Cont: The Biden Presidency (3)

[mgidm86]

Whenever Republicans say they are doing something to protect children you know they are up to something nefarious.

Please Republicans, embrace the 21st 19th century already!

 

[kookbreaker]

Kinda weird:

5 Cars rented by Biden’s security detail in Nantuket burst into flame a day after leaving.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...CkJjawmLd8tra2Z02q_-T2_VNV7XFrr8H0JSa9Kfhnfts

 

[Suddenly]

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...sident-joe-biden-on-averting-a-rail-shutdown/

As a proud pro-labor President, I am reluctant to override the ratification procedures and the views of those who voted against the agreement. But in this case – where the economic impact of a shutdown would hurt millions of other working people and families – I believe Congress must use its powers to adopt this deal.

He calls himself pro-labor in a statement where he's going to stick it to a union because they have serious leverage in bargaining. Which is sadly quite on brand for the Democratic Party.

The agreement was reached in good faith by both sides.

To this end misconstrues a rejected tentative agreement as an agreement, making the claim that a majority of the unions approved that agreement when the unions representing a majority of workers did not. Which is spectacularly dishonest. Which implies the union is both greedy and went back on their word

The deal provides a historic 24% pay raise for rail workers. It provides improved health care benefits. And it provides the ability of operating craft workers to take unscheduled leave for medical needs.

I'm searching for where he mentions the record profits raked in by the railroads but I guess an oversight. Not to mention that he's touting "being able to go to the doctor without scheduling it in advance" as a huge deal. It may seem to read like this is talking about paid sick days, but it isn't.

He's attempting to claim some sort of middle ground in forcing an "agreement" that's acceptable to the railroad but not the union. Calling it a "deal" when it is forced by the government is offensive, but I guess he'll keep the trains running on time.

(I just got a NYT news flash that uses the phrase "imposing a labor agreement" which isn't Orwellian at all)

Moral and policy issues aside, punting the "we care about workers" to the GOP isn't going to go well given the state of the electoral college map and the need to hold states that still somehow have significant numbers of union Democrats.

Let me be clear: a rail shutdown would devastate our economy. Without freight rail, many U.S. industries would shut down. My economic advisors report that as many as 765,000 Americans – many union workers themselves – could be put out of work in the first two weeks alone. Communities could lose access to chemicals necessary to ensure clean drinking water. Farms and ranches across the country could be unable to feed their livestock.

Sounds like the workers are really important and maybe just as cost effective to force the railroads to capitulate to all union demands. Unless in this labor market you can replace everyone on short notice without the same sort of collapse due to loss of expertise. A wildcat walkout probably isn't happening here but that sort of thing is coming at some point if they keep effing around like this.

I'm out on Biden. He goes in the bin with Bloomberg as Democrats I'm never voting for. I couldn't make up a more infuriating statement than this if I tried. I can and will yield on a lot of things in the cause of Republicans Are Evil And Must Be Stopped. This goes too far.

Honestly, I don't care as much about what they are doing, which to be clear is abhorrent but arguably economically prudent, but the way this statement is written makes me want to throw my computer out the window and re-register Mountain Party. It such an insult.

I mean:

But at this critical moment for our economy, in the holiday season, we cannot let our strongly held conviction for better outcomes for workers deny workers the benefits of the bargain they reached...

(emphasis added)

Just straight union busting here. The union rejected this agreement and he's driving a wedge claiming he's honoring the workers by disregarding the union.

 

[Aridas]

Just straight union busting here. The union rejected this agreement and he's driving a wedge claiming he's honoring the workers by disregarding the union.

Yeah... I'm not out on Biden overall, but I'm certainly not happy about his handling of this issue so far. Even so, here's a little more information on what's going on there. The workers may get paid sick leave in the end, but that's likely up to republicans.

 

[Bob001]

....
Just straight union busting here. The union rejected this agreement and he's driving a wedge claiming he's honoring the workers by disregarding the union.

Not so fast. There is no "the" union. Twelve unions had to approve the contract. Four didn't, but eight did. Should those four invalidate the votes of the other eight? More important, should those four be able to shut down the national transportation network, disrupting the delivery of essential goods, including food, gasoline and heating oil in the middle of winter? Yeah, the rail workers are getting screwed. But they don't get to screw the whole country.

And Congress is now considering a bill that would require the railroads to provide sick leave. So maybe the unions aren't getting busted after all.

 

[Suddenly]

Not so fast. There is no "the" union. Twelve unions had to approve the contract. Four didn't, but eight did. Should those four invalidate the votes of the other eight? More important, should those four be able to shut down the national transportation network, disrupting the delivery of essential goods, including food, gasoline and heating oil in the middle of winter? Yeah, the rail workers are getting screwed. But they don't get to screw the whole country.

Q: Did the union approve the contract under their rules?

A: No.

The number of people in these sub-unions are not consistent and the unions that rejected this make up a majority of the membership. Bringing up this 8-4 split is, again, misleading union busting rhetoric that the union is somehow frustrating it's membership. It's always the standard wedge used by capital and their minions to break worker solidarity. By implying that the unions are a hinderance and ownership would be much nicer if they were out of the way is in terms of labor the Big Lie.



I honestly would love it if I could be talked down from my smoldering rage about just how dishonest and terrible Biden's statement is, but the more I try to be objective the more I start feeling I'm maybe not mad enough...

And Congress is now considering a bill that would require the railroads to provide sick leave. So maybe the unions aren't getting busted after all.

It required a whole day last I checked, and some members of congress were pushing for seven. There is the matter of fine print and management abuses where this sort of thing only exists on paper though...

