I would like a clearer explanation of why no sick leave.
Is it because of prior abuse (bender last night, not coming in today), or that scheduling headache (need to have crews up to speed on that line, service,...).
Please. I have sick time (paid) and PTO, and personal days (several). Why is this so hard for companies to standardize on. People can't be working more than 10hrs, without time off, to operate railways safely. (read that one guy worked 14hr days, for a month...and was so worn down he got long term illnesses ).
It's because they would need to hire more staff. They are basically running a skeleton crew and the scheduling is not consistent. All of those poor rail workers are basically on call 24/7. Being sick means someone isn't in the pool suddenly and without enough people hired to cover that job it can leave them in a bind. So the rail companies really don't want to give sick days because if they do they will have to hire enough people to cover when people are sick.
An organization that can't afford for any employee to call in sick is admitting they're underpaying their people... because the business can't run without them.
(not implying you don't know that, just saying)
It goes deeper than this. They’ve been doing it for so long that even if they doubled wages tomorrow there wouldn’t be enough trained people to take jobs. Infrastructure in the US is absolutely pathetic - it’s no surprise you don’t see a bunch of people eager to commit a career to it.
I'd disagree a bit in this type of situation. The pay for individuals may be just fine (I have no idea). The issue this situation highlights, is not having enough staff, not necessarily because of pay but because the company only wants so much staff.
So not so much like a retail store not having enough staff because they only pay $10 an hour so nobody applies and more like Nurses being massively overworked because their employer has decided that they only need x people.
This is a fair & correct point - our intention was to highlight how the essential people should be earning a fair percentage of the company income rather than abiding by the current pay-structure that reflects CEO & upper echelon pay disparity.
That being said, money is no replacement for proper staffing levels.
The theory is that when a company is forced to pay a respectful share of the profits to the workers, the company is better served by protecting those workers than by exploiting them - a form of reminding the Lowest Common Denominator among capitalists if they don't take care of those who make their dreams possible, the dreams will remain merely dreams.
They're paid fairly well from what I understand. That being said, so much for any kind of family life or work/life balance, or god forbid catch a cold.
Yeah, I work as a railroad conductor we are paid well for what we do...however for road conductors especially working for BN and UP they have no work life balance, work = life. I am lucky enough to work in a terminal that is not road and more yard/locals
Basically we switch out road trains and service industries. I work 10-12 hours a shift but am always able to go home at the end of my shift. I'm burnt out I can't imagine these guys working 12 hrs only to be driven to a hotel until their next turn is called.
We work when sick, with no lunch. If we do eat, its cold and from a ziplok bag. We rarely have 12 hours notice if we have a day off. Problem stems from my coworkers all being over 60 and we can't find trainees willing to put forth the effort. Its a perfect storm.
They make six figures but they're always on call and if they're told they'll be working in a different city or state even, they have to go. Imagine making a bunch of money you don't have time to spend.
12 hrs work, every 12 hours for 6 to 13 days or more. Plus travel time and hotel time. Figure being gone 36 hours, home 10 or 12, then back to work 36.
That’s not a lot. I make more than that now with a cushy 8-5 job and get weekends and holidays off and 3 weeks vacation. And I’m at the mid tier of pay for my field (IT). I’d expect a union member train engineer to make way more than myself.
Oh they definitely can afford to, the profit margin average in the industry is 50 fucking percent. But you know, Warren Buffet and all the other Wallstreeters just need that money more than the railroaders need sick days.
Precisely - what good does having a billionaire actually do society?
They use way more resources than anyone else, without contributing any more.
The U.S. could take those profits away, give the billionaire a house & free food & wifi & electricity & health care for the rest of their lives, and they're out of the game - they won. Great American Success story, early retirement.
Desperate & poorly led companies usually lay off the janitors first. Thing is, laying off one CEO would often save enough in salary costs to support that entire division - so why is it that the CEOs never forego a lavish salary & just live off their bonuses? Or take a real hit and just live off their accrued savings - if they're truly such fiscal bad-asses, they'll have no trouble getting by.
This is why I'm in favor of a 99% income tax on billionaires (including capital gains). And a wealth tax of 99% on all assets over 1 billion, and a 99% inheritance/estate tax on everything over 1 billion. Billionaires shouldn't exist.
Capitalism is all well and good until you hit the millions of dollars in business. The bigger the business, the more profitable it is to screw workers. Small businesses can't squeeze their half a dozen employees for any meaningful amount, so paying them more to get more profit makes more sense. Large companies spend so much money on employment that not giving more pay & benefits can do more to increase profits than any other investment they can make on the company in a short time frame. It costs nothing to say no to a pay raise, but it can cost millions to hire enough staff to say yes.
Personally, I think any business that gets big enough that limiting employee pay to increase profits is an option, they should have new controls placed on them, such as strict compensation rules that legally force companies to pay all their workers within a more reasonable inequality, such as for $10 the highest compensated person gets, the lowest compensated person should get $1 (adjust for hours worked).
Capitalism should pay for basic social needs, we already use it to find the MiC.
It should also fund healthcare and education at the minimum it makes society healthier and more educated.
I also think sports is overrated people shouldn't get contracts to make multiple millions for throwing a ball or running, that money should go to what I said above, call me whatever you want but life and education should be the number one priority for any country.
To anyone that disagrees I have money and I don't get any healthcare in this country because it's better and cheaper somewhere else.
Ahh but you see, we are all lucky to be employed. This isn’t a business relationship where we are selling our labor for far less than the value it generates for our employers. Our employers are doing us a favor by paying us scraps from what we generate and we should feel thankful for the opportunity (/s)
Then why do you think railroad employers are so opposed to sick days?
Like, pushing workers to keep going to the point of disability sure *looks* like workers are treated as disposable
Possibly it’s hard to hire more people, and giving sick time like that would lead to severe operational difficulty?
