If it comes down to the wire, Rubio’s position as expressed so far would, if adopted by the Senate, result in a rail shutdown.
If it comes down to the wire, Rubio’s position as expressed so far would, if adopted by the Senate, result in a shutdown.
S enator Marco Rubio has attempted to chart his own course on freight-rail labor negotiations. His rhetoric has been sympathetic to unionized workers while being harsh on union leadership and the Biden administration. But in the context of what’s actually being debated in Congress, the practical consequences of the Florida Republican’s position are unclear.
On Tuesday, Rubio put out a statement in which he said that the Biden administration was wrong to ask Congress to pass legislation to avert a rail strike. “Just because Congress has the authority to impose a heavy-handed solution does not mean we should,” he said. “I will not vote for any deal that does not have the support of the rail workers.”
Rubio’s alternative approach: “Instead of relying on Congress to carry their water, the parties should go back to the negotiating table and strike a fair deal that workers can accept.”
To this statement, Rubio has added several tweets describing his position. “The railways & workers should go back & negotiate a deal that the workers, not just the union bosses, will accept,” he tweeted on Tuesday, and then reiterated that he will not support efforts to “impose a deal that doesn’t have the support of the rail workers.”
Rubio’s continued insistence on the deal’s not having the support of workers is not as clear as it may seem. There are twelve unions covered by national bargaining, with 13 separate contracts between them (the largest union, SMART-TD, has one contract for a small segment of its membership and another for the remainder). All twelve unions must approve all 13 contracts to avoid a strike because if even one union votes to strike, the other eleven would not cross a picket line.
Nine of 13 contracts were ratified by union membership, and across all twelve unions, a majority of the total number of workers who voted approved of the tentative agreement that the Biden administration brokered in September. That’s the same tentative agreement that the House voted 290–137 to approve, with nearly all Democrats plus 79 Republicans voting in favor. (National Review urged Republicans to support it.)
Yesterday morning, before the House voted, Rubio tweeted, “The way to avoid a rail strike isn’t for Congress to impose a deal made by labor bosses that was rejected by the rank & file of unions representing over half the rail workers. The way to avoid a strike is a new deal that rank & file members will support.”
How such a new deal would come about is left unsaid. One way would be for Congress to adopt the concurrent resolution that the House passed narrowly, 221–207, with only three Republicans, to add seven days of sick leave to the national contract. Sick leave is currently negotiated at the local level, with workers receiving a variety of sick benefits depending on their employer and position. An independent panel recommended rejecting a similar union proposal to add a set number of sick days at the national level in August, calling it “overly broad and very costly,” and recommended that the issue stay at the local level to be resolved through arbitration.
Then, after the House had passed both resolutions, Rubio tweeted, “The union bosses & Biden sold out the rail workers. The workers rejected their deal. So now Biden & the union bosses want Congress to step in & impose their deal. Instead of using Congress, get rid of the union bosses & negotiate a deal both the industry & workers can support.”
What that would mean in practice is unclear. If parties returned to negotiations, those negotiations would take place between the National Carriers’ Conference Committee, which represents the railroads, and the labor organizations, which band together in coalitions to negotiate. Unions send leadership to represent them in those negotiations. There are about 125,000 freight-rail workers in the United States; they can’t all negotiate separately.
The negotiation phase has already lasted three years. Unions requested, and were granted, help from the National Mediation Board, an independent federal agency set up to help resolve these disputes, earlier this year. Unions then requested to be released from mediation after only two months of work, which is much shorter than normal, and rejected the opportunity to enter into arbitration.
Parties then got independent recommendations from a presidential emergency board (PEB), which resolved wages and health benefits, the two largest issues in any contract negotiation, in a way that both unions and railroads accepted. They granted the largest general wage increase in the history of national bargaining, 24 percent over five years, plus $1,000 annual bonuses, and rejected a proposal from the railroads to restructure employees’ health plans, thereby preserving the status quo on some of the most generous health benefits in the country.
Then came the deal brokered by Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh in mid September, which arose because of the two largest unions holding out over the issue of sick leave. Railroads granted another concession to labor through those negotiations, and Biden celebrated the deal in the White House Rose Garden. At this point, the railroads essentially said they’re done negotiating, and they promised to make deals with each union based on that agreement.
They kept their word, and eight of twelve unions made agreements, with membership ratifying nine of 13 contracts. That included the BLET, the second-largest union, which was one of the holdouts that spurred the Walsh-brokered deal in September. The railroads’ position has not changed, and they are now urging Congress to adopt the same Walsh-brokered deal that Biden supports and the House overwhelmingly approved.
Rubio’s claim that “Biden & the union bosses want Congress to step in & impose their deal” is not correct. Biden wants Congress to impose the Walsh-brokered deal, but union leadership wants Congress to impose the sweetheart deal House Democrats hatched that goes beyond the Walsh-brokered deal.
BLET president Dennis Pierce said that unions “will do everything possible” to get the Democrats’ resolution through the Senate, and is urging membership to contact legislators to that end. SMART-TD leadership said in a statement yesterday that it “does not support the notion of Congress intervening” but urges “the House and the Senate to vote in favor of guaranteeing seven days of paid sick leave to rail workers.” The BMWED, the third-largest union, said in a statement on Tuesday that “a call to Congress to act immediately to pass legislation that adopts tentative agreements that exclude paid sick leave ignores the Railroad Workers’ concerns.” Each of these positions is directly contrary to Biden’s position.
If no deal is approved by December 9, a nationwide rail shutdown could begin, causing tremendous economic damage, especially in agriculture, energy, and raw materials. Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) was very clear in his support for rail workers’ ability to strike when he blocked a Senate resolution to adopt a labor contract in September, and his position has not changed since then.
National Review reached out to Rubio’s office for comment, but a spokesman argued that NR misrepresented Rubio’s position, which is that Congress should not get involved. A brief statement from chief of staff Mike Needham said that “12 Republicans voted this week to codify gay marriage and put well-intentioned Christians at risk of legal harassment, but National Review is writing a hit piece on Marco Rubio standing up for some of the hardest working people in our country. That’s telling about the state of the conservative movement.”
If it comes down to the wire, and the choice is between Congress forcing a deal and a nationwide shutdown of the rail network, Rubio’s position as expressed so far would, if adopted by the Senate, result in a shutdown. There is no way, under current labor law, to “get rid of union bosses,” and the railroads have said, after three years of negotiation, that they’re done.
There’s a House resolution, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, that would prevent a strike by adopting a tentative agreement that both sides found acceptable in September and eight of twelve union memberships have since ratified. The Senate would be foolish not to pass it.