Did Joe Biden Crush Labor By Intervening Against a Railroad Strike in 2022?

[honorentheos]

Ceebs posted a link to a video where Joe Rogan is interviewing a dude whose first claim out of the gate is Joe Biden is anti-labor as evidenced by his blocking a railroad union strike in 2022.

Supposing a person cared to actually engage the information shared, I think it's worth visiting that claim.

To start, here's a brief from the White House that does a decent job of laying out the background as well as why the Biden admin signed the bill blocking the strike:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo ... -shutdown/

NOVEMBER 28, 2022
Statement from President Joe Biden on Averting a Rail Shutdown

STATEMENTS AND RELEASES
I am calling on Congress to pass legislation immediately to adopt the Tentative Agreement between railroad workers and operators – without any modifications or delay – to avert a potentially crippling national rail shutdown.

This agreement was approved by labor and management negotiators in September. On the day that it was announced, labor leaders, business leaders, and elected officials all hailed it as a fair resolution of the dispute between the hard-working men and women of the rail freight unions and the companies in that industry.

The deal provides a historic 24% pay raise for rail workers. It provides improved health care benefits. And it provides the ability of operating craft workers to take unscheduled leave for medical needs.

Since that time, the majority of the unions in the industry have voted to approve the deal.

During the ratification votes, the Secretaries of Labor, Agriculture, and Transportation have been in regular touch with labor leaders and management. They believe that there is no path to resolve the dispute at the bargaining table and have recommended that we seek Congressional action.

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.

As a proud pro-labor President, I am reluctant to override the ratification procedures and the views of those who voted against the agreement. But in this case – where the economic impact of a shutdown would hurt millions of other working people and families – I believe Congress must use its powers to adopt this deal.

Some in Congress want to modify the deal to either improve it for labor or for management. However well-intentioned, any changes would risk delay and a debilitating shutdown. The agreement was reached in good faith by both sides.

I share workers’ concern about the inability to take leave to recover from illness or care for a sick family member. No one should have to choose between their job and their health – or the health of their children. I have pressed legislation and proposals to advance the cause of paid leave in my two years in office, and will continue to do so. Every other developed country in the world has such protections for its workers.

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.

Congress has the power to adopt the agreement and prevent a shutdown. It should set aside politics and partisan division and deliver for the American people. Congress should get this bill to my desk well in advance of December 9th so we can avoid disruption.

The statement lays out the complexities of the issues, the fact Labor had negotiated raises, and that the strike would have been devastating to the economy including railroad workers themselves.

As noted in this Reuters article, 8 out of 12 unions had signed to the deal but four held out over the lack of sick pay.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden- ... 022-12-02/

Ok, that kinda sucks, right? Biden sold them out to benefit Wall Street and Big Railroad and white collar elites, right?

Oh.

https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Artic ... BEWandPaid

After months of negotiations, the IBEW’s Railroad members at four of the largest U.S. freight carriers finally have what they’ve long sought but that many working people take for granted: paid sick days.

This is a big deal, said Railroad Department Director Al Russo, because the paid-sick-days issue, which nearly caused a nationwide shutdown of freight rail just before Christmas, had consistently been rejected by the carriers. It was not part of last December’s congressionally implemented update of the national collective bargaining agreement between the freight lines and the IBEW and 11 other railroad-related unions.

“We’re thankful that the Biden administration played the long game on sick days and stuck with us for months after Congress imposed our updated national agreement,” Russo said. “Without making a big show of it, Joe Biden and members of his administration in the Transportation and Labor departments have been working continuously to get guaranteed paid sick days for all railroad workers.

“We know that many of our members weren’t happy with our original agreement,” Russo said, “but through it all, we had faith that our friends in the White House and Congress would keep up the pressure on our railroad employers to get us the sick day benefits we deserve. Until we negotiated these new individual agreements with these carriers, an IBEW member who called out sick was not compensated.”

While President Joe Biden was calling on Congress in November to pass legislation to implement the agreement, he stressed that he would continue to encourage the railroads to guarantee paid sick time for their employees.

“I share workers’ concern about the inability to take leave to recover from illness or care for a sick family member,” Biden said. “I have pressed legislation and proposals to advance the cause of paid leave in my two years in office and will continue to do so.”

That pressure, plus the IBEW’s ongoing efforts, is paying off at last. The IBEW and BNSF Railway reached an agreement April 20 to grant members four short-notice, paid sick days, with the ability to also convert up to three personal days to sick days. The union reached similar understandings with CSX and Union Pacific on March 22, and with Norfolk Southern on March 10. Unused sick time at the end of a year can be paid out or rolled into a worker’s 401(k) retirement account.

Under the Railway Labor Act, national railroad labor agreements don’t expire. Instead, the parties enter a “status quo” position: Workers remain on the job with no changes to their pay and benefits until a replacement contract is approved. The current national pact was first reached last summer by negotiators from the railroad unions, the railroads, the Labor Department and the White House.

So. That's issue one from video one. Do we chase the Gish Gallop? Or can we step back from this grievance narrative and talk facts for why folks actually believe as they do? Ceebs, care to comment?

[honorentheos]

Also, if this is a big issue then a person who actually cares about it would vote for Biden in 2024 as 7 days guaranteed sick leave for all workers is part of his platform.

Just sayin'.

[honorentheos]

I don't want this to slip to the bottom of the page for the folks coming back on Monday. Seriously, anyone who argues the Biden administration has mostly been hurting America is not getting their news from reliable sources. This is just one example of dozens upon dozens where the facts aren't being accurately represented in the spin of a conservative news machine intent on giving our country over to authoritarianism.

[Kishkumen]

I recall that labor event the Trump people staged where they had auto workers show their support for Trump, only it turned out that they were non-union. I think this was done in response to Biden joining striking union workers on the picket line. The details of the Trump event were not flattering and did not apparently show much genuine support for Trump among autoworkers.

[honorentheos]

Yep, the sham narrative about how good Trump was for the economy and how Biden destroyed the country is one of those tells that shows how economically illiterate a person is as well as where they get their information.

Of course it doesn't stop at labor. A month or two back he also put on a sham event at a "black church" in Chicago that he falsely presented as being filled with congregants who support him. Behind the scenes photos and film showed instead it was packed with typical white MAGA supporters. Or there is the black barber who was approached to host an event in support of small business without being told it was a Trump event and is now suing the campaign.

Trump hasn't changed.

[Kishkumen]

Yep, the sham narrative about how good Trump was for the economy and how Biden destroyed the country is one of those tells that shows how economically illiterate a person is as well as where they get their information.

Of course it doesn't stop at labor. A month or two back he also put on a sham event at a "black church" in Chicago that he falsely presented as being filled with congregants who support him. Behind the scenes photos and film showed instead it was packed with typical white MAGA supporters. Or there is the black barber who was approached to host an event in support of small business without being told it was a Trump event and is now suing the campaign.

Trump hasn't changed.

The sad thing, in my mind, is that all of this has been more or less obvious from the beginning.

[Doctor Steuss]

For whatever it may anecdotally be worth, my dad was a locomotive engineer for UPRR (before that, he was a conductor, and before that, a brakeman). Both Republican and Democrat Presidents ended up intervening in strikes to essentially force them back to work. The railroad is one of those industries where not only the economy, but national security can be severely compromised if strikes last too long.

As an aside (just as another example of how the railroad is kind of a strange beast, when it comes to American private industries and the government), a lot of RR employees can't draw on SS.