How the Rail Carriers, Wall Street, and the US Government Crushed Class I Freight Rail Workers

Shuvu Bhattarai reports on the status of the U.S. railworkers struggle in the aftermath of Congress’ forced tentative agreement.

*Members of Railroad Workers United (Courtesy of RWU Facebook Page)*

Introduction

Four railroad unions, representing 55 percent of all Class I Freight Rail workers, a total of around 60,000 people, were set to strike on December 9th. Had these workers gone on strike or had the rail companies instituted a lockout, the economy of the world’s largest military superpower would have soon become paralyzed. Instead, the US President and Congress stepped in to quickly intervene, force through an agreement, and maintain the consumption and profit flows of the current economic system.

How did we get to this point? What are the lessons to be learned for working people?

Current position of the US Railroad Industry and the US Freight Railworkers

The United States’ railroad system is operated by companies that are divided into three classes as determined by the US Surface Transportation board. As of the most recent calculation, the annual revenue threshold for a Class I carrier was $943,898,958, and for a Class II it was $42,370,575, with everything below considered Class III.¹

There are eight Class I rail carriers, one passenger (Amtrak), and seven freight carriers. Five of the freight carriers are US-based firms and two are Canadian. According to the American Association of Railroads (AAR), the Class I freight railroads account for the majority of rail infrastructure in the country, “serving nearly every agricultural, industrial, wholesale, retail and resource-based sector in the economy.”² There are two major types of cargo that are transported by freight rail, bulk, and intermodal. Bulk cargo is generally raw material like grain, sand, iron, coal, etc. Intermodal refers to the use of standardized containers that can be transferred from ship to rail to truck with no additional reloading or unloading of the freight itself. The railways carry about 40 percent of all freight, being the second biggest freight transportation method behind trucking. It carries two thirds of all coal, and a great portion of the bulk shipments of grains, chemicals, and cars.

A nationwide rail shutdown is estimated to result in a daily loss of more than 2 billion dollars, drastically reducing the shipments of essential raw materials, leading to a knock-off effect which would effectively halt day-to-day business operations of US employers.

Freight Rail Operation

*Railyard by the Port of New Orleans (Wikimedia Commons)*

Freight rail is a critical part of the global supply chain and the global division of labor. For example, a shipment of iPhones, manufactured in Shenzhen, China with raw materials extracted from various parts of the world, will be loaded up into a container, brought by truck to the port of Shenzhen, loaded on a ship to Long Beach, California, moved on a train to Chicago, before being loaded again on a truck to its final destination at a local Walmart.

The operation of the freight rail system is a result of the coordinated and combined labor of train dispatchers, locomotive engineers and trainmen, rail and train maintenance workers, signalmen, drivers and conductors, and other workers. Workers assemble at railyards where operations are managed. The freight is loaded up and then moved by drivers who generally operate in two-person crews.

The well researched YouTube video “How Freight Trains Connect the World” by Wendover Productions does an excellent job explaining the basic operation structure of North American freight rail. They explain: “Every driver and conductor works a defined territory along the overall train route, so for longer runs like BNSF’s route from Seattle to Chicago, it takes 10 different crews to make the trip. Crews will live at one end of the territory, work the train to the other end, stay in a hotel overnight, and then swap with an inbound crew to take command of a train headed back to where they live.”

The railyards and trains are owned privately by the different Class I freight carriers, and since no one railroad covers the entire network, different companies work together to get freight to its final destination, but with major inefficiencies. Freight has to be moved from a railyard owned by one company to a railyard owned by another, leading to the increased use of trucks which emit greater carbon footprint than rail and cause more damage to roadways. There are far greater inefficiencies and destruction caused by the private ownership of rail but that is beyond the scope of this article.

The High Profitability of Rail Freight

The rail freight industry is the most profitable industry in the United States with a 50 percent profit margin in 2019.³ Furthermore, the industry is owned by finance capital, with BNSF owned by Berkshire Hathaway, and with financial institutions like Blackrock, Vanguard, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, JP Morgan, and Chase, among others owning significant stakes in rail carriers.

*Map of rail network of the 5 largest railcarriers (Creative Commons)*

The freight carriers function as oligopolies, each controlling their own “turf.” BNSF and Union Pacific are the two largest rail carriers, a duopoly controlling all transcontinental freight rail lines in the Western United States. CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway is another duopoly which controls most of the tracks east of the Mississippi River. Canadian National Railway and Kansas City Southern Railway control north-south lines near the Mississippi River, and Canadian Pacific Railway has a small but significant presence in the Northeast and Upper Midwest US.

The rail carriers, by exploiting their oligopoly position, have continuously increased their overall profit through three primary methods:

Increasing cost for consumers
Increasing the exploitation of rail workers
Lobbying and exerting pressure on the US Government

From 2000 to 2021, the rail carriers shipping rates, adjusted for inflation, have risen more than 30 percent despite costs borne by carriers increasing by only 3 percent.⁴ The profit-driven increase in rail shipping costs leads to a domino-effect which causes the costs of all goods to increase; in effect it is Wall Street that is a primary driver of inflation.

