A Great Miscalculation

I have been hearing about the Rail Workers’ potential strike for over five months. Long before it became a public story with news organizations. For that reason, we stocked up more than usual with frozen meats, milk and other necessities. I even sent my children money and told them to go buy extra food and other necessities.

Why was I so in the know?

Because I have a nephew, who on a contract with the railroads, transports rail workers from the airports and rail yards to their hotels, in a van. And they talk in the van. My nephew being a former trucker was keenly interested in their conversations and kept asking them questions and got to know their beef. He built a kindred relationship with them because as a former trucker he was constantly having to deal with the companies who simply saw him as a mule and not a human being.

He called me to tell me “Aunt Bunnie, the railroad is going to go on strike.” I knew what that meant. Shortages of goods and supplies. All those ships that were stuck offshore during Covid? Well, all those ships depend on truckers and railroads to move those goods they have brought to shore. And if anything, the internal movement of critical goods such as food, fuel and fertilizer in this country depend heavily on the railroad and the trucking industry. A breakdown in either sector is potential disaster, for everybody.

He told me five months ago “It’s not the money, they want sick leave".

He explained that they get one day a year for sick leave and even if they take that one day they get penalized “points.” Points. Let that sink in. A day of sick leave is a seven point penalty. They are only allowed to rack up twenty-two points in a year altogether or risk getting fired.

So let’s get this straight. I am sick or maybe my child or spouse is sick four days and I need to stay home to take care of myself or them and now I’m threatened with losing my job?

But it gets better. Let’s say they want to take the day off for their daughter’s birthday. That’s ten points, not seven.

Now, the geniuses in the United States Senate threw them a 24% raise. That’s great. But their real gripe is the points system and the lack of paid leave.

What irks me is a Congress that took nearly a year off, didn’t show up for their jobs, held zoom meetings and sent proxies into the chambers to cast their votes, did not get penalized any points. Yet they have the temerity to say to conductors and other rail workers, yeah well…this is the best we could do.

Listening to Senator Bernie Sanders floor speech it suddenly occurred to me that might have been the first time in my life I agreed with Bernie 100%.

My husband, a senior federal government employee who earns a six figure salary gets thirteen days of sick leave per year. And he can accumulate. Right now, he has over 400 hours of sick leave. He also donates a day a year to the “sick leave bank” for folks who have longer term illnesses, like cancer etc. People who will have an extended illness that uses up all their sick leave, can apply to the agency sick leave bank and if they miss two or three months of work, have it all covered by the donations.

My take is that the Congress, mostly the Senate, just stepped into a pile of turds on this one. It wasn’t about the money, it was about the “points” system.

And that miscalculation may have been based on memories of a decades old walk out by the Air Traffic Controllers.

The Air Traffic Controllers went on strike in 1981 causing President Ronald Reagan to summarily fire all air traffic controllers and replace them with military personnel. Military personnel who had experience with air traffic. I'm pretty sure we cannot find a surplus of military personnel who know how to run a railroad and just throw them into the job. So that may have been a big “Boo-Boo” brought to us by the old, crusty Senators on Capitol Hill.

In a conversation with my nephew I ruminated that should the railroad workers strike, they will be joined shortly by truckers, steam fitters, coal miners, auto workers and the entire three lettered organizations of both the AFL and CIO. The damn working people of this country. Not the goddamn paper pushing, bloviating Harvard Law School class of Capitol Hill.

They will be joined in their fight because nobody would work under those retaliatory conditions, nobody. And it’s not like the railroad workers can’t be immediately re-employed, companies cannot get enough workers and employees. When I see that Taco Bell is paying $20 an hour on the Eastern Shore of Maryland simply for sitting at a cash register and handing you a bag of Mexican Fast Food Goodness, even I get tempted to apply.