“Do Your Job.” How the Railroad Industry Intimidates Employees Into Putting Speed Before Safety
“Do Your Job.” How the Railroad Industry Intimidates Employees Into Putting Speed Before Safety
Railroad companies have penalized workers for taking the time to make needed repairs and created a culture in which supervisors threaten and fire the very people hired to keep trains running safely. Regulators say they can’t stop this intimidation.
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Good thing Biden broke the railroad strike.
Can we please stop with that? He did do the right thing with the railway workers. The strike would likely have had a massive economic impact across the nation and in many different industries. Avoiding the strike while still getting the workers much of what they wanted was a very good result. Not perfect, but we can't let perfect be the enemy of good.
The rail union is quite pleased with how things played out according to IBEW’s Railway Department Director Al Russo.
https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
“We’re thankful that the Biden administration played the long game on sick days and stuck with us for months after Congress imposed our updated national agreement,” Russo said. “Without making a big show of it, Joe Biden and members of his administration in the Transportation and Labor departments have been working continuously to get guaranteed paid sick days for all railroad workers.
“We know that many of our members weren’t happy with our original agreement,” Russo said, “but through it all, we had faith that our friends in the White House and Congress would keep up the pressure on our railroad employers to get us the sick day benefits we deserve. Until we negotiated these new individual agreements with these carriers, an IBEW member who called out sick was not compensated.”
Can we please stop defending Biden every time he hurts us?
Sick days weren't literally the only thing they wanted to strike for - there were numerous safety concerns, concerns about overtime, concerns about scheduling, and more:
The Association of American Railroads, which represents freight railway operators, said its members have been hiring in recent years to address staffing needs and recognize employees' desire for better scheduling. The group said the number of overtime hours worked by BMWE union members increased to 4.7 hours per week in 2022, compared to 4 hours in 2016.
Cory Ludwig, who works as a machine operator repairing railway tracks in Iowa, said he’s been working Saturdays and some Sundays along with 10- to 12-hour shifts since September. Recently, he worked 13 days without a day off. With the mandatory Saturday work, he’s had to rely on friends and relatives to take care of his five-year-old and nine-year-old kids. He said the overtime demands have increased as he’s seen the number of workers assigned to his crew go down.
“You fall asleep and then you wake up in the morning and you go right back to work. It can really break a person down, it gets really wearing on a person after a while,” Ludwig said. “With less people trying to do the same amount of work, working long hours, working multiple weeks in a row without one day off, you get irritated and you get burnt out.”
Recently one of the union’s members had been working 22 hours straight when he fell asleep on the job, an error that could have put his colleagues’ lives at risk but also could have been avoided had the employee had a rest period, said Ballew. Another member was recently disciplined for refusing to work through his scheduled days off on short notice so he could care for a family member having health issues, Ballew said.
“The stress it puts on marriages and parenting and the things you leave behind for your spouse to deal with or the things you miss, that kind of stress builds up,” said Ballew. “In the rail industry, we have noticed recently a spat of suicides and I can’t help but think there is a correlation there.”
Lives are still being ruined.
Stop your strike breaker apologetics.
But but but the economy! That’s so much more important than health and safety! We have to save it! /s
Can we please stop defending Biden every time he hurts us?
I honestly pray Biden voters never have human relationships that resemble their parasocial-electoral ones with Biden, it's terrifyingly similar to abusive relationships.
You're confusing the minority of fanatics with a majority of reluctant supporters. There aren't 80 million rabid fanatics foaming at the mouth to support Biden.
And honestly, what fanatics? How minor is this minority, because I can tell you with certainty that I've never, in my life, met someone who has anything beyond "mild enthusiasm" for Biden. And even that is rare.
Reluctantly choosing to stay with someone you know is hurting you because you feel like you have no choice isn't exactly a healthy relationship either. If you're in other ones like that please run.
Better than Trump any day twice on Sunday...
The two viable choices in 2020 were Biden or Trump. The two viable choices in 2024 are going to be Biden or Trump.
Are you suggesting we vote for Trump over Biden?
"Get in line or get out of my country" essentially? The more abusive relationship would be to let Trump (or one of his compatriots) in out of principle because you refuse to vote for the lesser evil. We don't have the luxury of just choosing who is best and getting a great deal out of the situation. We're stuck between a bog of eternal stench and a rampaging horde of zombies. Neither is great, but I'll take the stench over the zombies if it means I get to live a little longer, and maybe make my situation better in the long run.
I know some people would prefer to just stand their ground and face the zombies so they don't actually have to make tough decisions. But that's not me.
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If you keep voting for evil candidates you will keep gettig evil choices. If all they have to do for your vote is be slightly less evil than the other one, that's all you'll ever get. I find that unacceptable, so I use that to inform my actions.
I'm all for it!!!!
Tell the GOP to replace Trump with a human that has empathy and common sense! I'll vote for them!
You have that option. Join the party, participate in the caucus/primary. There are several still trying to get the nomination - find one and support them. get knocking on doors - this brings out the votes. The media likes to act like Trump is a done deal, but that is false, no primary has happened yet.
Sure, and in the US electoral system, the only real choice is the Republican. In dating, there are millions of other choices, or just being single. It's not analogous.
Wrong. There's another choice. You just won't find it in the ballot box.
Yeah, but we don't have broad support for that option.
If you're waiting for that to spontaneously appear you're going to be too late.
It's like you're incapable of not projecting.
Like what dude? I've never met a single person, in real life or on the internet, that has any kind of "relationship" with Joe Biden that I would consider anything close to "parasocial." Never. You're talking nonsense.
Now Donald Trump on the other hand...
Very curious as to your definition of projection, are you trying to say I have a parasocial relationship with Biden?
I still don't get why the president can't tell the corporation to take the union contract if he can order the workers back to work. Seems like two sides of the same thing.
What I don't get is why he has any power at all. This isn't war time, tell the two sides to work it out without violence. The truck industry will be happy to take more business from them.
Railroad companies are a little special. The US government has nationalized the railways before, specifically in both world wars, so the government has been involved in their operation as critical infrastructure for over a century. And they still exert some of that influence in peacetime, in case war were declared.
Isn't that one small segment of one small section of workers, not all rail workers? Weren't their demands only a tiny fraction of what the overall strikers wanted?
Isn't "but the economy" just another tired excuse to not implement any lasting change because it might affect votes, not the wellbeing of the American people?
Change is hard, and especially when you put it off for so long, it can hurt. But in the long run you come out better for it. Putting it off means it's just going to hurt worse later, if we even get a chance to do it. Workers are still over-worked and understaffed. Biden swooping in to "save the day" by telling them "Yeah, sure, we'll help you when it's convenient for us" didn't change that. No matter what an electricians union rep might have to say about it.
Can we please stop posting an electrical unions opinion? They always had sick days, they supported Bidens no sick day deal before the planned strike.
Rail unions still dont all have sick days, the ones that do have fewer than they would have, and their future bargaining power is poisoned.
Plenty of electrical unions don't have sick days or paid vacation.
Sounds like shitty unions then if they can't negotiate sick days or vacation days. That's boilerplate stuff.