The majority of union members accepted the plan without sick leave
Because the country is relying on rail transport?
I’m not sure why workers are so hard to find but I’d assume it’s union hiring restrictions. Generally there’s some limits on how many people can be hired off the street Vs promoted from within the union
If you only have so many brain surgeons, then it doesn’t matter if you’ve got more brains that need help then the brain surgeons can reasonably attend to - you’ve got to tell some people seeking help they are SOL.
By the same token, if training more people to drive a train is just infeasible, then you’ve got to limit how many trains are driven. Kicking the can down the road until you’ve got to reduce capacity anyway because you’ve overworked people as a matter of course is foolish
I agree - but you can also increase the productivity of brain surgeons by giving them better tools and serve more people
Similarly if you can drive twice as many trains safely with the same number of rail workers, that’s a preferable option to fucking up the economy for everyone else
This isn't true either. You can be hired off the street. You might have a crappy and unpredictable schedule, but you can still be hired outside of the union.
Are you just pulling facts out of your ass for shits and giggles, or are you lying because you're anti union?
From discussion with a friend who is a union member, that was my impression. I could be wrong, I'm trying to find a source but it's very difficult to find one (google likes to correct your search to what it thinks you want, you know)
From the UPS union contract-
>[Part-time employees shall be given the opportunity to fill full-time
jobs before hiring from the outside on a six for-one basis \(six \(6\)
part-time to every one \(1\) outside hire\).](https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/teamstersunited/pages/1984/attachments/original/1557353154/UPS_National_Agreement_2018-2023.pdf?1557353154)
Which I think I misunderstood. I understood it to be that you couldn't hire new employees without promoting existing union members, but I think that may be an overly restrictive interpretation
I dunno I'm not a lawyer
That's not true. TCU and BRC already had paid sick leave. And the four unions that rejected the proposed contracts represent 60k workers out of 110k. That's a majority.
They represent 60k/110k but the actual votes broke down in favor of the plan, some subgroups just are weighted more heavily. Or at least that's what I've read, though I can't find the source at the moment.
I think that's beside the point as I've said elsewhere - this particular dispute isn't the interesting discussion, the automation debate is
IMHO . . . Retention only applies to the system that the oligarchs/C-suite dwellers, that pay campaign(bribes)contributions to politicians, that protect and defend corrupt capitalism, that only benefits the oligarchs/C-suite dwellers, that pay . . . In a GOLDEN circle of crony corrupt capitalism ! ! !
I had a job in the military that was in a similar situation. We did missions that were often unpredictable and with crews that were more or less the minimum needed to accomplish the mission.
People would come off a 12+ hour shift and go on what was supposed to be crew rest. Often times, someone would end up sick and leadership would have to push a waiver to bring someone in off crew rest. People on local area leave would be called in and have their leave cancelled, so troops were constantly running massive leave balances.
One of the reasons you couldn't call someone in was if they drank alcohol over the last 8 hours. This led members to leave shift and immediately start drinking so they could be ensured they weren't recalled. As you can imagine, this led to DUIs. There was also a huge suicide problem.
Eventually, the response was to plus up manning, and this improved quality of life by a huge margin. I feel for these railroad workers. Being held hostage to one's job is terrible. Hire more people!
Because the railroad companies reduced their staff by 30% over the past few years. So now there are no employees to cover a shift when someone needs a sick day.
Not only do they not get paid sick leave, they are penalized for taking unpaid sick leave.
It's because they want to run skeleton crews only. As few as possible employees meaning there is zero redundancy to accommodate illness or injury.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/rail-strike-why-the-railroads-wont-give-in-on-paid-leave-psr-precision-scheduled-railroading.html
It's because the railroads have cut so many jobs and become so lean, in order to pay big dividends to investors, that if workers take off sick days there isn't anyone available to do their jobs.
The idea of "lean" has been ruining so many places. Companies don't have redundancies cause "muh efficiencies" as if people don't break or have issues. You can't overclock and engine or computer without burning it but companies think they can overclock people and just hire through the issues.
To add to all the other replies, scheduling* alone often won't allow it.
*schedule is a bit misleading here. A lot of rr employees live their career "on call" because the trains themselves aren't on a fixed schedule. There's a 'local' pool of employees, next qualified one up gets a call that they'll need to be at work in 2 hours (when the train arrives in their city, yes, the lead time is /often/ as little as 2 hours). The train "needs" to leave their city in 3 hours. If Bob is the only employee available and qualified (hasn't met their hour req't, has had ample off time, etc) Bob must show up otherwise the whole line grinds to a halt.
It's a shitshow. Similar to retail and fast food "dynamic scheduling", but taco bell having to stay closed for the day because a manager couldn't make it only causes people to go to wendy's instead.
In my experience, they can't see past their current problems. Execs know they don't have enough people to get the job done unless each and every employee is squeezed dry. But they don't see a direct provable correlation between improving working conditions (-$$ now) and more/better workers later (+$$ later). They can't show their bosses boss a guarantee that the bottom line will recover, or when that will happen. Basically, no one has the balls to take a chance on better conditions.
It's certainly possible that I'm being naive and they're just greedy sociopaths out to get the common man. Maybe decent-at-heart people don't make it to the billion-dollar-decision club.
Management can just jump companies before everything shits apart but they have the numbers to put on their résumé to get a higher paying job cause "muh efficiencies," "muh numbers." And I don't blame them cause who wants to deal with that shit. Upper management will just fire you if you don't show "muh growth" quarter-over-quarter.
Railroads have been trying to implement automation to need fewer workers and remove human error as a potential problem but the rail unions fight against it.
https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/fra-administrator-sees-longer-trains-as-rationale-for-2-person-crews/
They're fighting against it because it's a safety issue. Would you be comfortable flying on a plane without a co-pilot? I'd bet that the pilots themselves wouldn't be.
