The fallout from a freight-rail strike would be the fault of Democrats and two large unions.
The fallout from a freight-rail strike would be the fault of Democrats and two large unions.
H ere’s how we got to the precipice of a nationwide freight-rail strike: These negotiations began in November 2019. The Railway Labor Act is a special set of rules, separate from the National Labor Relations Act that most industries operate under, which applies to railroads and airlines. Contracts under the RLA do not have set deadlines, and negotiations are open-ended.
There are, however, mechanisms within the RLA that can be used to force deadlines. After over two years of negotiations, the unions requested that the National Mediation Board, an independent federal agency, get involved to help settle the dispute earlier this year. They got what they wanted — the NMB got involved — but it was still unable to yield a resolution. The NMB offered arbitration as an option, which the carriers accepted, but the unions rejected.
On June 17, the NMB, which has a 2–1 Democratic majority, released the parties from mediation without an agreement after only two months. The NMB’s two Democrats are a former flight-attendants-union president and a former Teamsters attorney, respectively. (Two of the twelve unions covered by national freight-rail bargaining are Teamsters affiliates.) The board’s lone Republican voted against releasing the parties from mediation.
Once the parties were released, which is what the unions wanted, deadlines under the RLA started to come into effect. There’s a 30-day cooling-off period after mediation, during which strikes and lockouts are illegal. The president then has the power to appoint a presidential emergency board (PEB) to help resolve the dispute. President Biden did that on July 18. Both the unions and the carriers thought Biden’s appointees were fair and experienced.
The PEB, on August 17, issued a report containing non-binding independent recommendations, which started another 30-day cooling-off period for parties to negotiate a deal. Carriers wanted a 17 percent raise, unions wanted a 31.3 percent raise, and the PEB recommended a 24 percent raise. Carriers wanted to significantly restructure health benefits, which are very generous for rail workers; the PEB recommended largely keeping the benefits status quo. Unions requested three additional holidays; the PEB recommended against them, though it did recommend on additional personal day of paid leave.
The day after the report came out, carriers said they would accept deals that followed the PEB report’s recommendations. They have kept their word, and they have made agreements with nine of the twelve unions.
The agreements include the 24 percent pay increase (the largest in the history of national bargaining), maintaining the status quo on health benefits, the additional day of paid leave, and, in the case of maintenance-of-way workers, a more generous travel-expenses policy that the union president praised in glowing terms. Even unions that had previously voted to approve strikes, such as the American Train Dispatchers Association, saw the PEB’s recommendations as reasonable and made deals with the carriers based on them.
But SMART-TD and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), the two largest unions, are still unsatisfied. The cooling-off period that started when the PEB report was released has almost expired, and strikes and lockouts are permitted beginning at 12:01 a.m. on Friday.
SMART-TD and the BLET say they are more concerned about working-conditions issues, not wages. But the unions have essentially asked for concessions from carriers through national bargaining that are not typically part of national bargaining. The PEB addressed this multiple times in its report.
Unions asked for a minimum of 15 days of paid sick leave. The PEB said that would be “best resolved in the grievance and arbitration process, not by an overly broad and very costly proposal.”
SMART-TD and the BLET asked for changes to attendance policies and meal allowances. The PEB said, “We agree that updating is needed, but the submissions do not clearly indicate the particular update that we should recommend.” It remanded the issue back to the parties to negotiate.
SMART-TD and the BLET asked for changes to rules pertaining to scheduling. The PEB found merit both in their arguments and the carriers’ arguments to the contrary, and it did not make a recommendation. Instead, the members of the board said, “We believe that a six-month period for bargaining, beyond which time any Party may invoke arbitration, is sensible.”
Some issues are negotiated locally, not at the national level. The PEB said the issue of crew size, for example, should be negotiated at the local level. Local unions can negotiate with individual carriers to secure concessions for their members regardless of what the PEB says about national bargaining.
In other words, accepting the recommendations from the PEB report would not preclude the unions from getting what they want in further negotiations and possible arbitration. What it would do, however, is avoid a crippling rail strike.
The recommendations can’t be all that bad for labor since nine of the twelve unions have already made deals based on them. Remember: It was the unions that wanted to be released from mediation; it was the unions that rejected arbitration; and it was the unions that wanted the PEB.
Also remember: It was the two Democrats on the NMB who released the parties from mediation after only two months; it was President Biden who appointed the PEB, with his appointments praised by unions and carriers alike; and it was Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh who was supposed to have a handle on this situation and coax the unions to an agreement.
If there’s a nationwide freight-rail work stoppage on Friday and the economy grinds to a halt, sending gas prices up and stranding cargo all over the country, remember that the ball has been in labor’s court to accept independent recommendations from a board appointed by President Biden.
That board recommended a 24 percent pay increase over five years, which would be the largest such increase ever. It recommended the preservation of platinum health benefits. It recommended an additional day of paid leave and the preservation of eleven paid holidays, which is two more than the average union-represented worker receives and four more than the average transportation-sector worker receives. And it allowed parties to continue to negotiate or go to arbitration on other issues that were still outstanding.
Congress can step in and prevent a strike. Senator Roger Wicker (R., Miss.), the ranking member of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, has been calling for the adoption of the PEB’s recommendations. Senator Richard Burr (R., N.C.) has introduced a joint resolution that would adopt the recommendations of the PEB as binding and avert a strike. All Congress has to do is pass it.
Democrats control both houses of Congress and the White House. An eleventh-hour deal is still possible, and parties could elect to extend the cooling-off period again, but if unions and carriers are unable to make a deal, and Congress doesn’t step in to prevent a strike, the economic consequences that follow will be on the Democrats and their union allies.