United Steelworkers officially endorsed President Biden for the 2024 election, after hinting earlier this week they would be backing him over former President Trump. The 1.2 million-member un…
The guy who broke the strike of an absurdly profitable rail company?
I mean it’s a choice between open contempt for the workers, and open contempt, but occasionally putting on a union hat for a photo op before either doing nothing or siding with management.
If you actually look at the details of the story you’re taking about you’ll find that after Biden ordered them back to work he then ALSO got the train companies to give the workers everything the union had been asking for
Thanks for posting and explaining some of this. I also had the mistaken impression that he just had forced them all back to work. It never sat right with me. I wasn’t aware that a lot of things happened after that.
In September 2022, U.S. Senators Richard Burr and Roger Wicker introduced a bill that would have required labor unions to agree to the terms proposed by the Presidential Emergency Board, to prevent a strike.[18] It was blocked by Senator Bernie Sanders, who noted that freight rail workers receive a “grand total of zero sick days” while railroad companies made significant profits.[19] In the House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “We’d rather see negotiations prevail so there’s no need for any actions from Congress.”[16]
In late November, after some unions had rejected the agreement, Biden asked Congress to pass the agreement into law. On November 30, the House of Representatives passed the existing tentative agreement along with an amended version that would require railroad employers to ensure 7 days paid sick leave.[20] On December 1, the Senate passed the tentative agreement with only 1 day of sick leave.[21] President Joe Biden signed the legislation into law on December 2.[4] Writing for Jacobin, Barry Eidlin, associate professor of sociology at McGill University, said the message sent to the rail workers by the president and Congress was “shut up and get back to work.”[22] The Biden administration’s intervention in the dispute was condemned by over 500 labor historians in an open letter to Joe Biden and Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh.[23]
Sounds like Bernie went to bat for them, and then Biden forced a compromise the industry wanted but most unions disagreed with…
I mean, Biden got them a single sick day when they were only asking for 7 days.
That’s not a great win for unions, that’s a middle finger.
It’s literally the smallest amount of sick days they could have so they could stop saying “we do t get sick days”.
And a cynic would say the only reason they got the one is “we don’t have enough sick days” doesn’t Garner as much sympathy in a headline.
But I’m just going off what you linked, do you want to try and find one that does back up your version of events?
The unions wanted 15 sick days, Biden forced them to accept the company’s offer of 1 day unpaid sickleave. Later it was increased to 7, plus a wage increase of 14%+4.5% per year for 5 years. That doesn’t even keep up with inflation.
Biden could have simply ordered the railroad to accept the union’s demands, hell he could have nationalized the rail companies in question, but his job is to represent capital, not labor.
To put into perspective how much of a pittance this is, BNSF is so profitable, they could afford to give every worker a raise of 100,000 and still afford to give Warren Buffet a billion dollars every year. This is the equivalent of Trump giving the .1% billions in tax breaks and telling workers they should support him because they get an extra 12 bucks in their tax returns.
Dude you just moved the goalposts a million lightyears away from what you said in your original comment.
Secondly, YOU don’t get to decide what the rail union’s opinion on the matter is, only the rail union can speak for the rail union, and they’ve all publicly said how very happy they are with the outcome of Biden’s actions
He literally required them to accept the board’s offer. The company offering minor concessions afterword doesn’t change the fact that he sided against the workers.
Biden could have simply ordered the railroad to accept the union’s demands
Ah yes, the “president has a magic wand” theory of governance.
It is, in fact, not quite as simple as I’m trying to make it sound, and there are some things to complain about in what Biden did. Here’s a pretty good summary of the “Biden did wrong” thesis.
My take on it is that Biden launched legislation to grant them 7 days of sick leave by law. It passed the house on a party-line vote, and then failed in the senate by 8 votes. When the senate passed an amended version that would grant 1 day of sick leave, what would you want Biden to do? Assuming he doesn’t have the ability to just ignore the law and order the rail companies to give the benefits he thinks they should be giving, because we don’t have a command economy under the total authority of one person?
Here’s a partial summary of what Biden’s labor department had done by working the issue after the fuss had died down in the rest of government. It’s complicated by the fact that there are multiple companies and multiple unions all with separate agreements, but my overall take is that it looks like he’s been trying to balance securing justice for the workers, with what he can get the rest of government to cooperate with, with keeping the economy running and not grinding to a halt.
Honestly, the point of view that he should have let the economy grind to a halt if that’s what the people who actually do the work want to have happen, in order to secure some economic justice for themselves, I can understand that. It makes sense to me. Honestly, that is more or less my personal point of view on it. But I think calling him a shockingly anti-union US president because he won’t do that is overstating how pro-union people in US politics tend to be.
There were 458,900 workers involved in work stoppages in 2023, notably including the even-more-unprecedented-than-the-rail-strike motion picture strike and the autoworkers strike. You can believe, if you want to, that Biden is anti-union and he just overlooked his responsibility to shut down the 458,900 people who did work stoppages in 2023. Personally my feeling is that he shut down the rail strike because it would have a big impact on the rest of the economy, then his labor department kept working the issue and got the workers the sick days they were fighting for in the first place by having the strike.
