THE BIDEN administration urged railroads and unions to reach a deal to avoid a railroad work stoppage, saying on Monday it would pose ‘an unacceptable outcome’ to the US economy that could cost $2 billion a day.
Railroads, including Union Pacific, Berkshire Hathaway’s BNSF, CSX, and Norfolk Southern, have until a minute after midnight tomorrow to reach tentative deals with hold-out unions representing about 60,000 workers. Failing to do so opens the door to union strikes, employer lockouts and congressional intervention.
US Labour Secretary Marty Walsh is postponing travel to Ireland to remain in talks, the department said on Monday.
‘The parties continue to negotiate, and last night Secretary Walsh again engaged to push the parties to reach a resolution that averts any shutdown of our rail system,’ a Labour Department spokesperson said. ‘All parties need to stay at the table, bargain in good faith to resolve outstanding issues, and come to an agreement.’
The brinkmanship comes at a sensitive time for unions, railroads, shippers, consumers and President Joe Biden, who appointed an emergency board to help break the impasse.
A White House official said that Biden had been in touch with unions and companies to try to avert a strike, as have cabinet officials.
US railroads account for almost 30% of cargo transport by weight and maintain about 97% of the tracks Amtrak uses for commuter rail. Widespread railroad disruptions could choke supplies of food and fuel, spawn transportation chaos and stoke inflation.
Unions, which won significant pay increases, are pushing back on work rules that would require employees to be on-call and available to work most days. Railroads are struggling to rebuild employee ranks after slashing their workforce by almost 30% over the past six years.
At midday yesterday, Norfolk Southern stopped accepting intermodal cargo: goods that move by combinations of ship, truck and rail transport. Those shipments included consumer products and e-commerce packages that account for almost half of US rail traffic.
That could exacerbate existing backups at East Coast seaports and inland hubs, causing cascading delays across the country as farmers prepare for harvest and retailers restock stores for the Christmas shopping season. Bulk commodities – including food, energy, automotive and construction products – make up the remainder of US rail shipments.
US industry groups are pressuring Congress to avert the worst-case scenario.
‘A shutdown of the nation’s rail service would have enormous national consequences,’ the US Chamber of Commerce said on Monday, adding it would lead to perishable food waste, disrupt goods delivery and prevent heating fuel and chemicals transport.
The Labour Department said there have been dozens of calls by Cabinet officials and other top administration officials to help the sides reach agreement.
Railroads late last week said they would cease shipments of hazardous materials such as chlorine used to purify drinking water and chemicals used in fertiliser on Monday so they are not stranded in unsafe locations if rail traffic stops.
On Sunday, two unions negotiating contracts said halting hazardous shipments was designed to give employers leverage ahead of this week’s deadline to secure labour agreements.
As of Sunday, eight of 12 unions had reached tentative deals covering about half of 115,000 workers, the National Railway Labour Conference (NRLC) said.
Hold-outs include the transportation division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers (SMART-TD) and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET).
There has not been a nationwide US rail service stoppage since 1992, when major freight railroads closed operations for two days in response to an International Association of Machinists strike against CSX, saying that a strike against one railroad was a strike against all railroads.
- Fifteen thousand Minnesota nurses began a three-day strike on Monday in what the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) said was the largest private sector nurses’ strike in US history.
The strike spanned 16 Minnesota hospitals and was authorised by union members last month after over five months of negotiations with hospital administrators led to what the union says are inadequate or essentially non-existent offers for workers’ safety, staffing and salary demands.
‘Hospital executives have already driven nurses away from the bedside by their refusal to solve the crises of staffing and retention in our hospitals, and we hope they will not be so brash as to fire nurses for standing up to demand better,’ MNA said in a statement earlier this month.
‘If hospital executives want to avoid a strike on September 12, they should spend less time and money on lawyers and more time working with nurses to settle fair contracts to improve patient care and working conditions in our hospitals,’ the union continued.
Nurses say that, while they didn’t want to strike, issues like understaffing at their hospitals mean they aren’t able to adequately provide for patients, even when a patient is facing an urgent or emergency situation.
‘I can’t give my patients the care they deserve,’ Chris Rubesch, vice president of the Minnesota Nurses Association and a Duluth nurse, said. ‘Call lights go unanswered. Patients should only be waiting for a few seconds or minutes if they’ve soiled themselves or their oxygen came unplugged or they need to go to the bathroom, but that can take 10 minutes or more. Those are things that can’t wait.’
