Talk of a railroad strike hearkens back to an earlier time. The Pullman Strike features in most American-history courses, and the Great Railroad Strike of 1922 lasted two months and ground the nation’s transportation system to a halt.
While the idea of a railroad strike may seem antiquated, the railroads themselves never went away. Though their place in public perception has waned, since they are mostly not used for passenger transportation anymore, they remain vital for transporting about one-third of American exports. Since deregulation in 1980, freight rates have fallen, safety has improved, and private investment has led to innovation in technology and maintenance of thousands of miles of rail infrastructure.
The specter of strikes has largely disappeared because of the Railway Labor Act. Passed in 1926 after multiple large-scale service disruptions in the decades prior, Congress listed as its first purpose in passing the RLA “to avoid any interruption to commerce.” It did so by creating a special set of processes, unique to railroads (with airlines added later), for labor disputes to be resolved through negotiation, mediation, and arbitration, rather than strikes or lockouts. The RLA is far from perfect, but it has largely been successful in achieving its primary goal, with national rail strikes being few and far between since its enactment.
In the freight-rail labor negotiations that are currently center stage, the entire process under the RLA has already played out over the past three years. Negotiations began for the current contract, which covers the five-year period from 2020 through the end of 2024, in November 2019. They were interrupted by the pandemic, but RLA labor contracts do not expire, so the status quo has held while the new contract has been worked out. Railroads and unions were far apart on basic questions of wages and benefits.
Earlier this year, unions requested help from the National Mediation Board, an independent federal agency established under the RLA, in resolving the differences. Mediation can last as long as is necessary to reach a resolution.
But after only two months of work, unions requested in June that parties be released from mediation. That’s far shorter than normal. The vote to release on the three-member NMB was 2–1, and the two voting in the affirmative were a former union president and a former Teamsters attorney. That decision, which the unions wanted, set in motion a series of deadlines that led to the possibility of a strike.
The first was in mid July. That’s when President Biden used his power under the RLA to appoint a presidential emergency board. A PEB is composed of professional arbitrators who hear both sides and propose non-binding, independent recommendations on how to solve the dispute. All three of Biden’s appointees had been on PEBs in the past, and all three were considered fair and impartial by the railroads and the unions.
In mid August, the second deadline, the PEB issued its report. It was a 124-page, thorough examination of a wide range of issues. On wages, it met the two sides right in the middle and proposed a 24 percent wage increase over the five-year life of the contract, plus $1,000 annual bonuses. On health care, it rejected a major proposal by railroads to restructure benefits and preserved the status quo. On paid holidays, it rejected a union demand to add three holidays to the existing eleven, but suggested an additional paid personal day that workers could take at any time.
Since then, the major questions of labor negotiations — wages and health care — have been settled. (Rail workers get retirement benefits directly from the federal government, and they far exceed Social Security.) The wage increase is the largest ever negotiated under national bargaining. Rail-worker health benefits are classified as Platinum under the Affordable Care Act and are some of the most generous of any private-sector workers in the country. Average annual total compensation (including benefits) for freight-rail workers is $135,700. Approval of the deal would increase it to about $160,000.
Railroads agreed to make deals with each of the twelve unions based on the PEB’s recommendations. They kept their word, and nine unions made deals, but leadership from three of the unions, including the two largest, held out. That led to the third deadline in mid September. If a deal was not approved, a strike would have been possible.
The issue then was sick leave. The PEB had rejected unions’ proposal for 15 days of sick leave nationwide. Sick leave is currently negotiated at the local level, not in national bargaining. The PEB recommended it stay there. Sick leave in the rail industry is different than it is in other industries because of the 24/7 nature of the business, but plenty of sick benefits exist. Depending on local agreements, some workers do get an allotted number of sick days. Others get 26 weeks of partial-income replacement, or 52 weeks of supplemental sickness benefit, which includes a higher rate of partial-income replacement.
Railroads and unions again went to the negotiating table, under the supervision of Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, and emerged after 20 hours with a deal that included a railroad concession on sick benefits that was celebrated in the Rose Garden at the White House on September 15. President Biden said, “It’s about the right to go to a doctor or stay healthy and make sure you’re able to have the care you can afford. It’s all part of this agreement.” The railroads and leadership of all twelve unions approved.
Then the deal went for ratification by union membership. The membership of eight unions, including the BLET, the second-largest union that had held out in September, voted to ratify the deal. Across all twelve, a majority of the workers who voted approved of the deal. But if even one union goes on strike, the other eleven won’t cross a picket line, and the entire freight-rail network nationwide will shut down.
That’s where we are right now. A minority of unions who rejected the Walsh–Biden deal that railroads and unions agreed to could halt shipments of petroleum, ethanol, chemicals, fertilizer, grain, corn, coal, and consumer goods that the American economy depends on. Passenger routes that use rail owned by freight companies would be affected.
Adopting the Walsh–Biden agreement, which is what Biden called on Congress to do, in no way precludes unions from continuing to negotiate for more sick leave at the local level. The Walsh–Biden agreement is a fair deal, arrived at through the proper procedures, and one that railroads and a majority of unions have accepted.
Three years is enough, and all other options have been exhausted. It’s time for Congress to fulfill its duties under the RLA and prevent a work stoppage by adopting the Walsh–Biden deal, with no modifications or poison pills, before December 9, the first day a strike would be legal. The sides have had plenty of chances to negotiate a deal on their own, and in many respects they have, but a few holdouts have taken the economy hostage.
Congress is well within its statutory and constitutional roles to act in protection of interstate commerce, and it should do so as soon as possible to reassure businesses of continuous rail service. President Biden, for once, has put the interests of the general American economy ahead of special interests who donate to Democrats. Republicans in Congress should as well and join with Democrats to make sure that nationwide rail strikes remain a thing of history.