Is your assertion here that United Steelworkers just fucked up and endorsed a rabidly anti-union candidate because they’re not as up to speed on labor issues as you are?
Is your assertion here that United Steelworkers just fucked up and endorsed a rabidly anti-union candidate because they’re not as up to speed on labor issues as you are?
I really appreciate the “you really think you’re smarter than the people whose job it is to do this?” Energy being exuded here. Spot on.
If you don’t earn over a million dollars a year then it’s obvious that Biden is the right choice
The guy who broke the strike of an absurdly profitable rail company?
I mean it’s a choice between open contempt for the workers, and open contempt, but occasionally putting on a union hat for a photo op before either doing nothing or siding with management.
If you actually look at the details of the story you’re taking about you’ll find that after Biden ordered them back to work he then ALSO got the train companies to give the workers everything the union had been asking for
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_labor_dispute
Thanks for posting and explaining some of this. I also had the mistaken impression that he just had forced them all back to work. It never sat right with me. I wasn’t aware that a lot of things happened after that.
Sounds like Bernie went to bat for them, and then Biden forced a compromise the industry wanted but most unions disagreed with…
I mean, Biden got them a single sick day when they were only asking for 7 days.
That’s not a great win for unions, that’s a middle finger.
It’s literally the smallest amount of sick days they could have so they could stop saying “we do t get sick days”.
And a cynic would say the only reason they got the one is “we don’t have enough sick days” doesn’t Garner as much sympathy in a headline.
But I’m just going off what you linked, do you want to try and find one that does back up your version of events?
The unions wanted 15 sick days, Biden forced them to accept the company’s offer of 1 day unpaid sickleave. Later it was increased to 7, plus a wage increase of 14%+4.5% per year for 5 years. That doesn’t even keep up with inflation.
Biden could have simply ordered the railroad to accept the union’s demands, hell he could have nationalized the rail companies in question, but his job is to represent capital, not labor.
To put into perspective how much of a pittance this is, BNSF is so profitable, they could afford to give every worker a raise of 100,000 and still afford to give Warren Buffet a billion dollars every year. This is the equivalent of Trump giving the .1% billions in tax breaks and telling workers they should support him because they get an extra 12 bucks in their tax returns.
Dude you just moved the goalposts a million lightyears away from what you said in your original comment.
Secondly, YOU don’t get to decide what the rail union’s opinion on the matter is, only the rail union can speak for the rail union, and they’ve all publicly said how very happy they are with the outcome of Biden’s actions
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/01/railroad-workers-union-win-sick-leave
I cannot conceive of how the leadership could both represent their workers and be happy Biden sided with the board, against the workers.
Because that’s not what happened.
He literally required them to accept the board’s offer. The company offering minor concessions afterword doesn’t change the fact that he sided against the workers.
No, he literally did not. And the concessions he got were basically everything the union was trying to get.
Ah yes, the “president has a magic wand” theory of governance.
It is, in fact, not quite as simple as I’m trying to make it sound, and there are some things to complain about in what Biden did. Here’s a pretty good summary of the “Biden did wrong” thesis.
My take on it is that Biden launched legislation to grant them 7 days of sick leave by law. It passed the house on a party-line vote, and then failed in the senate by 8 votes. When the senate passed an amended version that would grant 1 day of sick leave, what would you want Biden to do? Assuming he doesn’t have the ability to just ignore the law and order the rail companies to give the benefits he thinks they should be giving, because we don’t have a command economy under the total authority of one person?
Here’s a partial summary of what Biden’s labor department had done by working the issue after the fuss had died down in the rest of government. It’s complicated by the fact that there are multiple companies and multiple unions all with separate agreements, but my overall take is that it looks like he’s been trying to balance securing justice for the workers, with what he can get the rest of government to cooperate with, with keeping the economy running and not grinding to a halt.
Honestly, the point of view that he should have let the economy grind to a halt if that’s what the people who actually do the work want to have happen, in order to secure some economic justice for themselves, I can understand that. It makes sense to me. Honestly, that is more or less my personal point of view on it. But I think calling him a shockingly anti-union US president because he won’t do that is overstating how pro-union people in US politics tend to be.
There were 458,900 workers involved in work stoppages in 2023, notably including the even-more-unprecedented-than-the-rail-strike motion picture strike and the autoworkers strike. You can believe, if you want to, that Biden is anti-union and he just overlooked his responsibility to shut down the 458,900 people who did work stoppages in 2023. Personally my feeling is that he shut down the rail strike because it would have a big impact on the rest of the economy, then his labor department kept working the issue and got the workers the sick days they were fighting for in the first place by having the strike.
Is your assertion here that United Steelworkers just fucked up and endorsed a rabidly anti-union candidate because they’re not as up to speed on labor issues as you are?
I really appreciate the “you really think you’re smarter than the people whose job it is to do this?” Energy being exuded here. Spot on.
I had no idea he negotiated to get them the things they wanted afterwards, thank you for sharing that. I was completely unaware