While increasing the costs of its goods, the rail carriers have decreased the costs of their operation while demand for rail increases.⁵ While finance capital owns the railroads, the workers are the ones operating it, which means that the stress of the decreased costs of operation and increases in demand are shouldered entirely by the railroad workers.

According to the Presidential Emergency Board Report #250, over the past six years the railroad companies have reduced the workforce by about 30 percent, as part of the railroad industry’s revolutionary shift to Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) which was adopted by carriers around 2017. PSR reduced the number of operating trains by 25 to 30 percent, made trains longer from 7,000 feet in average to 9,500 feet, drastically cut the workforce, and also instituted attendance policies such as “Hi-Viz” which had the effect of coercing workers to show up to the job despite exhaustion.

The strenuous and dangerous conditions enforced by the rail carriers has generated opposition from rail workers, with a recent instance on January, when the two BNSF unions, BLET and SMART-TD, representing 17,000 workers threatened to strike over the rail carrier’s plan to impose the Hi-Viz policy on February 1st. The rail unions pointed out that this plan violated terms of the Railway Labor Act, which required the parties to maintain a status quo till a new agreement was reached. BNSF quickly appealed to the federal courts, gained a restraining order blocking the unions from striking, and forced the rail workers to work under the Hi-Viz policy.

In addition the rail carriers invest millions of dollars in lobbying funds to ensure that Congress looks out for their interest. In 2022, the American Association of Railroads, Union Pacific, Berkshire Hathaway, CSX corp, Norfolk Southern, Canadian Pacific, and Canadian National Railway spent roughly $13 million dollars in lobbying efforts.⁶ This was a below average year of lobbying and if compounded over decades, the rail carriers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars ensuring that their will is law. One recent lobbying effort is the millions spent by Canada National so that it can acquire Kansas City Southern, creating further monopolization in the industry. Accountable.US has conducted comprehensive research on railroad profiteering which can be found here.

Current Organizational Strength of the Railroad Workers

While the rail carriers exploit their oligopoly position and their influence within the US government to crush the rail workers into submission, the rail workers are severely disadvantaged due to two main reasons:

Division into Craft Unions and weak strike preparation
The US Constitution and Federal Law

Craft unions organize workers into a union based on their specific occupation, as opposed to industrial unions in which all workers in the same industry are organized into a union. Rather than bargaining and fighting together as one big rail union, workers have been split up into 13 different unions.

Nick Wurst, a CSX rail conductor, SMART-TD union member and a member of Railroad Workers United, a cross-union rail worker organization, explains the difficulties of organizing as a craft union:

One big problem is the craft division, obviously. You break it apart and you start to look at how many different people are employed in the rail industry, whether it’s big freight railroads or small freight railroads, there is a basis of small healthy locals made up of all rail workers and all crafts in the same area which does not currently exist.

As currently organized under craft unionism, “we have [union] locals that are geographically broad but they are not dense… Our last union meeting was the best turnout in a long time apparently with around fifteen people.”

To transform rail labor organizations on the basis of industrial unionism, Railroad Workers United was created by rank-and-file railroaders in April 2005. The organization has steadily grown but remains a small but significant force within rail labor. Nick explained that “I don’t think RWU sees itself as becoming the new union but trying to facilitate and coordinate efforts to transform all of the different unions into moving towards one industrial union for all railroads.”

There are also severe problems with internal union democracy which suppresses the development of militancy: “Political education within the unions is, to my knowledge, non-existent. In terms of organized discussion about current events, labor history, and going over the terms of the contract”

Leadership is not elected with sufficient democracy: “Most rail unions have a system of electing local delegates into office. It’s not like electing a local delegate for a convention. Local delegate is a position that is held as an office. Those local delegates are the ones who go into convention, who are the ones allowed to speak, vote, move motions on the floor”

Within BMWED, an internal opposition caucus, BMWE Rank and File United, has developed. The caucus is attempting to overhaul the union’s local delegate system of election in favor of one member one vote, which would allow the union membership to directly vote for their leaders.

Deven Mantz, co-chair of BMWE Rank and File United, explained:

We started as the result of an initiative of the national leadership. They realized that if they didn’t organize and rally rank and file workers, the union would fail. The program was called the Communication Action Team(CAT), and it started off with internal organizing, by bringing workers out to rallies, petition drives, and other kinds of organizing tools. This started in 2014 and it ended in 2021… The CAT program got shut down due to money issues and internal conflict but there were some guys that were in it and wanted to keep it going. Last year around this time it was organized by two guys to start something up. I got brought into the mix like two weeks after and it has grown from there. We are largely an educational tool, if we educate the membership they will come to the same conclusion that we have.