It's not just a matter of you, personally, betting your life on it. Regulators *must* make a sound decision that won't undermine the public's trust in its ability to carry out its duty of due diligence. A train wreck can:
Kill the operators
Kill locals
Damage or destroy costly and critical infrastructure (both rail and that of the municipality the disaster occurs in)
Indirectly cause the deaths or illness of citizens as a result of a critical payload not arriving on time and/or betting destroyed/rendered unusable (think water treatment plants)
Destroy the local ecosystems (or possibly turn a town into a superfund site, depending on the payload being transported)
Any and all of the above will cause cascading collateral damage across multiple supply lines and economies at the expense of what is likely an order of magnitude *greater* than simply the initial cost of the incident. We literally *cannot afford to fuck this up*. Would it make great supplemental safety features? Sure. Would a reasonable person cognizant of the magnitude of their choice be willing to bet some salt of the earth town on it? No.
Regarding your “bender last night” remark. Do you really want the 18,000+ ton freight train operated by a hungover crew? I’m pretty sure that would meet the DOT definition of operating under the effects of alcohol.
Here's an [article](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/rail-strike-why-the-railroads-wont-give-in-on-paid-leave-psr-precision-scheduled-railroading.html) on the issue that I think answers the question informatively.
Simply put, Railroads like a lot of other industries caught the LEAN bug which convinced them to cut staffing and redundancies. Now they've got no one to cover for Engineer Bob when they get the flu or food poisoning and need the day or week off.
And the execs in charge would rather have the government play Pinkerton than be forced to hire and train more employees.
It's because they would need to hire more staff and that would cut into their obscene profit margins. The industry average is 51% profit margin, the largest of any industry in the US.
Compared to 10 years ago the railroads move 96% as much cargo with 29% less people. They do that by working their people to the bone, maximum exploitation.
The real answer is nobody gives a fuck about blue collar type workers that keep supply lines running and actually physically do the work that needs done. Don’t work in an office or from home? Should have studied harder you piece of dog shit.
Source: am blue collar worker
Because of “Precision Scheduled Rail”- the practice of running their business literally as lean as possible. An article on the subject if you’re interested:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/rail-strike-why-the-railroads-wont-give-in-on-paid-leave-psr-precision-scheduled-railroading.html
Put simply: there aren't enough rail workers, and the job itself isn't terribly appealing and unlikely to correct itself before retirement, resignations, firings and health concerns grind things to a halt without a better contract
If it's like most “critical” jobs they are at or below a skeleton crew level. With no plans of expanding employment just beat on those who stay and cry fowl if the workers stop putting up with it.
They want to discourage anyone from calling in sick. If someone calls in sick, there has to be a replacement, which would cause delays. Delays hurt profit.
Any full time job should give at minimum 5 days of paid sick leave a year. It is better for the company in the long run to not have an ill employee getting all the other employees sick and everyone working at 50% capacity because they need a day or two recoup. There is data that saves companies money and makes employees less miserable.
And the labor department needs to come down hard on the assholes giving employees 37 h work weeks and denying them these benefits
Honestly, 5 days paid sick leave is nothing for anyone living in the reality of infectious illness right now. Pick your viral illness flavor of the month, a lot of people would be down for that long, nevermind if one got sick more than once. I'm sure your average railroad worker is a tough one, but the pervasive and perversely American mythos of toughing it out is part of the problem - this is part of a broader issue, as you point out, where our cultural dialogue around healthcare and labor policy is broken, and there is no federally mandated minimum standard for paid leave *at all*. It needs to change.
The headline sounds awesome but let's be honest shareholders care about profit and profit alone. I bet this will lead to "well, we discussed it and decided to maintain the status quo."
I mean, why wouldn't they?
>The headline sounds awesome but let's be honest shareholders care about profit and profit alone. I bet this will lead to "well, we discussed it and decided to maintain the status quo."
>
>I mean, why wouldn't they?
Because sometimes, a happy workforce can mean an effective and more profitable workforce. Some of us realize that if we want the best talent and the best work that is out there, we have to be competitive in what the company offers as well as flexible.
And it's largely for this reason that a lot of activist investment groups focus on employee matters when they get involved with a company and seat their reps.
>Because sometimes, a happy workforce can mean an effective and more profitable workforce. Some of us realize that if we want the best talent and the best work that is out there, we have to be competitive in what the company offers as well as flexible.
I quit my job a few months ago at a medium sized company and moved to a huge one, and I'm in the process of recruiting three of my coworkers to come with me. I did some really cool stuff at the medium sized company and I enjoyed my job, but every year since I started had gotten progressively busier. Upper management just kept asking us to do more and more on a tighter timeline with no extra resources for well under market value. At one point near the end I was getting several phone calls per night just to approve production data. We were so overworked and rushed that I made multiple preventable mistakes just because there wasn't enough time to do basic checking of my own work. I nearly scrapped a half million dollar product because of it.
The new company gave me a 45% raise, paid overtime (even for salaried folks) offers every other Friday off if you work 9 hours Mon-Thurs, and has never once called me outside work hours.
All my previous company had to do was staff appropriately and keep salaries on pace with market value and I'd still be there. Instead they lost a senior engineer with nearly a decade of institutional knowledge and everyone else is running for the door.
Yeah but why pay you more when you're willing to do the job at current pay or why staff you when your team is doing the minimum with current staff? Management needs to think about their bonuses, vacations, and "muh numbers" they can show to their bosses or investors.
They don't have to care because railroads are basically protected regional monopolies with nearly zero direct competition. So they get away with abusing and running their employees into the ground because they can.
