I'm not sure how it goes down in the USA, but here in Canada, federal transport workers are de facto prohibited from striking or other job action. Every time they go on strike, the next day the government passes legislation declaring the strike illegal because they are essential workers and a disruption poses a threat to infrastructure of national interest, and a new binding labour contract is imposed on the workers. The only legal option is to quit. (But you can't even encourage your coworkers to quit, too. That amounts to illegal labour agitation.) Air traffic control, port workers, railway workers, etc. get this treatment. They have no right to strike, in practice.
Edit: a quick Google search suggests it's same situation in the USA:
> The House has passed a resolution 290-137 that would force unions to accept a tentative agreement reached earlier this year between railroad managers and their workers and make an imminent strike illegal.
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/30/1139876084/congress-house-rai...
Given the level of corruption we live with today, that term packs an increasingly weak punch as labor continues to see completely unacceptable work arrangements.
What will eventually happen is they will strike anyway. It plays out in courts and a lot of people get harmed.
That same corruption will be the source of blame placed on labor.
It will eventually be on all of us to reject that proposition, stand up for these people and insist on reasonable and prudent labor arrangements. Yes, this means shit costs a bit more. So what?
The clowns abusing their labor could always give a little margin back too. Think they will? Nope. Not willingly. Not one cent.
Realistically the rail workers almost certainly don't need to strike to cause pain. They can likely slow things down dramatically by following rules and regs to the letter. Perhaps we'll start to see infrastructure sabotaged. Maybe dockworkers will refuse to handle rail cargo. Maybe Teamsters will refuse to do last mile for rail cargo. Who knows.
That assumes a situation where workers are able to do these things. Sure, in theory everyone could quit, but then they would need another way to earn money.
If employers know that their employees cannot afford to quit or risk losing their job, the whole "the market will fix it" theory falls flat, since there is no market.
Not sure how if this is the case for railroad workers.
The workers could decide to stop doing precision train scheduling (or whatever it was called). They could force their employer to give them concessions. If you're saying the workers can't afford to quit or resist then you're saying they have to accept whatever they are given.
Yeah, coming from a country with strong labour laws, it's mind boggling that this is legal in the US.
Is that a nickname for some politician you don’t like, or is an actual serial killer complaining about the president and it’s relevant because… I guess because we weren’t expecting to hear from him?
Help an expat out here!
> Among the practices prohibited by the Taft–Hartley act are jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing, closed shops, and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns. The amendments also allowed states to enact right-to-work laws banning union shops.
Labor in the US is weak by design.
What're they going to do, imprison the masses? Illegal doesn't mean much without realistic consequences.
But, usually the ruling class + capitalist class targeted those they identified as labor leaders (often with bogus charges-- even without evidence, these often ended in convictions. With some of these convictions resulting in the executions of innocent people).
But, just firing all workers who participate as was done in the 1980s when air traffic controllers attempted a strike would likely be sufficient to scare the working class back into compliance.
Or, for a larger action, you could punish the entire working class by sharply raising interest rates and inducing a recession. With the resulting large supply of unemployed/underemployed workers, labor will be too weak to make demands.
But also only “blue” led states have minimum required paid sick laws, so at least they are trying. Given the option between red and blue, it seems obvious which one to support if you support paid leave for all.
Agree, and furthermore, I'd argue that the blue "Third Way"[1] ushered in by Bill Clinton in the US is what hugely screwed labor, and 20 years later leads to the election of DJT.
Why can't Biden/congress make the agreement that the unions want and ratify that? There are multiple ways to avoid the strike; I don't understand why this has to be on ownership's terms. Long term, (or at least in 2024, which is about as long term as we get in American politics anymore) this is going to let team Red claim to be the pro-worker team.
but they are those who are voting those proposals down.
>Why can't Biden/congress make the agreement that the unions want and ratify that?
because they need 60 votes in senate and obviously don't have them.
I just don't understand how you can rationally reconcile party A voting against those proposals, blaming party B for not passing it, and claiming that party A is for those proposals. It's some weird doublethink.
It's exactly the same right-wing doublethink that spurs budget cuts and justifies the cuts by pointing out how ineffective government is. Anyone promulgating such notions is either a sucker or dishonest.
Party of voting against the majority self interests will continue to vote against the majority's self interests.
Nobody sane will believe them; while I believe the start of this was when the New Left captured "Team Blue" in the 1970s and blue collar workers famously became part of the Reagan coalition (and worked with him against the Soviet Union, particularly in Poland), the GOP establishment hates this part of its base.
Repeating part of another comment which in general is a repeat of all of this:
A great deal of Trump's otherwise inexplicable popularity is that he's a 1970s NYC Democrat just like Reagan in the 1980s was a self-described FDR Democrat and he doesn't hate these people. Doesn't care or do much for them, but this is a palpable difference from the GOPe.
Those blue collar Reagan Democrats that you're talking about are the ones that believe that. Same people more or less.
That is why Trump did well, he appeared to them to be a pro-worker Republican in the 2016 campaign and they voted for him.
While anti-communism may have been more impactful in the 70s, the Democrats being solid pro-big-business for the past 30 years has convinced a lot of people to vote Republican since they'll get low taxes and the freedom to do whatever they want personally. You may claim they're not sane or they're stupid, but that doesn't win their votes, and they're not interested in long-winded explanations of what Democrats are providing for them at the margins while yelling at them that they're racist/sexist/homophobic/etc.
If the Democrats were more pro-labor across the board and the message was simply "here is universal health care / child care / college and strong labor regulations for everyone" then there would be a real blue wave.
No they could not. That would lead to economic catastrophe worse than march/april 2020. Dems would get swept next election and the workers wouldn't even win because dems would be forced to pass this exact law within a week of the strike starting. The government can't let 100,000 unrelated people lose their jobs, and they really can't let grocery stores run out of stuff or coal plants run out of coal causing blackouts.
Your claim would be more useful if you pointed out the vote was 52-43; with no great effort six Republicans voted for it, five Democrats are AWOL and Manchin for some reason I can't imagine voted against it.
The Senate also voted 26-69 against 60 more days of negotiations.
Fact is they hid behind the parliamentarian, insisted on bipartisan legislation as a priority and then proceeded to cede the power granted to make that excuse a reality today.
Personally, I reject it all and know damn well this could all play out differently and it doesn't because ordinary people are just not a priority.
As you say, they have their reasons for keeping it.
Edit: A more extreme example; there is a rule that says airlines mustn't make pilots work more than a certain number of hours without a rest period. This rule applies to all airlines. This rule was introduced to reduce the number of planes crashed by tired pilots.
Even still, I think I had 2 days off when my child was born before I ran out of paid "sick" days and had to go to work.