No Rail Strike This Time

The 2022 near strike of rail workers, which was put down by an act of Congress to prevent a supply chain derailment at Christmastime, shows everything that can go wrong with labor negotiations when you throw partisan politics into the mix.

The most recent round is all but settled, with most rail unions having ratified the agreements. This shows how the back-and-forth of genuine negotiations, though frustrating at times, can make both workers and management much happier.

Last time, the negotiations dragged on for a very long time, from 2020 to 2022. Rail workers did not get paid more money during those years of runaway inflation. In fact, union negotiators turned down the railroads’ offer of extra pay while talks were ongoing to tide workers over.

This time, the details of a framework agreement were hammered out in 2025, giving plenty of time for the workers to vote on the deal.

Last time, politics made a train wreck of everything. Having been repeatedly assured by President Joe Biden that his would be “the most pro-union administration in American history,” and would thus back union leadership whenever possible, union negotiators refused to budge on much of anything, which dragged out talks. (A charge which they lobbed back at the railroads.)

Then, when the talks migrated to the National Mediation Board (NMB), which can get labor and management to actually negotiate and offers binding arbitration if they are truly stuck, partisan Biden appointees Linda Puchala and Deirdre Hamilton instead worked to declare an impasse in record time. That bureaucratically reckless action made a strike a very high likelihood.

This time, talks didn’t even have to go to the NMB. Perhaps one reason unions didn’t see that as a live option is that the NMB was made more neutral when President Donald Trump fired Democratic member Hamilton last October. (She is challenging the dismissal in court.)

But there are other reasons as well for the clear tracks for this deal. The National Railway Labor Conference (NRLC), which negotiates on behalf of the railroads with the 12 main rail worker unions, said that the latest bargaining round “has seen historic collaboration between freight rail carriers and unions.”

“Historic” could be a small stretch, but it does appear that both union negotiators and management went into this round determined to strike a bargain that workers and railroads could live with.

In addition to money, both unions and management have touted better benefits and more paid leave.

Last time, the leave issue nearly derailed the whole deal. The issue proved important enough to workers that several unions ultimately voted to reject the deal and pushed the country right up to the edge of a strike.

Congress, facing serious national supply chain issues caused by the COVID lockdowns, unfortunately, decided it was necessary to act.

Outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi warned that a general rail strike would mean that “more than 750,000 workers, including many union members, would lose their jobs in just the first two weeks” and “our economy would be paralyzed.” For that reason, she supported putting the strike down through congressional action.

Sick days, PTO, vacation. However we characterize it, paid leave proved to be an important issue to rail workers, but here’s the rub: Observers at the time could see that it was not an issue that had played a significant role in negotiations before things went to the PEB.

We can see this in contemporary news coverage. “Labor, railroads tussle over contract negotiation ‘dead end,’ seek mediation” was one headline from the trade journal Freight Waves in January of 2022. The article listed all of the relevant flash points between the railroads and the rail workers: pay, benefits, automation. But when it came to leave, crickets.

That shouldn’t have been terribly surprising because the way rail bargaining was supposed to work was that local negotiations follow down the tracks from the larger negotiations. Smart union negotiators knew that they could focus on getting as much in compensation and bargain for time off later.

For their part, when it became a sticking point in signing, the railroads insisted that once the larger contract issues were settled, they would sit down and voluntarily work out more paid leave with workers. And here is the funny thing: That’s exactly what happened.

This time, leave was understood to be an issue of sufficient importance to rail workers that some of it has even been baked into the larger agreements, though still more can be negotiated in local agreements as well.

Looking at the near derailment last time versus the much easier ride this time, the NLRC judged that the good faith voluntary bargaining that went into those “early local agreements” had “set the stage for this momentum, establishing a clear pattern that addresses employee needs.”

That seems like a better pattern to follow than putting partisan politics across the tracks.

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