The union has asked for a 27 to 30 per cent raise over the next three years. These raises would more closely match both inflationary and staffing pressures that its members face, they say – especially as nurses as a whole have faced increased risks throughout the pandemic.
Hospital administrators have countered with a 10 to 12 per cent raise over the next three years, or a bit over 3 per cent a year on average – far lower than recent rates of inflation. The hospitals blame the strike on workers, saying that they have refused to negotiate, though the MNA claims it is administrators who haven’t budged on key issues.
Many of the hospital groups are hiring nurses to replace workers as they strike; Twin Cities Hospital Group said that it’s hiring 2,000 travelling nurses during the strike, while other affected hospitals are also bringing in temporary workers, according to reports.
The workers have garnered the support of local and national lawmakers, including Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democratic-Farmer-Labour Party member, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).
‘I stand in solidarity with the 15,000 Minnesota nurses on strike this week fighting for safer care, fair scheduling, and higher wages,’ Sanders said on Twitter on Monday. ‘Nurses are the backbone of our health care system. They understand what’s best for their patients.’
The health care sector is facing major issues with nurse staffing, which has taken a huge hit amid the pandemic and never quite recovered. While administrators complain that nurses are ‘exploiting’ the shortage, nurses across the country have said that the shortage can be chalked up to hospitals’ failures to adequately invest in their own workers. Such failures also endanger patients, nurses say.
Health care workers have led strikes throughout the pandemic. According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, there were five strikes of over 1,000 workers from unions representing health care workers in 2020 and four such strikes in 2021.
Labour activity in the sector appears to be reaching a new high this year, according to Healthcare Dive, with at least seven strikes of 1,000 workers or more in health care so far, including the Minnesota workers’ strike. Recently, a strike set to consist of hundreds of nurses at UW Health in Madison, Wisconsin, was narrowly averted.
- The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) welcomed 4,436 new members to the AFGE family in August, representing the fifth consecutive month of growth.
Each month, the union has to add thousands of new members to offset drops due to retirement, people changing jobs or leaving the union. In August, the net gain was 655, the highest in five months.
All but three districts saw a net gain in membership with District 5 having the highest net increase of 191 members last month. With more than 50,000 dues-paying members, District 5 is the largest District at AFGE.
District 5 National Vice President David Mollett congratulated the locals and staff for the increases.
‘Any increases in membership within District 5 are due to a concerted effort by the locals, national representatives, and national organisers working diligently to make it happen,’ he said. ‘I congratulate these efforts.’
AFGE has been ramping up its organising programme, which was severely hampered during the previous administration due to anti-worker, anti-union policies and many employees choosing to retire or leave government service.
AFGE Membership and Organisation Director Dave Cann said this growth is a real meaningful sort: some 4,500 federal employees standing up and demanding a voice.
‘We are not just growing our membership, but growing our union, our power and our ability to command new rights at the bargaining table, pay raises and job security on the Hill, a demand for fair treatment for every single federal and D.C. government employee,’ he said.
‘As A Philip Randolph said, this growth tells a story, “Let the nation and the world know the meaning of our numbers.”’
- The Teamsters Union supports recent efforts by the Federal Trade Commission to scrutinise the troubling rise of mass surveillance and urges the agency to explore how commercial surveillance and lax data security practices pose unique harm to workers.
The FTC plans to host its Commercial Surveillance and Data Security Public Forum today to evaluate several concerns it is seeking public comment on. The agency is exploring potential rules to ‘crack down on harmful commercial surveillance and lax data security’.
‘As terrifying as it is, working people are growing accustomed to their personal information being exposed and exploited by corporate interests who face little accountability or punishment,’ said Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien.
‘Regulators have got to give these corporations a taste of their own medicine. Corporate America builds and sustains itself by bullying working people or robbing them blind entirely, whether it’s unpaid wages or private data. The advancements that employers have made to workplace surveillance are another appalling reminder that Big Business will never change its playbook. Working people must fight back.’
The Teamsters have repeatedly made clear that the methods employers like Amazon and UPS use to monitor workers are developed to stifle any concerted activity by employees, while also surveilling unsuspecting consumers. These dangerous corporate tools include navigation software, driver-facing cameras, item scanners, wristbands, thermal cameras, other security cameras, and recorded footage.