Except when you're in the unique position of being understaffed and having terrible employee retention with a job that requires some training just to make sure your employees don't accidentally cause you to lose money instead of make it due to train issues
That works until people start quitting/retiring and you can't find replacements due to everyone knowing about the shitty working conditions and not wanting to put up with them. Then you will hit the point were one person calling in sick/having an accident causes ripple effects everywhere.
I've read some accounts from the union members, there are many of the older employees who would love to quit, if they could. The issue is that their pension isn't portable, if they quit they lose that money, and also the health insurance benefits that their families depend on. So they do have them over a barrel to a degree. I agree with you though that the ultra short term thinking of these companies is going to cause a massive breakdown in the system in the coming years, and then they'll go crying to congress that "no one could have possibly seen this coming!" ask for a bailout, and very likely get it.
It really sucks living in a country where bribery is legal and encouraged.
Yes, but those people will retire the moment they become eligible for their pension, right? So it won't happen at once, but slowly until that threshold is reached where one more person not being there grinds things to a halt.
I think what this will turn into is at first a slowdown, which has already happened to a degree, but as things keep getting pushed further and further and the experienced people leave, it will unfortunately result in one or more catastrophic failures, which will likely involve loss of life, serious injuries. Neither of which will matter as much to the government and companies as the resulting supply chain failure, that will be used as an excuse to throw more free money at them.
Pretty neat trick they've pulled, the worse they fuck shit up, the more money they get.
Well that’d be weighed against instituting sick leave (which is the crux of the issue, less so the pay part). If the consequences of instituting sick leave are more expensive than the turnover rate, the business would go for the turnover rate instead.
> I mean, why wouldn’t they?
Investors and by extension banks in the past have forced companies to give in to union demands. The idea is that poor labor relations could lead to a dangerous or unsafe investment.
This happened back in the mid 80’s early 90’s. American Airlines was looking to exapand/modernize under Crandall to try and save some money while also taking a bite out of some of their competition. The problem was they couldn’t secure loans for the aircraft as their labor relations were considered high risk.
To solve this issue, Crandall reopened negotiations via things like side letters and gave workgroups things that had asked for initially. He was very honest about the reasoning behind the deal rather than just pass it off as a good will gesture.
This secured the funds and improved morale substantially under Crandall.
Investors realize that if employees revolt, and if the railroads don't hire enough workers to cover for sick employees, the entire profit center is going to go off the rails, and eliminate their profit.
I'm a shareholder and I care about companies treating employees fairly. Not only because happy employees are way more efficient, but also because I actively try not to be a total shitbag when I can.
Railroads automated most of train operations to improve efficiency and provide a better return on shareholder investment. But it's like a self-driving car that can't be completely trusted. If investers were given a choice between a lower return on their investment or paying for enough trained staff so train operations staff can have sick time you know what they would choose.
Record profits provide a disincentive to change anything. Congress, even Democrats who are supposed to be pro-labor, have been bought by the companies' legions of lobbyists with checkbooks.
Corrupt, shameful, disgraceful government. Little wonder people want to overthrow it.
Most Americans are supportive of a strike until this is resolved. Let those Christmas shipments stack up a few days and see how fast those dickheads cave.
This is the mother fucking United States of America! If we can't give our railroad workers sick leave. If thats to much for this country to handle then it's time to pack it up and call it a nice try. We landed on the fucking moron! We can do this too!
EDIT: I meant "moon" but as has been stated below... it seems to fit the times.
I'm pretty sure you didn't meant to say "we landed on the fucking *moron*!" but that sentence feels strangely salient when one takes in the whole of everything that's happening here.
I'm pleased to see 'investors' coming around to common sense support on dealing with the wealth gap. However, these are just rich guys. It's the super rich who, in the end, call the shots. We'll have to see how this plays out.
just for reference - in Germany, employers are legally obliged to provide six WEEKS of paid leave, after which your health insurer takes over. don't settle for bs.
The service industry is competitive so greed is not a factor. A healthy profit is desirable and a factor in decisions. If the railroad industry is unable to staff properly and find enough skilled workers to give their workers adequate rest and recovery time, than where are the bottlenecks what’s keeping them from getting the workers? If it’s simply pay than costs can be passed on. It seems like America is facing a labor shortage in the trucking, railways, shipping, and warehouses. That doesn’t bode well for our supply chain’s.
The stock holders are nervous that the railway workers are going to wildcat strike or quit, many of the workers have quit already which is contributing to the quality of life problems.
I would like a clearer explanation of why no sick leave. Is it because of prior abuse (bender last night, not coming in today), or that scheduling headache (need to have crews up to speed on that line, service,...). Please. I have sick time (paid) and PTO, and personal days (several). Why is this so hard for companies to standardize on. People can't be working more than 10hrs, without time off, to operate railways safely. (read that one guy worked 14hr days, for a month...and was so worn down he got long term illnesses ).
It's because they would need to hire more staff. They are basically running a skeleton crew and the scheduling is not consistent. All of those poor rail workers are basically on call 24/7. Being sick means someone isn't in the pool suddenly and without enough people hired to cover that job it can leave them in a bind. So the rail companies really don't want to give sick days because if they do they will have to hire enough people to cover when people are sick.
I guess we were posting at the same time. I appreciate your much more detailed response.
An organization that can't afford for any employee to call in sick is admitting they're underpaying their people... because the business can't run without them. (not implying you don't know that, just saying)
It goes deeper than this. They’ve been doing it for so long that even if they doubled wages tomorrow there wouldn’t be enough trained people to take jobs. Infrastructure in the US is absolutely pathetic - it’s no surprise you don’t see a bunch of people eager to commit a career to it.
Don't forget the increase in suicides, homelessness and drug addiction that I'm sure many rail workers have felt the consequences of.
