Congress must do more than keep rail workers from striking | Editorial
A national rail strike would have a devastating impact, but Congress must do more to ensure railway workers' demands are met before telling them to go back on the job.
There is no doubt that a national rail strike would have a devastating impact. It would freeze freight rail, which transports everything from fuel to Christmas presents across the country. It would suspend passenger traffic, leaving holiday travel in limbo. And the damage to our economy, which is already teetering on the edge of a recession, would be in the billions of dollars and would climb every day.
Given this grim reality, President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer collectively declared that “we must avoid a strike.” That means congressional action to impose a compromise agreement brokered by the Biden administration — regardless that four of the dozen unions involved have voted against taking the deal. The House voted Wednesday to avert the strike. The Senate is expected to follow suit this week.
The Democratic leaders presented the move as one of equity and safeguarding the national interest, citing lost jobs, a supply-chain crisis, and even unsafe drinking water if chlorine shipments stop.
Certainly, all of these are good reasons to avoid a strike, but Congress must do more to ensure railway workers’ demands are met before telling them to go back on the job.
» READ MORE: House votes to avert rail strike, impose deal on unions
After all, these demands are not unreasonable. Railway workers have stated, repeatedly, that the threat to strike is “not about the money.” Many railway workers are on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, a status which makes it impossible to plan for anything — think of a doctor’s appointment or a child’s school event — let alone deal with something unexpected.
While many Americans have seen growing flexibility in the post-pandemic workplace, railway workers have dealt with increasingly rigid conditions, with many of them having only one day off a month. For many rail workers supporting the strike, there’s no pay increase that can compensate for time away from their families.
The rail companies maintain that this is just how railroading works. The business has long bitten a large chunk out of the personal lives of its essential workers. Recently, however, the situation has worsened as railroads laid off workers amid increasing profits. Many in the industry have warned that strike or no strike, railroading won’t have much future as a career if a better work and life balance remains out of reach.
It is also worth questioning what, exactly, the railroad companies have brought to the table since the government-owned lines were sold to them in 1987. While the government initially took over rail lines in the wake of bankruptcies, Conrail was able to return them to profitability. Current rail companies, such as CSX, purchased already profitable assets.
Despite a legal requirement to allow for passenger traffic, cost-cutting practices — such as miles-long “monster trains” — have made running frequent, quality passenger service difficult. The companies have also failed to invest in modern best practices, including electrification, that would allow Americans to enjoy the same high-speed service between cities that is standard across the rest of the developed world.
That’s without getting into the companies’ disregard for public safety, as evidenced by the near decade-long wait for a long-term solution to Philadelphia’s crumbling 25th Street Viaduct.
Biden is hardly the first U.S. president to threaten the use of government to end a strike. One hundred years ago, President Warren G. Harding used “the power of government to maintain transportation” to justify his own intervention in a rail strike. Yet Biden is a very different man than Harding, who opposed organized labor. Seeing him in the role of a strikebreaker is a surprise, especially for someone billed as “the most pro-union president of your lifetime.”
Biden must live up to his reputation as a supporter of rail transit and union labor by pushing for a solution that supports workers and ensures the long-term health of the railroad industry. All options should be on the table to ensure that the country avoids a damaging strike without sacrificing the workers who make the railroads run in the first place.