduce crew size to an obviously inadequate compliment is pure, psychotic greed, or (again) the famine the railroad management are toying with creating is a feature, not a bug, of this goofy plan. But no doubt the further hell this will put family farms, and a great many other small businesses, through is also a motivation.
Death is taking no holiday this millennium. It seems everyone in the "elite class" is focused on little else these days but depopulation and dealing out misery.
Last edited by acptulsa; 09-13-2022 at 10:47 AM.
ABC is reporting there will be no strike.
In the absence of any details, ABC extensively quotes Bidenblather and talks about Amtrak (like that's the most important thing the railroads do). They say an agreement is reached.
Interestingly, ABC is telling baldfaced lies. Railroaders are reporting otherwise.
They're not only deliberately courting disaster, they're engaging in a coordinated effort to blindside us with it.Don't believe everything you see on the news. The IAM (International Association of Machinist) yesterday voted NO on the current contract offer. As a member of the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Railroad) I've not even received my ballot yet, and the union said are ballots will not be counted until 9-29-22. The IAM has already announced the approval of a strike on 9-29-22 if a new agreement is not reached. Also don't forget, the railroads can still lock us out at 12:01 AM 9-16-22, it's a two way street.
Now let me clear some things up as the railroads are not the saints they are claiming to be. First the railroads had already laid off half their work force pre pandemic, now they are claiming they took great risks keeping everyone employed during the pandemic. But the fact of the matter is, we were completely understaffed and forced to work overtime and forced to work all holidays beginning in September 2019. While everyone was spending long weekends with their families during Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years, we were all forced to work, because they had laid off half the work forced in 2019, long before the Pandemic Lock down.
During the pandemic we were told we were essential employees and were given paperwork from the AAR that would allow us access to the railroads in the event highways were shut down and entire towns were quarantined.
Now the railroads are acting like they are doing us a favor by not even giving us a cost of living raise, while they are increasing our health insurance payments by at a minimum $100 a month. If could be more because now instead of paying a flat rate, they want us to pay 15% of the total cost of the insurance. So my rates my increase every year, while the railroads continue to earn massive profits. Other companies have profit sharing where they use the profits to offset things like health insurance. Not the railroads, profits are only shared with Wall Street in the form of Dividend payments. They also threw out our request for sick days, yes you read that correctly we do not have sick days and if you call off too many days in a row because you are sick, they will fire you. We also ask for another week of vacation and two more holidays, both of which were thrown out. The sad part is, working for the railroad use to be a good job, but Precision Scheduled Railroading has taken that away and I've already seen members of my craft leave and find better paying jobs with better benefits outside the railroad. What's even sadder, no one has been hired to fill those open positions, so we struggle on now with even less employees. It's very sad and I'm here to tell you don't believe everything you hear on the news and the railroads are not the saints they make themselves out to be and the unions are not the evil money grabbers the railroads are trying to convince the public that we are. Is it so wrong to want a few sick days a year, so I don't have to go to work sick, for fear of being fired? Sure the union will fight for my job, but I've seen that process take up to two years. How do I feed my family during those two years?
I know everyone on this board in one way or another enjoys photographing or modeling railroads, I'm a modeler myself, but I just wanted to let everyone know the real story and not the one sided story you're going to hear on the news. And to answer the question of why am I still with the railroad, I'm only 5 years away from retirement, at 61 years old, I do not wish to start all over again at another employer, so I'm gong to try and stick it out here for the next 5 years. Yes I'm a late hire, so I do not qualify for 60/30.
Last edited by acptulsa; 09-15-2022 at 09:15 AM.
Is Biden bragging because his handlers are silly enough to think only trainmen are needed to move trains? Or is this a signal that they're planning on breaking strikes and forcing people to work?
The Engineers and Conductors now have a tentative contract that has to be voted on. Which means they now enter another 30 day cooling off period. If during the next 30 days, they reject the tentative offer, many things can happen. Congress can just impose the current tentative contract on them, the railroad can lock everyone out and / or the unions can strike.
Like I mentioned, the IAM already voted down their tentative contract and on 9-29, they can strike. Of course congress can order another 30 day cooling off period of they can just impose the PEB 250 recommendations without any further negotiations.
Also I just received my ballot today for the IBEW-Railroad tentative contract which is to be counted 9-28-22 and if it's voted down, we can strike on 9-29-22. Again congress can order another 30 day cooling off period or they can impose the PEB 250 (Presidential Emergency Board) recommendations on us as well.