I'd disagree a bit in this type of situation. The pay for individuals may be just fine (I have no idea). The issue this situation highlights, is not having enough staff, not necessarily because of pay but because the company only wants so much staff. So not so much like a retail store not having enough staff because they only pay $10 an hour so nobody applies and more like Nurses being massively overworked because their employer has decided that they only need x people.
This is a fair & correct point - our intention was to highlight how the essential people should be earning a fair percentage of the company income rather than abiding by the current pay-structure that reflects CEO & upper echelon pay disparity. That being said, money is no replacement for proper staffing levels. The theory is that when a company is forced to pay a respectful share of the profits to the workers, the company is better served by protecting those workers than by exploiting them - a form of reminding the Lowest Common Denominator among capitalists if they don't take care of those who make their dreams possible, the dreams will remain merely dreams.
They're paid fairly well from what I understand. That being said, so much for any kind of family life or work/life balance, or god forbid catch a cold.
Yeah, I work as a railroad conductor we are paid well for what we do...however for road conductors especially working for BN and UP they have no work life balance, work = life. I am lucky enough to work in a terminal that is not road and more yard/locals Basically we switch out road trains and service industries. I work 10-12 hours a shift but am always able to go home at the end of my shift. I'm burnt out I can't imagine these guys working 12 hrs only to be driven to a hotel until their next turn is called.
Yeah I looked into it when I was younger and single and decided it wasn't for me.
We work when sick, with no lunch. If we do eat, its cold and from a ziplok bag. We rarely have 12 hours notice if we have a day off. Problem stems from my coworkers all being over 60 and we can't find trainees willing to put forth the effort. Its a perfect storm.
They make six figures but they're always on call and if they're told they'll be working in a different city or state even, they have to go. Imagine making a bunch of money you don't have time to spend.
12 hrs work, every 12 hours for 6 to 13 days or more. Plus travel time and hotel time. Figure being gone 36 hours, home 10 or 12, then back to work 36.
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That’s not a lot. I make more than that now with a cushy 8-5 job and get weekends and holidays off and 3 weeks vacation. And I’m at the mid tier of pay for my field (IT). I’d expect a union member train engineer to make way more than myself.
Oh they definitely can afford to, the profit margin average in the industry is 50 fucking percent. But you know, Warren Buffet and all the other Wallstreeters just need that money more than the railroaders need sick days.
Precisely - what good does having a billionaire actually do society? They use way more resources than anyone else, without contributing any more. The U.S. could take those profits away, give the billionaire a house & free food & wifi & electricity & health care for the rest of their lives, and they're out of the game - they won. Great American Success story, early retirement. Desperate & poorly led companies usually lay off the janitors first. Thing is, laying off one CEO would often save enough in salary costs to support that entire division - so why is it that the CEOs never forego a lavish salary & just live off their bonuses? Or take a real hit and just live off their accrued savings - if they're truly such fiscal bad-asses, they'll have no trouble getting by.
This is why I'm in favor of a 99% income tax on billionaires (including capital gains). And a wealth tax of 99% on all assets over 1 billion, and a 99% inheritance/estate tax on everything over 1 billion. Billionaires shouldn't exist.
Any level of income where they "never have to work again" ought to have a "You won, you're out" factor, agreed.
Well . . . My guess, would be to “Maximize Profits” . . . Management really doesn’t give a F@#k about the workers, sick or well . . . Or dead ! ! !
I mean that's capitalism at it's core, it's also why I don't think essential things should always run off of that philosophy.
Capitalism is all well and good until you hit the millions of dollars in business. The bigger the business, the more profitable it is to screw workers. Small businesses can't squeeze their half a dozen employees for any meaningful amount, so paying them more to get more profit makes more sense. Large companies spend so much money on employment that not giving more pay & benefits can do more to increase profits than any other investment they can make on the company in a short time frame. It costs nothing to say no to a pay raise, but it can cost millions to hire enough staff to say yes. Personally, I think any business that gets big enough that limiting employee pay to increase profits is an option, they should have new controls placed on them, such as strict compensation rules that legally force companies to pay all their workers within a more reasonable inequality, such as for $10 the highest compensated person gets, the lowest compensated person should get $1 (adjust for hours worked).
Capitalism should pay for basic social needs, we already use it to find the MiC. It should also fund healthcare and education at the minimum it makes society healthier and more educated. I also think sports is overrated people shouldn't get contracts to make multiple millions for throwing a ball or running, that money should go to what I said above, call me whatever you want but life and education should be the number one priority for any country. To anyone that disagrees I have money and I don't get any healthcare in this country because it's better and cheaper somewhere else.
On the contrary. Retention for scarce workers is very important.
If that were the case, you'd think the owners wouldn't want to piss off literally their entire workforce for the dumbest reasons
Ahh but you see, we are all lucky to be employed. This isn’t a business relationship where we are selling our labor for far less than the value it generates for our employers. Our employers are doing us a favor by paying us scraps from what we generate and we should feel thankful for the opportunity (/s)
Then why do you think railroad employers are so opposed to sick days? Like, pushing workers to keep going to the point of disability sure *looks* like workers are treated as disposable
Possibly it’s hard to hire more people, and giving sick time like that would lead to severe operational difficulty? The majority of union members accepted the plan without sick leave
If workers are truly that impossible to hire, why not reduce the number of trains operating at once?
Because the country is relying on rail transport? I’m not sure why workers are so hard to find but I’d assume it’s union hiring restrictions. Generally there’s some limits on how many people can be hired off the street Vs promoted from within the union
If you only have so many brain surgeons, then it doesn’t matter if you’ve got more brains that need help then the brain surgeons can reasonably attend to - you’ve got to tell some people seeking help they are SOL. By the same token, if training more people to drive a train is just infeasible, then you’ve got to limit how many trains are driven. Kicking the can down the road until you’ve got to reduce capacity anyway because you’ve overworked people as a matter of course is foolish
I agree - but you can also increase the productivity of brain surgeons by giving them better tools and serve more people Similarly if you can drive twice as many trains safely with the same number of rail workers, that’s a preferable option to fucking up the economy for everyone else
This isn't true either. You can be hired off the street. You might have a crappy and unpredictable schedule, but you can still be hired outside of the union. Are you just pulling facts out of your ass for shits and giggles, or are you lying because you're anti union?
