Congress’ resolution to pressure a contract with none paid sick depart on the 12 rail unions is fairly fucked. It’s made not solely quite a lot of rail employees extremely indignant, nevertheless it’s additionally been extensively criticized by different unions, and, frankly, we expect it’s fairly shitty. Right here’s the factor, although, the specter of a strike was by no means about sick days, and Aaron Gordon does a stellar job of explaining why in an article printed on Monday by Vice.
Spoiler alert: the rail unions’ grievances are centered extra on the difficulty of company greed and its impression on the protection of employees and their capability to keep up any work/life steadiness, in addition to on public security, which some rail employees imagine is being compromised by the rail firms’ resolution to chop employees, skimp on inspections and shutting inspection and restore services. Sick days could be good, however they’re actually not the purpose.
Regardless of the large increase in on-line purchasing in the course of the lockdown, most of the rail freight firms used the pandemic as justification to make these cuts. At this level, with companies open and the nation again to work, that already skinny justification now not holds water.
To get a fuller concept of what precisely is happening and why this (completely precedented) transfer by congress is in the end not going to unravel many points, you owe it to your self to present the entire Vice article a glance.