According to both Nick and Deven, there is a severe lack of education regarding union matters and a lack of strike preparation which has restrained the worker’s most fundamental power: the ability to shut down and seize points of distribution: “Nationally, BMWE was not ready for a strike, the membership wanted it and there was hunger for it. We have 12 or 13 different systems and federations. The locals are like towns. Different systems have different leaderships that we vote in, some systems are better than others. Our local leadership had developed strike manuals and information, but overwhelmingly rail labor was not ready.”

Regarding the prospect of a strike, Nick said:

The last time there was any kind of strike was in the early 90s, most railroad workers haven’t been through a strike so the idea of a strike is scary enough. Most rail labor hasn’t been exposed to the broader labor movement in general. I’ve been involved in solidarity work with other strikes. I know what makes a good picket and what doesn’t. I know the kinds of things that companies can pull, being in the labor movement more broadly, there isn’t a lot of that education with railroad workers so a strike is a very alien concept, let alone a wildcat strike or an illegal strike.

In addition to weak organizing, the second barrier to railroad worker power is the US Constitution and federal law. “The commerce clause of the Constitution gives the government the right to intervene” Deven said. This is because commerce clause gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce.

This “right” was further solidified by the Railway Labor Act (RLA). The law was created to prevent “disruption” to interstate commerce. The RLA was enacted in 1926 and expanded in 1936 to include air transportation workers. It created two boards, the National Railroad Adjustment Board which handles minor disputes involving grievances or interpretation of labor agreements, and the National Mediation Board which handles major disputes such as changes to rates of pay, rules, or working conditions. .

The National Mediation Board determines if a dispute could threaten interstate commerce and notifies the President. The President can then create the Presidential Emergency Board, which has 30 days to issue a report back. After this, labor and management are legally obligated to maintain the status quo for an additional 30 days, and if no agreement is reached after this cooling off period, strikes and lockouts are permitted.

The power of the US Government to sanitize and suppress a strike was supplemented by the Supreme Court’s 1917 decision Wilson V Now, which allows Congress the power to impose an agreement through legislation on workers.⁷

Bargaining for a Contract

This leads us to the most recent dispute between rail workers and the rail carriers, which resulted in a crushing defeat for the workers. Before the most recent tentative agreement was imposed on rail workers by Congress, they were in negotiation, through the continuous degradation of their jobs, for more than three years. Six years after the implementation of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) they were suffering through 80+ hour workweeks, on call 24/7, and with zero sick days.

Rail contracts do not expire, they come up for an amendment, which most recently started in 2019. Six of the seven Class I freight companies bargained in unity through the National Carriers Conference Committee (NCCC), with Canadian Pacific bargaining separately. On labor’s end, initially ten of the thirteen unions decided to negotiate together under the Coordinated Bargaining Coalition (CBC), which according to RWU was “unprecedented for the operating crafts and the shop crafts to come together on such a scale as this,” although the merged bargaining was conducted without informing the membership. BLET and BMWED, despite both being members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), bargained separately as did the two sections of SMART-TD.

It is up to the National Mediation Board (NMB) to decide when to step in and force an agreement, in theory rail workers could be stuck without a contract indefinitely without the grace of the NMB.

Negotiations between the carriers and the unions proved unproductive and in January 2022, the NMB stepped in to start mediating between the two parties. In Spring of 2022, for the first time in history, all the rail unions bargained together as the “United Rail Unions.” By May, with the bargaining coalition at an impasse, the board called for a “super mediation” meeting, with both parties negotiating for three straight weeks with no agreement. On June 14th, the board offered binding arbitration which would impose a deal without rank and file approval. This was rejected by the unions on June 16th which triggered a 30-day cooling off period, before “self-help” was allowed. Self-help refers to both the workers and the rail carrier’s ability to engage in service disruption.⁸

At this point, the demands pushed forward by United Rail Unions were incredibly modest. A 5 year, 31.2 percent compounded increase in wages from 2020 to 2024. To be included were also 15 days of paid sick leave and the status quo for healthcare with increased benefits for autism and hearing.⁹ The rail carriers proposed a 17 percent pay increase compounded over 5 years, accounting for inflation a massive pay cut, with sharp increases in healthcare costs and decreases in benefits and no paid sick leave.¹⁰

Before the cooling off period expired, on July 15th President Biden stepped in, signing an Executive Order creating a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) of arbitrators to make recommendations and end the dispute.¹¹ This instituted another cooling off period. The PEB had a month to release a report and recommendations for a contract. According to Carey Dall, former organizing director of the BMWED, the insistence of Sean O’ Brien, the President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, is what ultimately pushed the President to create the PEB. Furthermore the rail union leadership had say on the majority of appointees for the three person PEB, and the rail union leadership chose to appoint career arbitrations instead of labor leaders.

The rail unions as part of the broader trade union movement had rallied their dues money and support behind the Democratic Party in 2020, with the hopes that Joe Biden’s victory would lead to favorable conditions in contract negotiations. Labor organizations contributed $27.5 million to his election.¹² Biden was endorsed by the largest rail unions, SMART and Teamsters (representing BLET and BMWED).¹³ This was the moment to see if their bet had truly paid off.