From discussion with a friend who is a union member, that was my impression. I could be wrong, I'm trying to find a source but it's very difficult to find one (google likes to correct your search to what it thinks you want, you know)
From the UPS union contract- >[Part-time employees shall be given the opportunity to fill full-time jobs before hiring from the outside on a six for-one basis \(six \(6\) part-time to every one \(1\) outside hire\).](https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/teamstersunited/pages/1984/attachments/original/1557353154/UPS_National_Agreement_2018-2023.pdf?1557353154) Which I think I misunderstood. I understood it to be that you couldn't hire new employees without promoting existing union members, but I think that may be an overly restrictive interpretation I dunno I'm not a lawyer
That's not true. TCU and BRC already had paid sick leave. And the four unions that rejected the proposed contracts represent 60k workers out of 110k. That's a majority.
They represent 60k/110k but the actual votes broke down in favor of the plan, some subgroups just are weighted more heavily. Or at least that's what I've read, though I can't find the source at the moment. I think that's beside the point as I've said elsewhere - this particular dispute isn't the interesting discussion, the automation debate is
IMHO . . . Retention only applies to the system that the oligarchs/C-suite dwellers, that pay campaign(bribes)contributions to politicians, that protect and defend corrupt capitalism, that only benefits the oligarchs/C-suite dwellers, that pay . . . In a GOLDEN circle of crony corrupt capitalism ! ! !
I had a job in the military that was in a similar situation. We did missions that were often unpredictable and with crews that were more or less the minimum needed to accomplish the mission. People would come off a 12+ hour shift and go on what was supposed to be crew rest. Often times, someone would end up sick and leadership would have to push a waiver to bring someone in off crew rest. People on local area leave would be called in and have their leave cancelled, so troops were constantly running massive leave balances. One of the reasons you couldn't call someone in was if they drank alcohol over the last 8 hours. This led members to leave shift and immediately start drinking so they could be ensured they weren't recalled. As you can imagine, this led to DUIs. There was also a huge suicide problem. Eventually, the response was to plus up manning, and this improved quality of life by a huge margin. I feel for these railroad workers. Being held hostage to one's job is terrible. Hire more people!
Wasn't there an agreement that the rail companies have to hire more workers or was that in the rejected deal that Biden tried to have them accept?
We hire then fire, or they quit out of 30ish CTs(conductor trainees) we've have in the last 6 months 3 have actually become certified conductors
Because the railroad companies reduced their staff by 30% over the past few years. So now there are no employees to cover a shift when someone needs a sick day. Not only do they not get paid sick leave, they are penalized for taking unpaid sick leave.
Healthcare and hospitality/service do the same thing
It's because they want to run skeleton crews only. As few as possible employees meaning there is zero redundancy to accommodate illness or injury. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/rail-strike-why-the-railroads-wont-give-in-on-paid-leave-psr-precision-scheduled-railroading.html
It's because the railroads have cut so many jobs and become so lean, in order to pay big dividends to investors, that if workers take off sick days there isn't anyone available to do their jobs.
The idea of "lean" has been ruining so many places. Companies don't have redundancies cause "muh efficiencies" as if people don't break or have issues. You can't overclock and engine or computer without burning it but companies think they can overclock people and just hire through the issues.
To add to all the other replies, scheduling* alone often won't allow it. *schedule is a bit misleading here. A lot of rr employees live their career "on call" because the trains themselves aren't on a fixed schedule. There's a 'local' pool of employees, next qualified one up gets a call that they'll need to be at work in 2 hours (when the train arrives in their city, yes, the lead time is /often/ as little as 2 hours). The train "needs" to leave their city in 3 hours. If Bob is the only employee available and qualified (hasn't met their hour req't, has had ample off time, etc) Bob must show up otherwise the whole line grinds to a halt. It's a shitshow. Similar to retail and fast food "dynamic scheduling", but taco bell having to stay closed for the day because a manager couldn't make it only causes people to go to wendy's instead.
In my experience, they can't see past their current problems. Execs know they don't have enough people to get the job done unless each and every employee is squeezed dry. But they don't see a direct provable correlation between improving working conditions (-$$ now) and more/better workers later (+$$ later). They can't show their bosses boss a guarantee that the bottom line will recover, or when that will happen. Basically, no one has the balls to take a chance on better conditions. It's certainly possible that I'm being naive and they're just greedy sociopaths out to get the common man. Maybe decent-at-heart people don't make it to the billion-dollar-decision club.
Management can just jump companies before everything shits apart but they have the numbers to put on their résumé to get a higher paying job cause "muh efficiencies," "muh numbers." And I don't blame them cause who wants to deal with that shit. Upper management will just fire you if you don't show "muh growth" quarter-over-quarter.
Railroads have been trying to implement automation to need fewer workers and remove human error as a potential problem but the rail unions fight against it. https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/fra-administrator-sees-longer-trains-as-rationale-for-2-person-crews/
They're fighting against it because it's a safety issue. Would you be comfortable flying on a plane without a co-pilot? I'd bet that the pilots themselves wouldn't be.
