Posted on 11/29/2022 10:58:40 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27
Amid pressure on Congress to pass a bill that would avert a rail shutdown, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Tuesday that he won’t back any deal that lacks support from rail workers.
“Just because Congress has the authority to impose a heavy-handed solution does not mean we should. It is wrong for the Biden Administration, which has failed to fight for workers, to ask Congress to impose a deal the workers themselves have rejected. I will not vote for any deal that does not have the support of the rail workers,” Rubio said in a statement.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
What are the workers actually asking for ?
More sick days.
That really doesn’t seem like a huge problem to work out.
I think one issue is they have no paid sick days.
Well, a paid sick day counts roughly as a 0.5% pay increase, and they’re asking for 15 days. So that’s basically asking for a 7.5% pay increase right off the top, plus all the other pay increases. So it’s a pretty big deal.
They do?
Freight railroads schedule their trains more precisely than ever. If a locomotive engineer calls out sick, the train doesn’t leave on time and the whole system is in disarray.
If these workers have lots of sick time available, the railroads will have to keep standby staff on duty at all times … and for every train.
One of the things that has remained unspoken is the rail worker are scared of automation and the elimination of rail workers to AI or automated trains eliminating many jobs.
If this is a real issue, then sure the rail workers are going to ask for everything knowing their jobs are on the line no matter what the settlement might be.
LOL
As I keep saying, “Just because Congress passes a bill does not mean railroad workers will obey Congress and go to work.”
You can’t replace 115,000 skilled railroad workers from the local “labor pool.”
So they’re basically asking for an increase that doesn’t even keep up with inflation at a time when the railroads have recorded record profits for the last several years. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me to expect the pay in a critical industry to keep up with inflation. Agreeing to less than that is really a pay cut.
We'll never know, they are represented by corrupt unions.
Except they're also getting a 24% wage increase in the deal.
‘Congress has the authority to impose a heavy-handed solution ‘
They do?
They THINK they do. They should be ignored, regardless of their “edicts”. They only get away with it because people allow them to issue edicts.
Trains are actually easy to automate.
Give the guys what they want for now and then
automate them out of work.
People are a pain in the ass as workers.
Many years as a project Engineer taught me this.
Oh, Marrrrr-coooooooo, trains also go in and out of Florida.
How about you let the rail companies negotiate with the rail workers and CONGRESS stay out of it
The rail workers also undoubtedly know that their own minds are still far superior to this “AI” or robotics, so from that perspective, I cannot blame them.
Have complex freight railroads run entirely by dumb computers and “AI”. What could POSSIBLY go WRONG???
Can a computer manually throw a railroad switch that fails to respond to a remote command?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.