Scab
When in doubt, do it to the workers.
President Joe Biden signed legislation Friday to block a national U.S. railroad strike that could have devastated the American economy.
That is, Biden broke a strike for paid sick leave. Railroad workers have to go on working despite not having paid sick leave, while Musk and Bezos count their billions.
The U.S. Senate voted 80 to 15 on Thursday to impose a tentative contract deal reached in September on a dozen unions representing 115,000 workers, who could have gone on strike on Dec. 9. But the Senate failed to approve a measure that would have provided paid sick days to railroad workers.
Listen, if you want paid sick leave, you should be born to rich people and go to Harvard. If you fail to do that, well, fuck you. Now get back to work.
Railroads have slashed labor and other costs to bolster profits in recent years, and have been fiercely opposed to adding paid sick time that would require them to hire more staff.
Gotta make the rich richer and the poor poorer. It’s the American way.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien harshly criticized the Senate vote on sick leave. “Rail carriers make record profits. Rail workers get zero paid sick days. Is this OK? Paid sick leave is a basic human right. This system is failing,” O’Brien wrote on Twitter.
He’s not wrong.
Paid sick leave should be mandatory for all employers. The government provides paid sick leave to its workers (at least its full time workers; the rest pretty much have to suck it up). That suggests the government understands the importance of paid sick leave. They just aren’t wiling to tell the money-men that paid for their election to suck it up.
Not only should there be paid sick leave, but employers should be prohibited from contacting the employees during leave, asking them work questions or giving them instructions. We get emails all summer long about things we are going to be doing the moment we get back. If it was prohibited to do that, they would have to give us those instructions in May, then leave us alone until we return.
This is particularly important for someone on sick leave. If you are sick, you should be left alone to recover.
I love how Musk tried to mandate 14-hour workdays (or whatever) by demanding that Twitter workers work harder, and they quit en masse. Privileged/entitled idiot dude who has probably never washed a dish in his kitchen in his life, or run a vacuum cleaner, has no concept of living a real life or what’s needed to do it.
Sick leave should be federally mandated in the USA. I don’t give a good goddamn what employers think about that, either. I fully support the rail workers in this, even if their (now blocked) strike were to cause “damage to the economy”. And iknklast is absolutely correct: if someone is sick, LEAVE THEM ALONE. My former CEO tried to threaten me with unemployment when I refused to answer the telephone the last time I had the flu. I didn’t say anything at the time, but were it to happen again now, I would tell him to go screw himself. (I guess I’m older and more ornery.)
Jeeeeeeeeeez. Bosses, man.
It has all been a massive confidence trick.
Labour was told that they would be better off if they gave up certain rights as a trade-off for a shorter working week or a pay rise. Like most of us, dazzled by the immediate reward, they grabbed it and when they realised what they had lost, it was too late.
The same thing happened with member owned insurance companies and other forms of co-operatives. “Unlock the value” was the cry from the robber barons. Sure, the value was unlocked, a few dollars went to the members, and vast profits to the smart money men.
The state of Victoria “privatized” its electricity assets. The profit made by the private owners in a single year was equal to their purchase price. That is revenue foregone by the state, and increased costs on “consumers”, all in the name of market driven competition. There is little to no competition in a market where the buyer must sign a long term supply contract with a seller.
This seems so strange to me, maybe I don’t quite get what happened. The workers were planning a strike unless their demands were met, their demands weren’t met, and then lawmakers said ‘you guys are too important to strike so you’re banned from striking’ – that’s my read of this. Two things puzzle me. If these workers are employees of private rail companies rather than government staff, why is the government involved? And regardless of the government sticking its nose in, why can the staff no longer strike and what is the penalty for going ahead with it anyway?
My understanding of the power of a strike is that it shows the management who really drives the business forward – the labour force. And the government stepping in and telling them the economic damage would be too large if they went on strike really only reinforces this point. Labour is the lifeblood of any business, and in this case also a large segment of the national economy… how can they be regarded as too important to be permitted to strike and yet be powerless to strike?
The legislation blocking the strike doesn’t mean there will be no strike. It merely means that if there is a strike, it will be illegal, which may not matter very much to workers who were just backstabbed by the Senate on paid sick leave (a decision from politicians bought and paid for by the bosses). The courageous protests we’ve seen in Iran and China are also “illegal” according to the laws of the rulers of those countries. This may not be over yet.