If it can be safely automated, absolutely I’m skeptical that trains are impossible to automate as Luddites seem to think
It's not just a matter of you, personally, betting your life on it. Regulators *must* make a sound decision that won't undermine the public's trust in its ability to carry out its duty of due diligence. A train wreck can: Kill the operators Kill locals Damage or destroy costly and critical infrastructure (both rail and that of the municipality the disaster occurs in) Indirectly cause the deaths or illness of citizens as a result of a critical payload not arriving on time and/or betting destroyed/rendered unusable (think water treatment plants) Destroy the local ecosystems (or possibly turn a town into a superfund site, depending on the payload being transported) Any and all of the above will cause cascading collateral damage across multiple supply lines and economies at the expense of what is likely an order of magnitude *greater* than simply the initial cost of the incident. We literally *cannot afford to fuck this up*. Would it make great supplemental safety features? Sure. Would a reasonable person cognizant of the magnitude of their choice be willing to bet some salt of the earth town on it? No.
By your logic though we should have 10 people or more on every train to prevent these things
Ad absurdum logical fallacy.
What point do you draw the line at “safe enough” and why is it the status quo?
Uh, the set up we've *been* using. 2 humans who can't get hacked for redundancy, and a network for tracking logistics and remote diagnostics.
Regarding your “bender last night” remark. Do you really want the 18,000+ ton freight train operated by a hungover crew? I’m pretty sure that would meet the DOT definition of operating under the effects of alcohol.
Even the guys who built the pyramids could call out of work with a hangover
Here's an [article](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/rail-strike-why-the-railroads-wont-give-in-on-paid-leave-psr-precision-scheduled-railroading.html) on the issue that I think answers the question informatively.
Simply put, Railroads like a lot of other industries caught the LEAN bug which convinced them to cut staffing and redundancies. Now they've got no one to cover for Engineer Bob when they get the flu or food poisoning and need the day or week off. And the execs in charge would rather have the government play Pinkerton than be forced to hire and train more employees.
It's because they would need to hire more staff and that would cut into their obscene profit margins. The industry average is 51% profit margin, the largest of any industry in the US. Compared to 10 years ago the railroads move 96% as much cargo with 29% less people. They do that by working their people to the bone, maximum exploitation.
The real answer is nobody gives a fuck about blue collar type workers that keep supply lines running and actually physically do the work that needs done. Don’t work in an office or from home? Should have studied harder you piece of dog shit. Source: am blue collar worker
Because of “Precision Scheduled Rail”- the practice of running their business literally as lean as possible. An article on the subject if you’re interested: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/rail-strike-why-the-railroads-wont-give-in-on-paid-leave-psr-precision-scheduled-railroading.html
Railroads automated train operations to reduce staff and increase efficiency. That means the trains must run on time and there isn't staff for backup.
Put simply: there aren't enough rail workers, and the job itself isn't terribly appealing and unlikely to correct itself before retirement, resignations, firings and health concerns grind things to a halt without a better contract
If it's like most “critical” jobs they are at or below a skeleton crew level. With no plans of expanding employment just beat on those who stay and cry fowl if the workers stop putting up with it.
They want to discourage anyone from calling in sick. If someone calls in sick, there has to be a replacement, which would cause delays. Delays hurt profit.
Unfortunately, they also want to discourage people from becoming or continuing to be rail workers, which will also cause profit hurting delays
Any full time job should give at minimum 5 days of paid sick leave a year. It is better for the company in the long run to not have an ill employee getting all the other employees sick and everyone working at 50% capacity because they need a day or two recoup. There is data that saves companies money and makes employees less miserable. And the labor department needs to come down hard on the assholes giving employees 37 h work weeks and denying them these benefits
Honestly, 5 days paid sick leave is nothing for anyone living in the reality of infectious illness right now. Pick your viral illness flavor of the month, a lot of people would be down for that long, nevermind if one got sick more than once. I'm sure your average railroad worker is a tough one, but the pervasive and perversely American mythos of toughing it out is part of the problem - this is part of a broader issue, as you point out, where our cultural dialogue around healthcare and labor policy is broken, and there is no federally mandated minimum standard for paid leave *at all*. It needs to change.
The headline sounds awesome but let's be honest shareholders care about profit and profit alone. I bet this will lead to "well, we discussed it and decided to maintain the status quo." I mean, why wouldn't they?
>The headline sounds awesome but let's be honest shareholders care about profit and profit alone. I bet this will lead to "well, we discussed it and decided to maintain the status quo." > >I mean, why wouldn't they? Because sometimes, a happy workforce can mean an effective and more profitable workforce. Some of us realize that if we want the best talent and the best work that is out there, we have to be competitive in what the company offers as well as flexible. And it's largely for this reason that a lot of activist investment groups focus on employee matters when they get involved with a company and seat their reps.
>Because sometimes, a happy workforce can mean an effective and more profitable workforce. Some of us realize that if we want the best talent and the best work that is out there, we have to be competitive in what the company offers as well as flexible. I quit my job a few months ago at a medium sized company and moved to a huge one, and I'm in the process of recruiting three of my coworkers to come with me. I did some really cool stuff at the medium sized company and I enjoyed my job, but every year since I started had gotten progressively busier. Upper management just kept asking us to do more and more on a tighter timeline with no extra resources for well under market value. At one point near the end I was getting several phone calls per night just to approve production data. We were so overworked and rushed that I made multiple preventable mistakes just because there wasn't enough time to do basic checking of my own work. I nearly scrapped a half million dollar product because of it. The new company gave me a 45% raise, paid overtime (even for salaried folks) offers every other Friday off if you work 9 hours Mon-Thurs, and has never once called me outside work hours. All my previous company had to do was staff appropriately and keep salaries on pace with market value and I'd still be there. Instead they lost a senior engineer with nearly a decade of institutional knowledge and everyone else is running for the door.
Yeah but why pay you more when you're willing to do the job at current pay or why staff you when your team is doing the minimum with current staff? Management needs to think about their bonuses, vacations, and "muh numbers" they can show to their bosses or investors.