So very short answer, a railroad strike will not happen tomorrow, but depending on how the votes go from the 12 different unions that represent the railroad employees, there could possibly be a strike at some point in the future, aka the problem may have just been kicked down the road a little further.
Sadly this current contract will end 12-31-24 and at that time we will begin the negotiation process all over again. Also just to clean up any confusion, railroad contracts never expire per the Railway Labor Act of 1926 until a new contract is approved. Each contract is for a 5 year period, but at the end of contract, if a new contract has not been approved, the current contract stays in effect. So yes, I'm still being paid under the contract that expired in 2019.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/deal-prev...223423787.htmlHandfuls of workers gathered outside railyards across the country in pickets organized by a newly formed workers group separate from the 12 unions that negotiated the deals last week with the major U.S. freight railroads. The protesters expressed dissatisfaction with the deals, just as the unions are trying to explain the potential benefits they negotiated to their roughly 115,000 members ahead of contract votes.
Fears about the dire economic consequences of a rail strike that could cripple all kinds of businesses that rely on railroads to deliver raw materials and finished goods prompted the Biden administration to jump into the middle of the contract talks last week and urge both sides to reach an agreement. The contract talks included Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, BNSF, CSX, Kansas City Southern and a number of other railroads, so the entire country would have been affected by a strike.
Nearly a dozen BNSF workers gathered near Minot, North Dakota, Wednesday with homemade signs declaring “We demand more!!” and “We will not back down.” Another group of a half dozen workers stood outside their worksite in Olathe, Kansas, with signs saying “Railroad greed driving inflation" and “Greedy railroads harming nations supply chain.”
Workers' concerns about time off and demanding attendance policies at the railroads took center stage in the negotiations. In the end, the unions that represent engineers and conductors secured a promise of three extra unpaid days off for workers to attend doctors' appointments without being penalized and improved scheduling of days off to go with the 24% raises and $5,000 in bonuses that a special board appointed by President Joe Biden recommended this summer for the five-year deals.
It remains to be seen whether those concessions are enough to get workers to vote for these deals. A branch of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union rejected a deal last week that didn't include those extra days off, so they are back at the table now working on a new pact. Two smaller unions did approve their deals, but the nine other unions will be counting their votes at various times over the next two months.
The two biggest unions that held out the longest — the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union that represents engineers, and the Transportation Division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers union that represents conductors — aren't expected to report the results of their votes until mid November. Members of those unions are still waiting to see all the details of the deals that Biden announced last Thursday because lawyers are still finalizing everything before the full agreements get released.
That puts any potential for a strike out beyond the midterm elections, which mitigates the potential political impact of the talks for Biden and the Democrats. If any of the unions do reject their contracts, Congress could still be forced to step in.
Recently retired engineer Marilee Taylor, who left the railroad in Chicago after more than 30 years earlier this year when BNSF imposed the strictest attendance policy in the industry, said she doesn't think the tentative agreements do enough to address the schedule and workload concerns after the major railroads eliminated nearly one-third of their workforces over the past six years. Unions say the railroads' strict policies make it hard to take any time off without a penalty.
“The issue remains we're working fatigued," said Taylor, who is active with the Railroad Workers United coalition that urged workers to go on strike. "The safety of ourselves, our coworkers and the people that we serve — whose communities we run through — are at risk .... These conditions are losing many, many workers who cannot maintain 90% of their every breathing moment in service or at the behest of the railroad.”
Norfolk Southern engineer Hugh Sawyer said it's hard to tell how many workers will ultimately vote for these deals because they might decide these agreements are the best they can get, although he said he's not hearing many people happy with them. Even if they remain frustrated, workers may not be willing to go on strike and risk having Congress intervene and impose a contract on them that could be worse than what the unions agreed to.
“We’re sick and tired of the way we’re treated out there,” said Sawyer, a 34-year veteran of the railroad who serves as treasurer of the Railroad Workers United group that includes workers from all the unions. “There's a lot of anger out there.”
The government is making the unions knuckle under, and the workers are about to dump the unions.
But it won't come to a head until after the midterms. Meanwhile, Congress is contemplating forcing people to work under these unsafe conditions like slaves.
SMH
Last edited by acptulsa; 09-22-2022 at 08:14 AM.
