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With less than two weeks until a possible railroad strike, Congress may need to step in to keep workers on the job. A vote to enact a labor deal should be easy if legislators want to keep the U.S. economy running.
The odds of a strike dropped Monday after President Biden urged Congress to impose a deal if unions keep holding out. “A rail shutdown would devastate our economy,” he said in a statement, predicting mass layoffs and supply shortages. He asked Congress to send him a bill before the Dec. 9 strike deadline. House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi
agreed after meeting with the President on Tuesday. “Tomorrow morning we will have a bill on the floor,” she told reporters.
Congress has a role to play after rail workers at four of 12 unions rejected the deal approved in September by their leaders. The workers for eight unions have voted to adopt the deal that was proposed by the Presidential Emergency Board this summer. Congress has often settled rail disputes after mediation failed.
In September legislators from both parties expressed support for a Senate bill that would have enacted the deal before a previous deadline. Yet some Members are opposed to intervention on grounds that it would hurt workers. That includes usual suspects like Sen.
Bernie Sanders,
who said Sunday that “Congress must stand with rail workers.” He’s joined by Florida Republican
Marco Rubio,
who lately has rebranded himself as a pro-union tribune. “I will not vote for any deal that does not have the support of the rail workers,” he said Tuesday.
This is a simplistic view of the dispute. It’s more accurate to say a strike would pit the special interests of four unions against workers across the entire economy. Mr. Biden notes that as many as 765,000 workers could lose their jobs in the first two weeks of a strike. Mr. Rubio is fond of lecturing about the “common good,” but a strike would benefit the few at the expense of the common good.
The unions have had ample opportunity for collective bargaining, and the agreement includes a 24% pay raise over five years. The workers who rejected the deal cited paid sick leave, but the deal includes a new day of unscheduled sick leave on top of existing railroad policies that grant an average three weeks of vacation and paid sick leave starting as soon as after four sick days.
Rail unions wouldn’t have so much sway over U.S. transportation if the Jones Act didn’t deter domestic shipping as competition. But a nationwide rail strike would do vast economic damage. Congress is the arbitrator of last resort.
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Appeared in the November 30, 2022, print edition as ‘Congress Has a Railroad Job.’
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