What are you talking about? Yes, they ended the strike without getting paid go leave, but the WH continued to work on it after and they did get what they were asking for. Just media didn’t bother reporting on that little detail as it wasn’t “newsworthy”.
That’s still not great. The point of strikes is to be disruptive. This undermines the power of unions. Sure the union got what they wanted, but next time they might not. This whole thing is just the usual Dems playing both sides
The struggle for workers’ rights is not one battle, and enforcing a precedent that the government can and will back corps during a strike diminishes the power of the strike, arguably the most powerful tools for workers’ rights, at is core. Biden essentially declared strikes aren’t acceptable, but they’ll deign to help groups when they see fit, and when this happens under a republican government, we all know there’ll be no work done afterwards to satisfy the workers, who now have a diminished position to work with.
The foundation of workers’ rights that’s been built up over the last hundred+ years was very much damaged by Biden, and he shouldn’t get a pass for that. At best it was a stupid blunder he worked to fix, at worst it was a manipulative effort to weaken the effectiveness of these groups while also establishing a reliance on “sympathetic” governmental powers as necessary to get anything done. Neither is particularly great.
Alternatively, you could look at it as the Biden administration declared that strikes above a certain level of disruption to critical infrastructure warrant the government stepping in, even if the demands are valid.
Something about the administration unambiguously endorsing a large but not critical infrastructure strike, like they are with the UAW, implies that maybe the point isn’t to signal that strikes are unacceptable.
It’s almost like the executive branch has to balance a myriad of competing interests, all of which are important.
The government could’ve stepped in in support of the striking workers, but they didn’t. Now that the strike isn’t causing “problems”, they’re all for it!
The point of strike is to get what is demanded. Much better outcome for everyone involved (including the very people who are striking) is to get demands satisfied without having to strike. Do you think people strike, because they love doing that? No one does.
He forced them back to work before their demands could be met. That is a fail. He may have gotten something after the fact, but that doesn’t change that he forced workers back to work instead of striking. What if he wasn’t able to get that done?
FWIW, rail workers were asking for 7 sick days a year. 7. And Biden got them 5 with the ability to convert 2 personal days to sick days. As a note, even 7 is a ridiculously low number.
He should have sided with unions then, too. The only reason he’s doing this is because Republicans are saying that the UAW is being damaged by Biden’s policies.
If our infrastructure is so brittle that one strike can disrupt the economy as severely as pro-strikebreaking centrist Democrats say, the current rail companies cannot be trusted to continue operating it.
My point is, it shouldn’t be Biden inserting himself into what should have been a conversation between the union and the railroad. He forced the union’s hand and then said “trust me”. I want you to imagine a world where a politician forced a company to accept a union’s offer and then told the company to “trust them”.
As if an American politician would ever force a company to accept a union’s (very reasonable, FWIW) offer.
You mean when he in the three months afterwards helped the workers and the union to make sure they got their demands, while also not causing an actual rail shutdown that would cause massive harm to multiple areas?
Maybe I’m uninformed, but how are rail strikes, which are common in my country, massive harm that a government of half a continent feels the need to step in?
It was going to be a massive rail strike in a situation where logistics were already strained. The US is run by rail, despite how little we invest into it. It’s an absolutely massive amount of land area, and the only reasonable way to transport things across it is rail. It would have crippled almost every business.
That said, if the workers are that important they should get everything they demand. The Biden administration did get them some of their demands, which is better than I expected, they should get more.
Remember rail strike?
Yeah wouldn’t trust him on this. He definitely not on the side of workers.
What are you talking about? Yes, they ended the strike without getting paid go leave, but the WH continued to work on it after and they did get what they were asking for. Just media didn’t bother reporting on that little detail as it wasn’t “newsworthy”.
Edit: https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
That’s still not great. The point of strikes is to be disruptive. This undermines the power of unions. Sure the union got what they wanted, but next time they might not. This whole thing is just the usual Dems playing both sides
The point of strikes is to get employers to meet the demands of the workers
But nothing.
The struggle for workers’ rights is not one battle, and enforcing a precedent that the government can and will back corps during a strike diminishes the power of the strike, arguably the most powerful tools for workers’ rights, at is core. Biden essentially declared strikes aren’t acceptable, but they’ll deign to help groups when they see fit, and when this happens under a republican government, we all know there’ll be no work done afterwards to satisfy the workers, who now have a diminished position to work with.
The foundation of workers’ rights that’s been built up over the last hundred+ years was very much damaged by Biden, and he shouldn’t get a pass for that. At best it was a stupid blunder he worked to fix, at worst it was a manipulative effort to weaken the effectiveness of these groups while also establishing a reliance on “sympathetic” governmental powers as necessary to get anything done. Neither is particularly great.
Alternatively, you could look at it as the Biden administration declared that strikes above a certain level of disruption to critical infrastructure warrant the government stepping in, even if the demands are valid.
Something about the administration unambiguously endorsing a large but not critical infrastructure strike, like they are with the UAW, implies that maybe the point isn’t to signal that strikes are unacceptable.
It’s almost like the executive branch has to balance a myriad of competing interests, all of which are important.
The government could’ve stepped in in support of the striking workers, but they didn’t. Now that the strike isn’t causing “problems”, they’re all for it!
The point of strike is to get what is demanded. Much better outcome for everyone involved (including the very people who are striking) is to get demands satisfied without having to strike. Do you think people strike, because they love doing that? No one does.
He forced them back to work before their demands could be met. That is a fail. He may have gotten something after the fact, but that doesn’t change that he forced workers back to work instead of striking. What if he wasn’t able to get that done?
FWIW, rail workers were asking for 7 sick days a year. 7. And Biden got them 5 with the ability to convert 2 personal days to sick days. As a note, even 7 is a ridiculously low number.
He should have sided with unions then, too. The only reason he’s doing this is because Republicans are saying that the UAW is being damaged by Biden’s policies.
He also robbed the right wing of a “unions bad” moment when a rail strike disrupted the whole economy.
If our infrastructure is so brittle that one strike can disrupt the economy as severely as pro-strikebreaking centrist Democrats say, the current rail companies cannot be trusted to continue operating it.
This all-or-nothing approach is what gives you nothing more often then not
My point is, it shouldn’t be Biden inserting himself into what should have been a conversation between the union and the railroad. He forced the union’s hand and then said “trust me”. I want you to imagine a world where a politician forced a company to accept a union’s offer and then told the company to “trust them”.
As if an American politician would ever force a company to accept a union’s (very reasonable, FWIW) offer.
You mean when he in the three months afterwards helped the workers and the union to make sure they got their demands, while also not causing an actual rail shutdown that would cause massive harm to multiple areas?
Maybe I’m uninformed, but how are rail strikes, which are common in my country, massive harm that a government of half a continent feels the need to step in?
It was going to be a massive rail strike in a situation where logistics were already strained. The US is run by rail, despite how little we invest into it. It’s an absolutely massive amount of land area, and the only reasonable way to transport things across it is rail. It would have crippled almost every business.
That said, if the workers are that important they should get everything they demand. The Biden administration did get them some of their demands, which is better than I expected, they should get more.