On August 16th PEB Report No. 250 was released. The rail unions and carriers would negotiate and determine a Tentative Agreement (TA), to be presented to vote to the union membership. A strike date was set for September 16th.

The PEB recommendations were 24 percent compounded wage increases from 2020 to 2024, service recognition bonuses, increased benefits for hearing and autism, and only one additional paid sick leave. The recommendations did nothing to address the quality-of-life concerns, which was the primary cause of the short staffing crisis at the railways. Despite this lackluster deal, the “unity” of the United Rail Unions started to break down while on the railway carriers side, the NCCC bargained with unswerving unity and discipline. On August 30th, the Transportation Communications Union, Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District Lodge 19, representing a total of 15,000 rail workers, all agreed to a TA based on the PEB recommendations with the NCCC. These unions were to go back to their membership and tally votes for the agreement.¹⁴

On September 2nd, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the American Train Dispatchers Association (ATDA) also agreed to a TA based on the PEB recommendations.¹⁵ On September 11th, BMWED, the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, and SMART-MD, collectively representing 86,000 workers, agreed to the TA.¹⁶ The rail carriers began to use economic attacks to pressure businesses and the US government to speed up negotiations. On September 9th, in unity, the rail carriers announced or threatened the suspension of “security-sensitive and hazardous material,” a case of “self-help” that is illegal.¹⁷

Pressure to end the strike-threat increased from various business groups, including the US Chamber of Commerce–the world’s largest business organization representing over 3 million businesses and organizations–which wrote a letter on September 12th to Congress suggesting that they “may need to intervene.”¹⁸ The same day, Republican Senators Richard Burr and Roger Wicker stepped in, introducing Senate Joint Resolution 61 to the Senate. The bill would force workers to accept the recommendations made by the PEB. While rail carriers were engaging in economic warfare, the Senators wrote in their press release: “Labor unions holding supply chain hostage, threatening disastrous $2 billion a day railway strike.”

On September 13th, the National Conference of Firemen and Oilers (NFCO), representing 2,400 members, agreed to a TA. The next day the IAM Lodge 19 membership rejected the agreement, with the union going back to the bargaining table and extending the strike date to September 29th. The same day, the membership of the Transportation Communications Union (TCU) and Brotherhood of Railway Carmen(BRC) voted to approve the TA.¹⁹

The strike date of September 16th was looming and this was the lineup and position of the 13 rail unions:²⁰

TCU: TA Ratified and approved by membership
BRC: TA Ratified and approved by membership
IBEW: TA Ratified and up for a membership vote
ATDA: TA Ratified and up for a membership vote
BMWED: TA Ratified and up for a membership vote
IBB: TA Ratified and up for a membership vote
SMART-MD: TA Ratified and up for a membership vote
NCFO(SEIU 32BJ)- TA Ratified and up for a membership vote
TWU: TA Ratified and up for a membership vote
IAM Lodge 19: TA rejected, strike date set September 29th
SMART-TD: No agreement on TA
BLET: No Agreement on TA
BRS: No Agreement on TA

Senator Burr was seeking unanimous consent for the speedy passage of the Senate Joint Resolution 61, saying: “In less than 48 hours, at 12:01 Friday [Sept. 16] morning, the likelihood is without action by Congress, there will be a strike and rail traffic will stop.”²¹ Senator Bernie Sanders objected, blocking the unanimous consent and requiring 60 votes in the Senate for the measure to pass, stating that if the railroad companies are not willing to fight for a good contract the workers have a right to strike for paid sick days and other benefits.²²

The Biden Administration and the Democratic Party, with the promise of the $10K student loan relief being held up in the courts and with a growing cost-of-living crisis under their rule, could not risk the midterm elections with a strike at the railroads. The only option left to prevent a strike or lockout was negotiation and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh was the man for this moment, holding closed-door talks with the union leadership of SMART-TD, BLET, and BRS for 20 non-stop hours ultimately producing a Tentative Agreement.

Railroads announced that they would resume normal operations and remove embargos.²³ The strike was seemingly averted. The White House celebrated the “win for tens of thousands of rail workers.” Among those celebrating was the national leadership of the Teamsters, with President Sean O’ Brien, an old friend of Marty Walsh, saying “Collective bargaining works. The labor movement works.” adding “The Teamsters thank all of our members and negotiating partners for staying at the table until this job was done. We’re not yet to the end of the line, but the process is working.” The agreement had to be brought back to the membership and there was a month long-cooling off period with a strike date set for November 16th.

However, this did not change the fact that the deals did not adequately address the quality-of-life concerns faced by workers. The only significant addition of the last minute Tentative Agreement was that unionized rail employees would be permitted three annual periods for medical care visits BUT those visits had to take place on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, and be scheduled at least 30 days in advance.²⁴ Over the course of the following month and a half, the membership of four unions, representing 55 percent of Class I freight rail workers, voted no to the tentative agreements presented to them.