In spite of what Biden said, railroaders are spectacularly unimpressed by the latest offer. It looks like a strike is inevitable. What's more, if Washington breaks the strike, it looks like the railroads will suddenly find themselves with very, very few experienced hands on their payrolls.
They've simply had enough.
Even Yahoo can no longer put lipstick on the pig.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-rail-ag...214703954.html“This was 100% a way to avert a strike by an industry that is the very backbone of this nation’s economy prior to the midterms,” he said. “It would have been an absolute death knell for the Dems had we gone on strike.”
He plans to vote “no” on the agreement. Many of his coworkers both at his terminal and among communities online are planning to do the same.
Chris Bond, chairperson of Fort Worth’s SMART-TD chapter, did not respond to requests for comment.
First union to get their votes tallied up: No.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/10/busin...eat/index.htmlA union of railroad track maintenance workers has rejected a tentative agreement with the nation’s freight carriers, renewing the threat that there could be a strike that shuts down this vital link in the nation’s already struggling supply chain.
The vote, announced Monday by the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division, was 43% in favor of the proposed five-year contract, and 57% opposed.
About 12,000 of the 23,000 members of the BMWE participated in the vote. It is the third largest of the major freight railroad unions. The two largest freight unions, which represent the more than 55,000 engineers and conductors who make up the two-person train crews, are conducting the their own rank-and-file ratification vote by mail.
The BWME said it will now enter negotiations with the association that represents management at the nation’s major freight railroads in an effort to reach a new deal. Without a new deal there could be a strike, but not until at least Nov. 19, according to the union. Things will remain status quo with the union’s contract until then.
Just in time for the holiday shipping rush.Without a new deal there could be a strike, but not until at least Nov. 19, according to the union.
Good.
On a side note, was sad to see that CSX gobbled up Pan Am Railways early this summer.
That will probably mark the end of the Hoosac tunnel.
Last edited by Anti Federalist; 10-11-2022 at 09:06 AM.
“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” - Arnold Toynbee
But not in time for the election.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/railroads...154209409.htmlOMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The major freight railroads appear unwilling to give track maintenance workers much more than they received in the initial contract they rejected last week, increasing the chances of a strike.
The railroads took the unusual step of issuing a statement late Wednesday rejecting the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division union’s latest request to add seven days of paid sick time on top of the 24% raises and $5,000 in bonuses they received in the first five-year deal.
Union Pacific CEO Lance Fritz said Thursday that he thinks the main reason the BMWED rejected its initial contract last week was that the details of improved expense reimbursement in the deal were still being negotiated at UP while workers were voting. So it wasn't clear exactly what those workers would receive for their travel expenses when they go on the road to repair tracks.
Six of the 12 railroad unions that represent 115,000 workers nationwide have approved their tentative agreements with the railroads so far, but all of them have to ratify their contracts to avoid a strike. The unions have agreed to put any strike on hold until at least mid-November while the BMWED negotiates a new deal and the other unions vote on their proposed contracts. That means there's no immediate threat the trains most businesses rely on to deliver their raw materials and finished products will stop moving. A railroad strike could devastate the economy.
“Ultimately, I remain confident that we’re going to get our temporary agreements ratified and be able to avoid a strike. That’s still a possibility but I don’t think it’s a probability,” Fritz told investors after his railroad released its quarterly earnings report.
The group that negotiations on behalf of the major railroads, including UP, BNSF, Norfolk Southern, CSX and Kansas City Southern, said the new contracts should closely follow the recommendations of the special board of arbitrators that President Joe Biden appointed this summer. The railroads said that board rejected union demands for paid sick time.
“Now is not the time to introduce new demands that rekindle the prospect of a railroad strike,” the railroads said.
Concerns about quality of life and the ability for workers — particularly the engineers and conductors who drive the trains — to take time off without being penalized have weighed heavily on the negotiations. The maintenance workers in the BMWED union generally have more predictable schedules than the train crews, but they and the rest of the rail workers lack traditional sick leave.
BMWED spokesman Clark Ballew said providing paid sick leave “has become a norm in this society” and railroads should step up and provide that to its employees.
“It is not unreasonable and the railroads can very easily afford it, and they’d still be making record profits if they agreed to provide railroad workers paid sick leave,” Ballew said.
There's no reason for this. They want to deal this blow to the economy.
After the midterms, of course.
This thread will help you out.
Posting Permissions
Connect With Us