Tentative deal averts US rail strike
Looming walkout threatened severe blow to economy
WASHINGTON — Rail companies and their workers reached a tentative agreement Thursday to avert a nationwide strike that could have shut down the nation’s freight trains and devastated the economy less than two months before the midterm elections.
President Joe Biden announced the deal, which emerged from a marathon 20-hour negotiating session at the Labor Department and came just one day before the threatened walkout.
“This agreement is validation of what I’ve always believed unions and management can work together ... for the benefit of everyone,” Biden said in the White House Rose Garden.
The deal, which includes a 24% pay raise, will go to the roughly 115,000 union members for a vote after a cooling-off period of several weeks.
The threat of a shutdown carried political risks for Biden, a Democrat who believes unions built the middle class.
But he also knew a rail strike could damage the economy ahead of the midterms, when majorities in both chambers of Congress, key governorships and scores of important state offices will be up for grabs.
Biden made a key phone call Wednesday evening to Labor Secretary Marty Walsh as negotiators were talking and being offered Italian food for dinner, according to White House
officials who insisted on anonymity to discuss the conversations.
On speakerphone, the president urged both sides to get a deal done and to consider the harm that a shutdown would inflict on families, farmers and businesses, the officials said.
One union had to wake up its board to move forward on the agreement, which involved 50 calls from White House officials to organized labor officials.
Joined in the Oval Office by business and union leaders, a beaming Biden joked that he was surprised everyone was “still standing” after the late night and that they
should be “home in bed.”
A strike would also have disrupted passenger traffic as well as freight, because Amtrak and many commuter railroads operate on tracks owned by the freight railroads. Amtrak canceled all of its long-distance trains ahead of the strike deadline and was working to restore full service.
The five-year deal, retroactive to 2020, also includes $5,000 in bonuses. The railroads agreed to ease their strict attendance policies to address union concerns about working conditions.
Railroad workers will now be able to take unpaid days off for doctor’s appointments without being penalized. Previously, workers would lose points under the attendance systems at BNSF and Union Pacific railways, and they could be disciplined if they lost all their points.
The talks also included Norfolk Southern, CSX, Kansas City Southern and the U.S. operations of Canadian National.
The unions that represent conductors and engineers who drive the trains had pressed hard for changes in the attendance rules, and they said the deal sets a precedent that ensures they will be able to negotiate such rules in the future.
Victor Chen, a sociologist at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies labor, said concerns about working conditions have increasingly become a priority for unions and the workers they represent.
“At a certain point, good wages just aren’t enough to make up for the toll these sorts of working conditions impose on workers,” Chen said. “The companies need to treat workers like human beings, rather than just inputs in a business process.”
The railroad unions pointed to workload and attendance rules after the major railroads cut nearly one-third of their workforce — some 45,000 jobs — over the past six years.
The rail industry has aggressively cut costs everywhere and shifted its operations to rely more on fewer, longer trains that use fewer locomotives and fewer employees.
The unions said the remaining workers, particularly engineers and conductors, were on call 24/7 because of jobs cuts and could hardly take any time off under strict attendance rules.
Unions had an advantage at the bargaining table because of the tight labor market and ongoing service problems on the railroads, Chen said.
Shippers have complained loudly this year about delays and poor service as railroads struggled to hire quickly enough to handle a surge in demand as the economy emerged from the pandemic.
Union activism has surged under Biden, as seen in a 56% increase in petitions for union representation with the National Labor Relations Board so far this fiscal year, including prominent organizing efforts at Starbucks, Amazon and other companies. A number of unions have gone on strike over the past two years to get better deals.
Before the deal was reached, business groups including the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce were predicting that a rail strike would be an “economic disaster.”
The Association of American Railroads trade group estimated that a strike would cost the economy more than $2 billion a day and force many businesses to scale back or cease production and consider layoffs.