Holy shit they’re straight up going to delay the vote until after the midterms
Edit: btw, the machinists union, IAM, voted on and rejected the TA, they also voted in favor of striking. They are clear to strike on Sept 29. Media is silent.
My co-worker who used to work for a carrier who shall not be named, was telling me that all his old rail buddies are fucking furious and was talking about how sometimes when he and another engineer were tired or mad about a pay dispute, they'd "lay down" their train.
Basically, you're required to blow the emergency brake if you see someone on the tracks. And resetting the emergency brake can take hours, like literally 4-6 hours.
So what you do is get with your buddies, stand by the engine so the microphones don't pick you up and decide you wanna do this. Then you take your train out to the most remote part of the track you can in the dead of night with 3 hours left in your shift and shout "I see someone on the tracks!" And blow out the emergency brake. This shuts down the corridor until you finish you checks, and if your 12 hours is up, they have to send a relief crew.
Because you laid it down in the middle of nowhere, the relief crew needs to be brought out by a rail truck, which means another 3+ hours to get them there. Once they're there, you let them know what's happened (by the running engine of course) and after spending an hour doing shift change, you head home and they pull the same thing later.
One of the more effective wildcat tactics you can do in rail as far as I can tell.
Make a pretty if you can get home to share anything interesting from his end
I never thought I’d say this, but… this website needs High School Musical emojis
Remember, comrades: unions aren't enough. They have to be radical, member-driven, and with mass involvement from membership.
A union is better than no union, but unions can become beholden to bourgeois interests relatively easily. It's a constant fight to keep radical unions radical and to transform non-radicao unions into radical unions.
I'm going to take anything by the good folks at WSWS with a massive pinch of salt. They're fucking nutty in a classic trot way.
Don't join a union unless you can call a vote to replace the leadership with an uncomplicated process. Form a new union if you have to.
Democracy in the workplace has to start with us...