Majority of Rail Workers Reject Biden’s Agreement

On September 27th, as the strike date was approaching for IAM District Lodge 19, the union leadership shifted the strike to December 9th as it reached a new tentative agreement with the rail carriers.²⁵ The way the TA’s were presented to the union’s 5000 members is a concrete example of the lack of internal democracy which categorizes the rail unions. A back-and-forth letter exchange between Reece Murtagh–the local chairman of IAM Lodge 696–and the national leadership of IAM Lodge 19 revealed that members had voted 62.9 percent to reject the original TA on September 14th. The letter exchange is presented here on my Twitter with Reece’s permission. Alongside this, they had voted 89.3 percent for strike authorization. A strike was originally set for September 17th but the union leadership shifted the strike date, without rank and file approval, to September 29th.

On September 28th the membership of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), which represents 4000 members voted to ratify the agreement.²⁶ On October 4th, the American Train Dispatchers Association voted to ratify the agreement.²⁷ The first major crack on Biden’s agreement appeared on October 10th when membership of BMWED, composed of 26,000 workers, rejected the agreement, with 56 percent of workers voting no.²⁸ A strike date was set for November 20th.

On October 12th members of SMART-MD voted to ratify the agreement.²⁹ The next day, members of NFCO (SEIU 32BJ) voted to ratify the agreement.³⁰ 13 days later, on October 26th, 61 percent of BRS voted to reject the Tentative Agreement, with a strike date set for December 4th.³¹ The next day, pressure on the US government began to build from the side of business urging the White House to intervene in the negotiations in an open letter from 300 business groups, including the US Chamber of Commerce, the Agriculture Transportation Coalition, the American Trucking Associations, among others.³²

On November 5th, members of IAM District 19 voted to approve the ratification of the TA with 52 percent of railroaders voting yes.³³ On November 9th, the BMWED leadership, without membership approval, announced that they would be moving their strike date to coincide with the December 4th date of BRS, adding that if either BLET or SMART-TD failed to ratify the TA, they would be moving the strike date in sync with theirs. Among the reasons the leadership gave for shifting the date was that they gained the “opportunity to educate Congress and obtain a better bill written for Railroad Workers” and that joining with the other unions in the same strike date would “improve our chances of not having Congress intervene on the railroads behalf and instead allow us to strike if necessary. This ultimately strengthens our chances to get paid sick leave.”²⁸ Instead, as we will soon see, extending the strike date and putting faith in educating Congress led to a situation where all the unions who rejected the TA had the deal imposed on them while gaining nothing.

On November 14th, the IBB voted to reject the agreement, with a strike date set for December 9th.³⁴ On November 21st, the BLET membership voted to ratify the agreement while the majority of SMART-TD voted to reject, with yardmasters who represent 4 percent of the union ratifying the agreement.³⁵ The final lineup of the unions and their relationship to the TA was nine unions having accepted and having ratified the agreement with four unions representing 55 percent of all Class I freight railroaders, around 60 thousand workers, voting against and setting up a strike date for December 9th.

Congress Crushes the Strike-threat and Forces the Tentative Agreement on Workers

The midterms were over and the President and Democratic Party leadership were ready to impose a deal on rail workers. Monday, November 28th, a coalition of 400 business groups sent a letter to Congress calling on them to intervene and to crush the rail strike.³⁶ The White House released a statement later in the evening, with the President urging Congress to “get this bill to my desk well in advance of December 9th.”³⁷

The hundreds of millions of dollars that the rail carriers/Wall Street had spent lobbying Congress was about to pay off big. The morning of November 29th, President Biden ($74 million from Wall Street in 2020) hosted Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer ($8.4 million from Wall Street), house speaker Nancy Pelosi (2021 Wall Street Trader of the Year), Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell ($6.3 Million from Wall Street) and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy ($3.1 Million from Wall Street), to discuss how to avert the rail strike.³⁸ These figures are a drop in the bucket compared to the total funds that these career politicians have been gifted by Wall Street and big business through the entirety of their political career, funds from the same forces which rail workers have been fighting against in their struggle for better work conditions.

With the Democratic Party taking the lead, Congress worked out the details on how to avert the rail strike or lockout. The progressive caucus of the Democratic Party and its allies, AOC and other members of “the Squad,” and Senator Sanders, worked with the rail unions to push for paid sick leave to be introduced. According to Deven from BMWED Rank-and-file United, “We had calls from offices saying is this something that you want. The only reason why paid sick leave was introduced was because of the progressives.”

The demand for 15 sick days which the United Rail Unions were originally bargaining for was cut more than half to 7 days. The bill guaranteeing 7 days paid sick leave for the workers was introduced separately from the TA. What this meant was that the TA could be passed while the paid sick leave could be rejected. This is exactly what happened.

