Presumably they wouldn’t all be able to retire or quit at the same time.
Look, it’s a damn sight better than ending it by sending in federal troops to kill 100 people. Which has been done. In America. In, I believe, 1877.
If the best defense you can muster for the Democrats here is, “Hey, at least they’re not literally murdering the strikers!” you should really just stop.
Look. Most people in America don’t even have collective bargaining of any kind. I work a minimum-wage job in which most of the time I don’t even get more than 5 minutes to sit down in an 8-hour shift. I get no PTO. I’ve got a lot on my plate. And if I don’t like it, my only option is to get another job, which I’m currently in the process of doing. It could be worse.
And what’s your defense for the Republicans? Did any Republicans vote for the sick leave for the railway workers? Any of them? Bueller? Bueller?
What the fuck makes you think I’m defending Republicans?
You seem to be blaming the Democrats for this when you should be blaming the Republicans. It’s because of liberal Democrats that the extra leave time was even on the table. The Republicans were the ones who decided to put the screws to the railway workers.
Biden did everything he could. It wasn’t what they wanted, it wasn’t the best solution, but it was the only thing possible to avert the railway strike which would have crippled America. You want to pay $40 for a pound of boneless, skinless chicken breasts? I don’t.
I can blame both pretty easily.
No, he didn’t. He could have stood up for the rail workers, but he folded. Because the Democratic party doesn’t actually give a shit about workers, they only care about employers.
2 things here:
First, presumably you should want the Democrats to be better than the Republicans.
Second Biden didn’t do everything he could. His two leverage points were the threat of a veto or executive action, neither of which he used.
Also btw union workerss having more bargaining power than non-union workerss is exactly why any worker should be against the government undermining union power. It undermines your ability to collectively bargain as well.
Fine, then let’s write in to Biden and demand that he use executive action. I’m all for that. To be completely honest, that thought had not occurred to me.
Your implication that most of us have almost no influence over what Biden does is correct. So I guess we should just stop having opinions about what he does?
Any executive action to nationalize the railroads would get struck down by the pro-business supreme court in no time flat with no positive effect except to provide evidence to the ill-informed voter that there might be something to Republican claims that Democrats want to turn America into Soviet Russia.
The threat of a veto isn’t going to change any votes. All the Dems except Manchin were voting for the paid leave anyway, and a Biden veto would put all blame for failure to act squarely on his shoulders. If anything this would make Republicans even more willing to let it fail.
So the only thing Biden could do would be to actually go through with a veto, throw the dice and let the workers strike (which they may or may not win). This would send the country into spiraling recession (which may actually weaken union power long term if the populace blame the unions), resulting a clear path to a 2024 Trump 2.0 presidency.
Is the chance of 4 extra paid sick days for these workers worth a return to fascism?
I stand with @Banquet_Bear here. These people should strike, and fuck the economy/Christmas/etc. If they are so goddamned essential to the economy that Warren Buffett decides they can’t have sick leave, then fuck Warren Buffett as well: He’s a job creator, or so I’m told, he can design a system that is more attractive to employees so that ALL can have sick days.
Let’s not. Rather, let’s have both houses of Congress and the President agree to pass new laws, like the Constitution says.
Not executive orders and administrative agency decrees.
…I’m saying what I said. If I had intended to say something about Warren or Ocasio-Cortez then I would have said so.
Imagine thinking this.
Imagine knowing that workers in America have almost zero leverage to be able to negotiate for better pay and conditions but also that the one bit of leverage they do have? They should not be allowed to do.
If Biden wanted to avoid a strike then he should have bought pressure on the railroad companies not the workers. He chose not to do that. This is on him.
Perhaps that’s what its going to take. The gap between rich and poor keeps getting bigger. People are getting thrown in prisons at an industrial rate: more people are locked up per capita in America than anywhere else in the world. You have over 17,000 police agencies working with billion dollar budgets that almost all are a law unto themselves. You spend more on the military. You spend more per capita on healthcare than anywhere else in the world yet if you don’t have health insurance you essentially can’t access that care.
America is all of this and worse.
But the biggest threat to the country: what will bring it to its knees, what must be prevented at all costs, is a statistical handful of workers going on strike for something as basic as sick days.
You do realize that this is all-kinds-of-fucked-up right?
Perhaps “destroying the economy” is the way to go. Maybe that’s the least bad option on the table here. Because if a statistically small number of people withdrawing their labour for a short period of time is enough to destroy the economy and the solution isn’t “they really aren’t asking for much, just give them what they are asking for,” then perhaps it all isn’t worth saving.
It was a clear and obvious set up and it looks like you fell for it. Nobody is pretending that the Republicans are the “good guys” here. But this was an exercise in cynical political posturing, not a good faith effort to bring sick-leave to the table.
The Democrats deserve the blame.
Lets be real here: it was never really on the table. It only got added because they realized that they fucked up and looked real bad.
And it looks like the Democrats cynical exercise in ass-covering did it’s job.
Well…no he didn’t. He literally didn’t. He could have done nothing and that would have been more helpful than the things that he actually did.
I find this hard to argue with. (Not that I even want to.) So when (not if) Biden notices a lack of support from organized labor, having a mirror handy will help him get to the source of the problem.
Biden made a huge mistake here, clearly siding with corporations over labor, even blaming labor for a potential crash of the economy, as if we control capital. I personally think it part of the problem of having a geriatric president. No real vision for the future. The railroads said that labor doesn’t contribute to profit. They said that and he sided with them.
Railroad workers actually tend to be Republicans, for various reasons. We used to be able to win some over to the Democrat side by pointing out facts of how the Democrats are better for union workers. Not huge numbers, but enough to possibly swing elections.
He ended that; we can’t say that now. I see it leading to people that would be potential Dem voters just not voting, enough to swing elections.
I hope it was worth it.
The executive action I think would be the most reasonable for Biden to take would be to make a rule that future federal contracts to rail companies are contingent on workers getting the 7 annual sick days…
It seems to me that the House could have sent over a single bill, bundling sick days with all the rest, and forcing Republicans in the Senate to vote up or down on the whole shebang. That would have brought the risk of a strike up to a much greater level–but a strike would put enormous pressure on the companies, and I think the companies would have folded. Any harm to the country from a strike could be laid squarely at the feet of Republicans who voted against sick leave for workers.
I am deeply, deeply disappointed in the “labor president” for advocating on behalf of a solution that he knew in advance would result in the sick days being voted down in the Senate.
I hadn’t heard of that possibility. That might have worked. Heck, he could still do it now.
I guess the question would be how much of the Rail roads business is from government contracts, and its low enough that the Rail roads decided they could do without it, idoes the government have any alternative methods of transport that offer the required sick leave.
Oh I’m pretty sure it’s a low proportion of their business. I also think that if it was based on other similar rules essentially what would happen is the sick time rules would only apply to those contracts and not to private contracts.