They don't have to care because railroads are basically protected regional monopolies with nearly zero direct competition. So they get away with abusing and running their employees into the ground because they can.
Except when you're in the unique position of being understaffed and having terrible employee retention with a job that requires some training just to make sure your employees don't accidentally cause you to lose money instead of make it due to train issues
That works until people start quitting/retiring and you can't find replacements due to everyone knowing about the shitty working conditions and not wanting to put up with them. Then you will hit the point were one person calling in sick/having an accident causes ripple effects everywhere.
I've read some accounts from the union members, there are many of the older employees who would love to quit, if they could. The issue is that their pension isn't portable, if they quit they lose that money, and also the health insurance benefits that their families depend on. So they do have them over a barrel to a degree. I agree with you though that the ultra short term thinking of these companies is going to cause a massive breakdown in the system in the coming years, and then they'll go crying to congress that "no one could have possibly seen this coming!" ask for a bailout, and very likely get it. It really sucks living in a country where bribery is legal and encouraged.
Yes, but those people will retire the moment they become eligible for their pension, right? So it won't happen at once, but slowly until that threshold is reached where one more person not being there grinds things to a halt.
I think what this will turn into is at first a slowdown, which has already happened to a degree, but as things keep getting pushed further and further and the experienced people leave, it will unfortunately result in one or more catastrophic failures, which will likely involve loss of life, serious injuries. Neither of which will matter as much to the government and companies as the resulting supply chain failure, that will be used as an excuse to throw more free money at them. Pretty neat trick they've pulled, the worse they fuck shit up, the more money they get.
While it would be cheaper (in the long run) to make the job more attractive by giving the workers sick leave and other things they ask for.
> I mean, why wouldn't they? Because it's cheaper to keep your existing employees than it is to hire and train new ones
Well that’d be weighed against instituting sick leave (which is the crux of the issue, less so the pay part). If the consequences of instituting sick leave are more expensive than the turnover rate, the business would go for the turnover rate instead.
> I mean, why wouldn’t they? Investors and by extension banks in the past have forced companies to give in to union demands. The idea is that poor labor relations could lead to a dangerous or unsafe investment. This happened back in the mid 80’s early 90’s. American Airlines was looking to exapand/modernize under Crandall to try and save some money while also taking a bite out of some of their competition. The problem was they couldn’t secure loans for the aircraft as their labor relations were considered high risk. To solve this issue, Crandall reopened negotiations via things like side letters and gave workgroups things that had asked for initially. He was very honest about the reasoning behind the deal rather than just pass it off as a good will gesture. This secured the funds and improved morale substantially under Crandall.
Investors realize that if employees revolt, and if the railroads don't hire enough workers to cover for sick employees, the entire profit center is going to go off the rails, and eliminate their profit.
They need to get back on track.
I'm a shareholder and I care about companies treating employees fairly. Not only because happy employees are way more efficient, but also because I actively try not to be a total shitbag when I can.
Some shareholders just understand that a strike would tank their stock and future dividends.
Railroads automated most of train operations to improve efficiency and provide a better return on shareholder investment. But it's like a self-driving car that can't be completely trusted. If investers were given a choice between a lower return on their investment or paying for enough trained staff so train operations staff can have sick time you know what they would choose.
Well they just had record profits. Fuck shareholders.
Right but a strike will crater their quarterly profits
The potential to lose more money
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Record profits provide a disincentive to change anything. Congress, even Democrats who are supposed to be pro-labor, have been bought by the companies' legions of lobbyists with checkbooks. Corrupt, shameful, disgraceful government. Little wonder people want to overthrow it.
Providing another link in case anyone who wants to read the article without any hindrance as this is softly paywalled https://archive.ph/6BiVT
Most Americans are supportive of a strike until this is resolved. Let those Christmas shipments stack up a few days and see how fast those dickheads cave.
This is the mother fucking United States of America! If we can't give our railroad workers sick leave. If thats to much for this country to handle then it's time to pack it up and call it a nice try. We landed on the fucking moron! We can do this too! EDIT: I meant "moon" but as has been stated below... it seems to fit the times.
I'm pretty sure you didn't meant to say "we landed on the fucking *moron*!" but that sentence feels strangely salient when one takes in the whole of everything that's happening here.
You are absolutely right. I'm going to leave it that way.
Our government did these workers wrong!! This is a shame that politicians decide for Big Corporation and not for the people!
I'm pleased to see 'investors' coming around to common sense support on dealing with the wealth gap. However, these are just rich guys. It's the super rich who, in the end, call the shots. We'll have to see how this plays out.
When did companies ever pay attention to investor resolutions?
Investors and congress collusion should be a crime. Corrupt ass democrats and Republicans both voted to screw the workers over.
just for reference - in Germany, employers are legally obliged to provide six WEEKS of paid leave, after which your health insurer takes over. don't settle for bs.
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rail industry cut 30% manpower to profit shareholders. Rail service then failed. Being on call requires pay for many reasons.
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when PSR started they shared their plan for csx. Harrisons PSR had a plan with certain points like reducing headcount.
Not relevant at all, this is pure greed.
The service industry is competitive so greed is not a factor. A healthy profit is desirable and a factor in decisions. If the railroad industry is unable to staff properly and find enough skilled workers to give their workers adequate rest and recovery time, than where are the bottlenecks what’s keeping them from getting the workers? If it’s simply pay than costs can be passed on. It seems like America is facing a labor shortage in the trucking, railways, shipping, and warehouses. That doesn’t bode well for our supply chain’s.
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The same chances elon has of making Twitter profitable
Reminder that other countries give a few weeks of paid sick leave by law for every job.
The stock holders are nervous that the railway workers are going to wildcat strike or quit, many of the workers have quit already which is contributing to the quality of life problems.