Wednesday, November 30th, H.J Res.100 for the TA and H.J Res 119 for paid sick leave was introduced to the floor of the House of Representatives. The TA was passed first at 1:02 PM, with a 290-137 vote. The majority of House Republicans, 129 including the minority leader, voted as a bloc to reject the tentative agreement and keep open the strike threat. Almost all Democrats, 211, including all of the “Squad” with the notable exception of Rashida Tlaib voted for the agreement. The paid sick leave bill passed 18 minutes later on a much thinner 221-207 vote, with 218 Democrats voting for with 1 not voting, 207 Republicans voting no, 3 yeas, and 3 not voting. The next day, voting began in the Senate.

Bernie Sanders had called for a roll-call vote to pass paid sick leave before voting on the TA. The vote needed a significant majority of 60 to pass. Before paid sick leave was voted on, votes were tallied for an amendment to the TA bill which would extend the cooling off period an additional 60 days, this was rejected in a 25-70 vote, with all yeas composed of Republicans and nos composed of 48 Democrats, 20 Republicans, and 2 Independents including Sanders. At 2:55pm, the paid sick leave bill was rejected in a 52-43 vote. The yea votes were composed of 44 Democrats, 6 Republicans, and 2 Independents. The no votes were composed of 42 Republicans and 1 Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin. 5 Senators chose not to vote, composed of 3 Democrats and 2 Republicans. After the not-so-surprising result of the paid sick leave failure, the vote for the TA came next. The TA passed resoundingly with a 80-15 margin, with most of the Democrats voting for alongside most Republicans. As in the House, more Republicans voted against the tentative agreement than Democrats, the no votes being 9 Republicans, 4 Democrats, and Bernie Sanders as Independent.³⁹ On Friday, December 2nd, a week before the strike date of December 9th, President Biden signed the TA into law, congratulating Congress for the passage of the bill and saying that workers can expect sick days “as soon as I can convince Republicans to see the light.” The President and Congress successfully crushed the strike.

Response of the Labor Movement

While the contract of railroad workers was being decided by Congress, most of the leadership of the trade union movement were calling for support of the paid sick leave bill while ignoring the issue of a deal being imposed on rail workers without their consent. The AFL-CIO leadership, representing more than 12 million active and retired workers, released a statement calling on Congress to pass paid sick leave while keeping quiet on the issue of the TA.⁴⁰ Sean O’ Brein, President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), whose members in BMWED voted to reject the tentative agreement, posted a tweet of himself walking through the rain in Washington DC, calling for Congress to pass paid sick leave. He had no comment on the vote for the TA and the workers’ right to strike. A similar comment was issued by Sara Nelson of the Association of Flight Attendants(AFA), who avoided the issue of TA and the strike, instead urging people to call their Senators and tell them to vote for paid sick leave. The leadership of the International Longshoremen Workers, one of the most powerful unions with thousands of West Coast port workers as members followed this trend, posting a statement which called for sick leave but did not touch on the TA or the right to strike.⁴¹ These statements were in fact a step backwards. In the 1992 railway strike, the leadership of the AFL-CIO and railunions denounced the strikebreaking measures saying they opposed “any action by Congress to intervene in these railroad labor-management disputes,” adding that the least objectionable option would be to extend the negotiations.

While the heights of the trade-union leadership avoided comment on allowing rail workers the ability to strike, certain union leaders, rank-and-file caucuses and local union organizations stepped up in support, publicly denouncing Congress’ move to impose a strike-breaking measure on the workers. Railroad Workers United released an open letter to the President and Congress which received over 5000 signatures in support alongside the support of over 200 organizations, after the TA and sick leave measure passed the House and was being debated in the Senate. RWU urged Congress and the President to reject imposing the TA and to instead push for broader demands like Public Ownership of the Railroads, Universal Paid Family and Sick Leave, and to Pass the Pro Act & Fund the NLRB. The Vermont AFL-CIO published a twitter thread, where they wrote “we give no credit to the House’s passage of a separate 7 day sick leave bill insofar as we have seen this show before with Build Back Better. Such recent experiences should make clear to all that sending two separate bills to the Senate does little more than allow the Senate to reject the sick leave, while imposing the TA”. The American Postal Workers Union, representing 222,000 active and retired postal workers, wrote in their statement “The right to strike, the right of all workers to withhold their labor to improve their well-being, is a fundamental and vital working class right”, adding that “the AFL-CIO’s top leadership failed to organize a united resistance to the pending Congressional action against the railroad workers, nor have they condemned Congress’ overriding the workers’ collective bargaining right, along with their right to strike.”

Immediately after the TA was passed, protests were organized not by the rail union leadership or the leadership of other powerful trade unions but by socialist activists and rank and file organizations within the trade union movement. A protest of over 200, including rail workers and the rank and file of union locals, was organized by the Boston DSA, a member of Railroad Workers United, and the Independent Socialist Group on December 2nd, a day after the TA was passed. The protestors were defending the rail workers’ right to strike and were calling Joe Biden a “scab”. Similar demands were called two days later for a smaller protest of 30 people outside Senator Schumer’s NYC home. It was organized by members of the DSA and Brooklyn Eviction Defense(a tenant defense org) with union members speaking and in attendance. On December 6th, a small protest was held at the University of California, Berkeley, where striking UC Grad Workers spoke of how their struggle was connected to that of rail workers and demanded paid sick leave for all. The next day, a group of 25 union members and activists in Baltimore gathered with similar demands.

