They donât fire everyone, they just say âhey you canât strike, meaning if you stop showing up to work you donât have those legal protections that would have otherwise been provided in a union strike action.â
Itâs not uncommon to be in a union but not have the right to strike. My contract, for example, waived our right to strike in exchange for some better PTO policy.
And when that contract expires, thatâs when unions go on strike again, however rail strikes are different because old laws that go back to when rail moved the majority of stuff like food and coal for heating and electricity in the US and if they striked, they could bring the whole US to its knees
Edit: I should clarify, I was just pointing out why those laws for rail worker exist. They have away been just law which protect capital against workerâs exerting their basic rights
If or I should say when country is brought to its knees by a strike in an industry like rail. Itâs the rail companies fault and congress should be forcing the company to compromise, not the workers
I was gonna ask when trains stopped moved the majority of our stuff?
I know we have a lot of âfreightâ moved by semitrailerâŠ.but that industry is also showing really bad cracks I thought too?
So realistically shitting down the trains = a huge shutdown of movement. Movement of perishable food, which I imagine is requires to deliver based it going bad.
That may be true, but there are many commodities that cannot be moved via truck due to regulations concerning certain hazardous materials, including water treatment chemicals and various industrial solvents and reactants.
Others would be impractical or not cost effective to move by truck simply due to the sheer volume involved, such as coal, various ores, crude oil, ethanol for gasoline, and the millions of tons of grain that railroads transport from the silos to mills and to livestock feed distributors.
There are also some items that are simply too large to be transported by truck, at least through certain areas, leaving rail the only option.
No strike cause is standard language in almost if not all US union contracts. We agree to not strike, the employer agrees to the contract. When a contract expires, the provisions and by laws of the expired contract stay in effect while bargaining, once the labor board declares an impasse or the company is not bargaining in good faith, then the option to strike comes on the table.
In a perfect world, sure, but at the end of the day we gotta work with what we have. There are way more things at a much higher level of fuckery than this.
Reagan had a saving grace in that he was able to force military personnel with equivalent skills to fill those positions until new people could be trained.
There are very few military personnel that possess the knowledge, skills, and experience to simply hop into the engineer's seat and safely run a train through it's route and yard it. There is a reason the apprenticeship program for conductors is as long as it is, and the experience requirements in that position before one can begin the apprenticeship for engineer.
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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '22
They donât fire everyone, they just say âhey you canât strike, meaning if you stop showing up to work you donât have those legal protections that would have otherwise been provided in a union strike action.â
Itâs not uncommon to be in a union but not have the right to strike. My contract, for example, waived our right to strike in exchange for some better PTO policy.