https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/11/28/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-averting-a-rail-shutdown/
But at this critical moment for our economy, in the holiday season, we cannot let our strongly held conviction for better outcomes for workers deny workers the benefits of the bargain they reached, and hurl this nation into a devastating rail freight shutdown.
Think of the TREATS!!!
I hope the unions see the leverage they can wield here.
It is one hell of a jumbled mess of a sentence.
we cannot let our strongly held conviction
[negating our ethics]
for better outcomes for workers
[workers deserve better]
deny workers the benefits
:mao-wtf:
of the bargain they reached
they didn't reach a bargain tho
:meow-tableflip:
Sorry, sweaty, if you take a day off because you have, I don’t know, a deadly respiratory virus, 765,000 people, including you, will starve to death. That’s just how the world works.
they didn’t reach a bargain tho
labor negotiators did, and that's the weaseling they're doing.
The administration has been pushing off this strike since summer, now they're going to hold the holidays hostage.
:grillman: Sorry Timmy, you don't get a Christmas puppy this year because the big bad unions wanted two unpaid sick days
Shocking, I can’t have imagined Joe Biden would do this!?! The news told me he was a union man and loved workers, but his actions seem like that of a puppet of capital!!! Oh noooooo
Spamming Dark Brandon at rail workers who want more than 1 day off
I hoped the union guys that spruiked for him are eating shit right now.
Let me be clear: a rail shutdown would devastate our economy. Without freight rail, many U.S. industries would shut down. My economic advisors report that as many as 765,000 Americans – many union workers themselves – could be put out of work in the first two weeks alone. Communities could lose access to chemicals necessary to ensure clean drinking water. Farms and ranches across the country could be unable to feed their livestock.
:sicko-hexbear:
This should say to any union leader "we have them by the balls" but I have no idea whether this union is any good. If things got this bad in the first place my guess is they're shit and need some real radicals in charge.
Ah, but it's not one union, it's more than a dozen, and if any one of them goes on strike, the rest will do the same. So only one of these unions needs to be worth its salt.
I hope so, I hope they've looked at the support rail workers have had in the UK and understand that they WILL have support.
With the way things are right now I'm convinced it would be extremely widespread support as well. People will not be like "ohhh but they're hurting meee" their response will be "yeah get em boys you deserve this" as soon as they hear the back breaking working hours 6 days a week.
They can try their bullshit "but they're hurting 765,000 people" shit and nobody will buy into that in any way other than "well you better give them their demands then". I mean, the finance crowd will be like that but there is a real bubbling labour movement and widespread support is out there. The conditions are right.
But at this critical moment for our economy, in the holiday season
Fuck off
Apart from it being a busy season being, you know, the point - they'll always claim this anyway.
The entire British media is in absolute lockstep, constantly using the phrase "Christmas train strikes" and constantly asking Mick Lynch (since he is the only pro-union person allowed on British media as they fight to be the one to somehow trip him up while scolding him) why they're striking "through the Christmas period".
And it's a flat out lie. There aren't any strikes between the 17th of December and January 3rd. But everyone, including the Guardian, BBC etc just keep repeating it.
Strikers could detonate charges on all the major rail bridges and want the country fall apart and I'd still support them before I ever agreed with a single on of these media and political class ghouls.
Rant over. :soviet-huff:
That was essentially Trudeau's message when he legislated postal workers back to work a few years ago. And of course everyone lapped it up because the treats must flow
Tin soldiers and Biden coming
We’re finally on our own
This winter I hear the drumming
Ar this critical moment for our economy, in the holiday season, we cannot let our strongly held conviction for better outcomes for workers deny workers the benefits of the bargain they reached
There is a podcast about when strike brakers come in to run trains. Also engineering disasters. :wtyp-gang:
Was there ever any way a rail strike would have been legal? Did anyone ever think they'd be allowed to strike after completing the long, convoluted and deeply anti-labour bureaucratic process?
They'll let you strike at a coffee shop or a whizbang factory but rail transport is a backbone of the economy and they will never let you touch that without a fight.
I hope the strike happens no matter what, that the rail workers are radicalised further by seeing "their" elected representatives fuck them over and that liberal legalism is exposed as the tool of bourgeois control it is.
BNSF, the Warren Buffet owned company whose refusal to budge on sick days is a key cause of railroad worker unrest, earned 6 billion dollars in profit throughout 2021. That same year they had 35,000 employees . They could have given each of them a $150,000 bonus and still had 725 million dollars left over.
Nice that Brandon still has their back!
Why do they demand so little? :meow-tableflip: ask 100k a year and sick week off, then negotiate down
Probably because they know that if they ask for "too much" the lying media will have a field day with "greedy rail workers"
Does the media make train go choo-choo? Dock workers got shit on constantly, they still have most labor power and salaries for decades
"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning,"
- Warren Buffett
Yeah the country has actually made a weirdly sharp turn towards labor rights in the last couple of years, and politicians seem to have no idea.
People in there heavily updooting MLKs white moderate quote. I'm sure it'll leave their head as soon as they leave the thread, but still
Hahaha it's already fucking locked, neolib moderators of r/politics pissing themselves in fear
There's some asshole in there repeatedly stating that since the unions "agreed" to this deal, the Dems aren't being anti-labor by forcing them into it. The pretzels they'll twist themselves into to keep supporting Dems.
we have two right wing parties
in a lot of waysdear god they're actually getting close to understanding things
fucking called it, not that it was difficult. So hey what was all that about the new FDR? Real glad the labor-backed candidate backed out for this guy
oh man, the consequences of a rail strike sound pretty dire, mr. president, maybe to avert it you could maybe urge the bosses to concede to union demands? is that even possible for an amerikkkan politician to do?
maybe to avert it you could maybe urge the bosses to concede to union demands?
Listen, Jack. You just don't understand how business works. These bosses, they're working real hard. They've got friends who are working hard. They got me elected. Now I gotta pay them back.
We can't just hold them at gunpoint and relieve them of their accumulated labor surplus. Would undermine the whole system. Not how my daddy taught me to do things. Gotta feed the dog or it'll bit you, you know what I mean? And these dogs are barking.
the consequences of a rail strike sound pretty dire
Yeah, sounds like these workers do absolutely essential labor and should be compensated accordingly.
I can only hope that this elevates contradictions, and incites new forms of labor militancy. But in all likelihood, regular workers will be crushed unforgivingly without recourse, and nothing good will happen.
I think labor militancy will come in the near future. This decade looks a lot like the early years of the Gilded Age. People were disenchanted and propagandized back then as well. The first couple of attempts were brutally crushed but it only made them more militant.
