Some interesting fault lines appearing in this one.
As of this writing - Friday afternoon - the president has signed it. It does not expand the paid leave to seven days. Congress seems to be taking its cue from the fact that eight four railway-related unions with the majority of he industry's workers support an agreement that included a number of other favorable features from labor's standpoint, but not the paid sick leave. Four didn't support it.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in hot water with the Democratic Socialists of America for voting for the bill in the form Biden signed. Most other Squad members also voted in the affirmative.
This also, rather interestingly, puts her position in resonance with that of Marco Rubio:
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said Thursday that she and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., had found common ground in the potential rail worker strike that has concerned many across the nation.
“A rarity,” she said in reference to a tweet from the Florida Republican earlier this week in which he said he would object to a deal that does not reflect the wishes of the workers.
“The railways and workers should go back and negotiate a deal that the workers, not just the union bosses, will accept,” he said in a post Tuesday. “I will not vote to impose a deal that doesn’t have the support of the rail workers.”
Ocasio-Cortez retweeted the message and said, “Glad we are on the same page [regarding] railworkers’ paid sick days.”
“The House just sent over what you asked for: the full TA deal w/ sick days as supported and demanded by our railworkers. Can they count on your YES vote for the amendment?” she questioned.
Rubio seems to have found an opportunity for his common-good-conservatism rubber to hit the actual-legislation road.
And he may have found solid ground to do so. Morale in railway jobs seems to be in the pits:
Even if paid sick leave is secured, rail workers have years of bad feelings around their employers. Jason Doering, who has worked at Union Pacific for 18 years, told me in July that even a good contract would not solve “rock-bottom” morale issues.
“Everybody goes to work and there’s nothing positive to talk about,” said Doering, who is also the Nevada legislative director for SMART Transportation Division, a labor union of train, airline and other transportation workers. “There are no positive things going on within the industry. You are forced to choose between your career and your life.”
Doering previously said workdays lasting up to 19 hours, consisting of 12-hour shifts and hours of waiting around for transportation or relief crews, have become the norm. So too has spending more time in motels waiting for one’s next gig than at one’s actual home.
The other side of this matter, though, is the human-agency factor. Nobody's forcing these people to be in these jobs. Let us not lose sight of the element of choice. Yes, they have built lives on the basis of the financial planning they're able to do, but at some point doesn't one become miserable enough to investigate alternative ways to make a living?
Industry consolidation has permitted the remaining firms to say to shippers, "Face it, we're the only games in town." That's not healthy for a railway industry that works for everyone:
Decades of consolidation have left the U.S. with only seven Class I railroad companies. Four of those companies collectively control more than 83 percent of the freight market. And the vast majority of train stations in the U.S. are served by exactly one railroad.
Thus, most shippers can’t credibly threaten to take their business elsewhere. At the margin, rail customers could shift their transport needs toward trucking, but most are reliant on the inherent scale and efficiency of rail transport. So when freight carriers reduce their operating costs, they’re less inclined to pass on those savings in the form of improved customer service or lower rates than to simply shower their shareholders in dividends.
Last year, the seven dominant North American railways had a combined net income of $27 billion, nearly twice their margin a decade ago. In the interim, the railways have collectively doled out $146 billion in dividends and stock buybacks while investing only $116 billion into their businesses.
This, of course, isn't the first time government has intervened in a standoff between two private-sector entities (a union and a management consortium). The rational given generally seems to Article 1, Section 8 of he Constitution, which addresses interstate commerce, as well as the 1926 Railway Labor Act.
Sometimes government has gotten quite brazen, as was the case in in 1952:
During the Korean War the government imposed controls on raw materials, production, shipping, credit, wages, and prices. When the wage-price controls created a collective-bargaining impasse in the steel industry, threatening a nationwide strike, President Harry S. Truman ordered the secretary of commerce on April 8, 1952, to seize and operate most of the country’s steel mills for the ostensible purpose of maintaining production of critical munitions.
Owners of the seized properties obtained a court injunction against the seizure, and an appeal of that injunction to the U.S. Supreme Court gave rise to one of the “great cases” in constitutional law, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. et al. v. Sawyer.1 Although the Court found the President’s actions to be unconstitutional, its decision did not signify a triumph of private rights or a significant check on the government’s exercise of de facto emergency powers.
By 1952 Truman had become an unpopular president, even among Democrats, and his attempted seizure evinced a power struggle with a hostile Congress. He had alternative ways to proceed. Although no current statute authorized him to nationalize the steel industry, he had authority under the Taft-Hartley Act to order an 80-day “cooling- off period,” during which the union- management dispute might have been settled without a strike. The pro-union President chose not to issue such an order, however, because he opposed the Taft-Hartley Act, which Congress had passed over his veto in 1947. He did not ask Congress to authorize his seizure of the steel industry.
Instead, Truman rested his seizure order on legally vague national-emergency grounds, citing his inherent powers as president and as commander in chief of the armed forces.2 Afterward, he and his official spokesman sought clumsily “to transform the steel crisis from a particular labor dispute into a broader battle against ‘big business,’” a rendering that had little resonance.3
You see, he had, in the parlance of a more recent decade, a pen and a phone.
I am not at all comfortable with what's going down.
I understand that a strike would bring the economy to a screaming halt, and that even national security could be imperiled. I also understand the crummy life railway workers have had for several years.
But when the entity with a monopoly on legitimate use of coercion and force inserts itself into a private-sector disagreement between two parties each striving for a favorable outcome, I bristle. That's the rationale climate alarmists use to take away the choice of energy forms people use.
The labor-management relationship is really one of producer and consumer. Management would like to consume what labor is producing, provided a compensation package it finds within its budget can be agreed on.
When we erode this basic principle, even for what appear to be compelling reasons, we do freedom no favors.
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