*Southwest airline workers in Solidarity with Railroad Workers at Grand Central Protest*

The latest protest took place in Grand Central, NYC, around the same time as that of Baltimore. It was organized by the December 12th Movement, Chris Silvera of Teamsters Local 808, the Workers Assembly against Racism and War, Charles Jenkins of the NY Chapter of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, among other worker groups and activist organizations and had well over 100 members in attendance.

Almost a week after the TA was passed, the rail union leadership finally stepped up and announced several rallies around the country, though news of this is being boosted currently by RWU members and other activists.

Political Ramifications of the Vote

The passage of the TA and denial of sick leave was a combined effort of the Republican and Democratic Party, evidenced by President Biden holding an emergency conference with leaders of both parties in figuring out a plan of action on how to push through the agreement. However, on paper, the Republican party emerged as the party of opposition to the TA seemingly on the side of the majority of rail workers who rejected it. At the Senate, several high profile Republicans such as Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley, voted both against the TA and for paid sick leave. This can be seen as nothing more than a shrewd political calculation from the same people who are in favor of dismantling unions through right-to-work laws and have taken millions of dollars from Wall Street. Furthermore, this is a tactic used by both parties as in the 1992 strike, under a Republican President it was the Democrats which posed as the party of opposition, with the majority in the House voting to reject the TA.⁴² Regardless, the judgment of the Republicans has already started to pay off.

BMWED President Tony Cardwell made an appearance on Steve Bannon’s “The War Room.” Bannon said that the bill “shuts down the ability to strike, which unions fought for decades,” adding “Let me be blunt, you guys got stiffed. They used the power of Congress which limits your ability to go out and they didn’t give you that one thing that the guys had asked for.” Cardwell agreed and said “We all know that you(referring to Bannon) helped lead the cause when Trump got elected. One of the things that he was able to do was resonate with blue-collar workers out there. In this case there’s finally some Republicans that stepped up and backed us up. This is going to be remembered and they are going to get union votes when they do that.”

Cardwell also joined Fox News, saying that Biden’s actions “will definitely have an effect on the next elections,” adding again that “Republicans who stood for us will be rewarded for it.”

While the passage of the TA has bolstered the Republican Party, the Democratic Party has lost support from sections of labor and the socialist movement as evidenced by the statements of APWU, the Vermont AFL-CIO, Railroad Workers United which called the TA passage “The Democrat/Republican One-Two Punch to Rail Labor” and a statement released by the National Political Committee of the DSA, the largest socialist organization in the US. The statement expressed “disappointment” at the yes votes of House Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush. This was followed by a statement signed by over 20 DSA chapters and 400 members calling for an open town hall, where the two Congressmembers alongside Democrat Jamaal Bowman were asked to explain their vote for the TA in an open town hall.

The latest action by Progressive Democrats and their allies has been to “pressure” President Biden to sign an executive order guaranteeing paid sick leave, at this point a futile and foregone effort. Even if Biden does sign, as with his move to grant $10K student loan relief, this will almost surely be held up at the courts.

Strategic Conclusion for Working People

The railroad workers, in their struggle for the most basic of demands, lacked the support of the broader working class whilst unprepared to strike due to weak internal organization. They were facing the centralized power of the rail carriers through the NCCC which had the support of huge business organizations and the US Government. Railroad workers, with their arms tied around their backs, faced the entire might of the US Capitalist Class.

While the rail workers occupy one of the most strategic sectors of the US economy with enormous potential strike-power, their union leadership treated the struggle for a better contract as a simple negotiation while the rail carriers treated it as class war.

The rail carriers bargained united through the NCCC, going so far as to unilaterally impose or threaten to impose embargoes on goods. The rail unions, briefly united without consulting the membership, soon began to break apart, bargaining as individuals rather than a united fighting force. While the rail carriers were already using economic pressure, the rail union leadership actively avoided a strike by not preparing the membership for strike action and continuously pushing back the strike date, even against the will of the rank-and-file.

Rather than utilizing solidarity and strike, the natural weapon of the working class, rail union leadership had instead put their faith in the President and the Democratic Party to deliver a good contract. This faith was bolstered by the broader leadership of the trade union movement who chose not to mobilize mass action in solidarity with railroad workers, but instead to push illusions in the sick leave measure passing. Despite good intentions, in practice, this faith led to a political dead end, with virtually no organized mass opposition to the US Government pushing through an agreement which represented the interests of capital over labor. In the end, leaders of rank and file caucuses had not option but to “throw a hail mary”, go to Congress and appeal to the moral conscience of Congressmembers to grant them the minimum of a week’s paid sick leave.

