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A contract issue is the on-call requirement on off-duty days. This WP article has details - I could read it but it may be behind paywall. There are other industries/professions with on-call requirements that may serve as models. It seems that 3 of the 12 RR unions are sticking to their demands on this issue whose importance was under appreciated by the federal mediators. Everybody is now scrambling to salvage the situation. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/13/rail-strike-railroad-shutdown-biden/
Yes, @yogibearbull. I once interviewed for an airline job. Flight staff don't even get paid EXCEPT for time in the plane, locked-in with passengers, and in the air. That's... um... just plain NUTS, as General Anthony McAuliffe would say. And the typical off-duty arrangement is to share a flat with other employees, because there's no way to afford it on one's own.
Glad to see it. I blocked the constant, irritating pop-up at cnbc telling me I should whitelist the website with my adblocker. Hell, no. So now CNBC won't work for me. It just freezes---- except, so I discovered, SOME videos. Anyhow, I went and found the CNN report and read it there.
The deal also includes changes to workplace attendance policies that workers found overly punitive. Under the tentative agreement, workers will be able to take time off for medical care without facing discipline, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the SMART Transportation Division confirmed in a joint statement.
NPR does a good job in their journalism in getting to details of the reporting. This reminds me of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” that I read in high school about meat packing industry in Chicago.
Relating "The Jungle" to the RR workers situation is apt. While people often think of the novel as a critique of the meat packing industry, Sinclair wrote it to illustrate the exploitation of immigrants and laborers.
As he later observed, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”
Comments
Here we go again …
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/13/rail-strike-railroad-shutdown-biden/
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/15/president-joe-biden-says-tentative-railway-labor-agreement-reached.html
https://nbcnews.com/news/us-news/biden-announces-tentative-deal-avert-us-rail-strike-rcna47850
Excerpt from NPR, https://npr.org/2022/09/15/1123114110/biden-says-a-tentative-railway-labor-deal-has-been-reached-averting-a-strike
Digging deeper into this story, there is a lot going on that the public is not aware of.
https://npr.org/2022/09/14/1122918098/railroads-freight-rail-union-strike-train-workers
As he later observed, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”
https://talkpoverty.org/2019/01/10/sinclair-jungle-immigrant-narrative/
And the Cliffs Notes version, literally:
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/j/the-jungle/about-the-jungle