by Chris Black

This was expected since Biden is Wall St’s b*tch and most of these railroad companies are owned by hedge funds.

Over 100,000 workers have gone nearly three years without a national contract. On almost every issue, Biden’s Presidential Emergency Board supported the train industry, advocating wage hikes below inflation. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), which represents railroad workers, approved strike action by a vote of 99.5 percent last month, demonstrating that workers were determined to fight against conditions that have reached the breaking point. Shortly after that vote, the PEB was appointed.

Less than 30 days remain for the railroads and the unions to come to a deal that would be put to the workers’ vote.

It’s predicted that 25–30K railroad workers will resign whether there is a strike or not if the firms don’t give them what they want. You better be ready for empty store shelves.

The U.S. is Now 30 Days Away From a Possible Railroad Labor Strike t.co/Duuuux3xmY

— dimitri (@hedgeproject) August 19, 2022

The U.S. is Now 30 Days Away From a Possible Railroad Labor Strike

Congress Holds the Power to Intervene

While workers can legally go on strike starting Sept. 16 if they don’t choose to adopt the board’s recommendations, Congress can intervene if workers decide to strike Sept. 16.

“If history repeats itself, the last time we had a stoppage was in the early 1990s,” he says. “And I believe it lasted one day, maybe two days, before Congress passed a bill prohibiting a lockout or strike. Essentially, the two sides had to then go back to work on reaching agreement. So, Congress has a lot of power here. We would like to think they’re going to exercise it, and we’re certainly going to encourage them to exercise it because stopping the railroads would be very, very bad for the agricultural economy.”

Fisher says the railroads have been working to hire more workers, but considering the current labor shortage and shipping delays, he expects rail delays to last another year. The rail delays have been so bad, some feed users report being just days away from running out of feed. Those delays could be inevitable even if a strike is averted in September.

“Obviously, it could get worse if the trains were just to completely stop. But the service right now, even without a stop, is just not the best,” says Fisher. “There’s still a lot of delays as far as bringing rail cars to facilities, pulling them and delivering them. So, now the grain industry is still not in a good spot with respect to rail transportation.”

Tense Labor Negotiations

The April hearing in front of the STB gave a hint to how tense those labor negotiations could continue to be. Rail carriers pointed out how severely impacted they’ve been from what’s been dubbed the “Great Resignation,” and the issues getting labor back up to speed. Certain rail carriers also outlined the plans in place to get labor back to necessary levels to operate efficiently and smoothly.

However, rail workers place blame on the railroads, saying there’s more to the story. Mark Wallace, locomotive engineer, and vice president of Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), North America’s oldest rail labor union, testified during the STB hearing in April.

“Since 1984, 40 railroads have been reduced to seven class one carriers, now largely controlled by speculators and hedge fund investors,” he stated. “This culture of profits over safety, customer service and the lives of railroad workers, is now exposed as this network fails on a daily basis.”

Union Pacific, which is also part of the labor negotiations between rail workers and freight railroads over a new labor contract, signaled in July that the two sides were still far from reaching an agreement.

“I wish we could have gotten an agreement earlier in the process,” Union Pacific’s Lance Fritz said. “But the railroads and the union leadership are pretty far apart right now in terms of what we think is an appropriate settlement on wages.”

The talks involve nearly 115,000 union rail workers and more than 30 railroads and started in 2020.

 

Railroaders demand strike action as pro-management Presidential Emergency Board declares workers have “no claim to share” in record profits

One highly revealing claim made by management during the PEB hearings, summarized in the final report, provoked particular fury among railroaders. “The Carriers maintain that capital investment and risk are the reasons for their profits, not any contributions from labor,” the PEB report said. “The Carriers assert that since employees have been fairly and adequately paid for their efforts… then they have no claim to share in the [profits].”

From the standpoint of basic economics, the claim that the railroads’ profits do not come from labor is a self-serving lie. As first explained over 150 years ago by Marx, all profits are ultimately derived from the exploitation of the working class, measured by the difference between the value of workers’ wages and the value they produce during the working day. Extreme levels of exploitation are why the railroad industry, in spite of massive delays and congestion, is the most profitable in the country, with a 50 percent profit margin posted in 2019.

The second part of the statement, that workers’ are not entitled to share in the profits, is practically a paraphrase of what Marx wrote on wages. The statement taken as a whole also indicates that the railroads see workers’ wages as merely a subtraction from their profit margins, suggesting there is no ceiling to the number of workers they would chase out of the industry through brutal work regimes. Indeed, even though the workforce has been reduced by 20 percent since 2019, the railroads have been moving almost the same amount of freight and have posted record profits during the pandemic. Moreover, they have been pushing for years to reduce train crews from two to one.

The ruling prepares a showdown between railroad workers on one side and the railroads, the pro-corporate unions and the government and Democrats on the other. The self-serving lies of the union bureaucracy, calling on workers to place their trust in the Railway Labor Act, the Democrats and the White House, are being shattered. Assuming the contract is voted down, Congress, for the moment still controlled by the Democrats, will intervene in a bid to block a strike. This would take place around the time of the midterm elections, creating an overlapping eruption of class class struggle and political crisis.