The leadership of the trade union movement, the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, SEIU, all of whom have rail workers as members, as well as the trade union leadership of rail labor, chose not to organize solidarity actions, chose not to bring this struggle to public consciousness months in advance, and chose not to create rank and file ties between rail labor and all labor, despite the fact that rail labor has the ability to cripple the flow of profit and provide the power to win transformative change for all working people. The leadership of the trade union movement only spoke up about this struggle once the corporate press chose to feature it in front-page news.

The response of the labor-oriented elements of the Democratic Party was also wholly inadequate. While it would be ludicrous to fault the Progressive Caucus and DSA Congressmembers like AOC for the failure of the passage of paid sick leave, their primary failure was the failure of responsibility that all genuine representatives of working people must hold, exposing the truth for all. Why was paid sick leave made a separate bill from the resolution to pass the TA? What was said at the “closed door” meetings between the Progressive Caucus and Democratic Party leadership? What could be done to hold up passage of the bill and allow workers the time and space to mobilize? None of these questions could be answered and still have not been answered. Railroaders were instead left in the dark with merely the hope that Congress would grant them 7 days paid sick leave.

What Must Be done?

For rail workers to win against the rail carriers/Wall Street they must:

Be prepared to strike in unity among all crafts
Generalize and link their struggle to that of all workers by building a Working People’s Party

The primary barrier to strike readiness is the lack of education and training among rail workers. RWU and BMWE Rank-and-File United have performed the crucial work of educating their membership and helping vitalize their local unions, but they have two different though complementary strategies. RWU aims to build cross-union solidarity while BMWE Rank-and-File United aims to overhaul and transform the BMWED. Both of this work must be expanded, but to do so each organization should consider steps towards formal unity in order to learn from each other to succeed in the united goal of overhauling union leadership and its structure, building cross-union solidarity, and educating/training rail workers to strike. All of the craft unions and their locals must be overhauled while RWU, a common center for railroaders of all crafts, is expanded and grows in influence. RWU/BMWE Rank-and-File United will need to increase their funds and democratically elect full-time staffers who can do the work of organizing locals and local meetings, helping coordinate strategic goals and relaying information to all railroaders. The necessary funds will come as a consequence of deepening and expanding the solidarity with other sections of the working class that have already been built. Furthermore, due to a recent upset victory of militant railroader Eddie Hall for President of BLET, conditions are extremely favorable for unity and strike preparation.

Simply the ability to strike is not enough. Rail workers are up against the entire US capitalist class and their government. The financial institutions which own the railroads are the depositories of wealth collected from the entire capitalist class who in turn have amassed it through the exploitation of all working people around the world. All of the oligarchs have a vested interest through these financial institutions to ensure that railroaders are as exploited of a workforce as possible. These are also the same institutions which are responsible for foreclosing the homes of millions of working people, for real estate speculation and driving up rent prices, for profiting off of war, for privatizing schools, for destroying public infrastructure and contaminating the water supply, for placing millions in debt bondage, for preventing medical care from being a public good, for breaking the backs of service workers in companies like Amazon and Starbucks, and innumerable atrocities committed against all of the world’s toilers and oppressed.

In their fight against rail carriers, rail workers find a natural ally with all of the fighting layers of working people. The critical task is for militants within rail labor, such as Railroad Workers United, BMWE Rank-and-File United, individual leaders like Reece Murtagh, to deepen and expand the links that they have already created with different worker organizations. As this year’s struggle shows, it is not the national leadership of the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, or the SEIU, that will come to their defense, but rather militant organizations within and outside of labor like the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the Vermont AFL-CIO, the American Postal Workers Union, and the 5000+ individuals and 200+ organizations composed of union locals, student groups, DSA chapters, socialist groups, and various worker organizations around the country that signed RWU’s open letter. The most critical, short term goal must be to concretize unity developed through statement and protest into organizational unity. We must move together to gather all of the forces of working people that are so desperately waiting for an independent worker party to unite, create a list of demands and formal democratic organization. We must not allow ourselves to get sold out again by the two parties of Wall Street, the time has come to form a mass working people’s party. A working people’s party, a mass organization that will radically shift the political consciousness of the country’s workers and oppressed, an organization which will fully expose to all what the toilers of this country deserve.

The working people’s party will serve the role, in the event of a rail strike, to generalize the struggle and bring in the broader working class in solidarity. As Wall Street, big business, and the US government rally in support of the rail carriers, rail workers can only win when they are able to rally the support of all working people, leveling the playing field and creating a general struggle between the forces of capital and the forces of labor, a struggle between the forces of death and the forces of life.

Needless to say, this work will be very difficult, but it is necessary. To fight and win against Wall Street, we must be prepared for class war. To win a class war, the working people will need to build an army of the oppressed, an army which is ready and prepared for mass general strike and the seizure of all power. Let’s build working class solidarity and carry onwards!

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