Which, again, that this is held out as significant just shows how bad the labor situation has gotten in the US.

 

[kevbo]

Love him or hate him, at least Danny Devito stepped up to the plate on the right side of this one.

From Newsweek via MSN.

"No Joe, you’re supposed to help the railroad workers… you got it backwards. A handful of sick days c’mon! Workers of the world unite!"

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...id=EMMX&cvid=85081806debe495ea3f0ba44785a0ad7

 

[Bob001]

.....
Which, again, that this is held out as significant just shows how bad the labor situation has gotten in the US.

Yeah, organized labor has become weaker ever since Reagan broke the air controllers' strike. But most Americans who don't belong to unions -- and that would be most Americans -- will have no sympathy for a crowd that just won a 24% pay raise and other benefits and still threaten to shut down the national economy. The unions set the deadline. They could continue to negotiate, and work to increase their support among legislators and consumers who could pressure the railroads. Most people, when asked, think the workers should get sick days. But if there's a strike and consumers can't get gas and fuel oil, they'll know who to blame. And it won't be management.

 

[Suddenly]

Yeah, organized labor has become weaker ever since Reagan broke the air controllers' strike. But most Americans who don't belong to unions -- and that would be most Americans -- will have no sympathy for a crowd that just won a 24% pay raise and other benefits and still threaten to shut down the national economy. The unions set the deadline. They could continue to negotiate, and work to increase their support among legislators and consumers who could pressure the railroads. Most people, when asked, think the workers should get sick days. But if there's a strike and consumers can't get gas and fuel oil, they'll know who to blame. And it won't be management.

They are told who to blame. The fact that this narrative is humored much less accepted is a problem created by what amounts to bipartisan hostility to the interests of working people.

Biden going into the 24% raise without addressing the profits of the railroads is unforgivable corporate propagandizing. It's a meaningless statistic without reference to specifics. Biden is demonizing labor here by dressing the offer up in a way that makes them look unreasonable. I await the same scrutiny of companies that have raised their prices in the last two years. Free market I guess.

The Democratic Party is the ones that should be serving the unions. The supposed pro labor party, and it's hard to type that first clause without rolling my eyes so far that I can see my brain.

The union has to set a deadline. That's how strikes work. This isn't hippie BS. They pay workers or the workers walk and the business suffers. Never setting a deadline forfeits leverage.

Asking for crap never works. Whether it be labor or civil rights or any reform. Trouble must be made and pain must be felt or all that happens is things like:

I have pressed legislation and proposals to advance the cause of paid leave in my two years in office, and will continue to do so. Every other developed country in the world has such protections for its workers.

Maybe if the Democrats would have been more pliant and polite towards corporate interests over the last few decades we wouldn't be so far behind.

There is no opportunity to actually cause improvement that the Democrats won't squander.

To wit:

Some in Congress want to modify the deal to either improve it for labor or for management. However well-intentioned, any changes would risk delay and a debilitating shutdown.

Remember this statement during the next debt ceiling crisis and how that gets exploited for concessions. Also note the pathological both siding where he humors the idea of being explicitly anti-union.

 

[Bob001]

.....
The union has to set a deadline. That's how strikes work. This isn't hippie BS. They pay workers or the workers walk and the business suffers. Never setting a deadline forfeits leverage.
.....

So to be clear, you're okay with a few thousand workers, who are probably paid more on average than a majority of working Americans, wrecking the economy and disrupting millions of lives because they didn't get everything they want? You're okay with that?

Would you be okay with the management replacing all the strikers with non-union workers? You know they can do that, too, right?

 

[Suddenly]

So to be clear, you're okay with a few thousand workers, who are probably paid more on average than a majority of working Americans, wrecking the economy and disrupting millions of lives because they didn't get everything they want? You're okay with that?

Pretty much, yes. Effects all overblown of course but no better way to establish labor dominance. Nothing happens without the workers and if they decide nothing happens then nothing happens.

So to be clear, you're OK with a critical business making record profits beyond the dreams of working Americans wrecking the economy and disrupting millions of lives because they refused to reward labor's part in creating same and used government to force them to work? You're okay with that?

Would you be okay with the management replacing all the strikers with non-union workers? You know they can do that, too, right?

If they like collapse, go for it. Good luck finding those numbers of capable people in time and who are ok with being scabs. This is an excellent plan for those nostalgic of labor violence as well. I've a few uncles who are probably too old to tip over a bus full of scabs but might give it a go for old times sake.

Seriously. Bring that **** on. It would be the best way to dispel the myth of unskilled labor.

 

[Suddenly]

In a more positive note it is refreshing to be big mad over something not written by a Judge. Biden making me more mad than Alito is quite the upset.

I'm in a weird place. I could just rent an office, hang a Trump flag and put up a Lets Go Brandon sign. and my biggest trouble would be keeping track of all the money coming in. I live in a Trump area but the bar is by and large moderate. So there's a market.

I wish I was that guy sometimes. I really do. If ignorance is bliss than MAGA has to be euphoria.

 

[Delvo]

"Not getting everything they want" is just more anti-union framing. The working conditions these people have been put through have been abusive to an extent that would be unimagined in most other industries. Just trying to get out of that and up to the already-not-good minimal level of worker treatment that most of the rest of us have is not greedy. It's just seeking to be treated like a people.

(And if strikes aren't allowed to cause some economic harm, then they're not allowed to be strikes at all, and then unions aren't allowed to really be unions.)

 

[Aridas]

The working conditions these people have been put through have been abusive to an extent that would be unimagined in most other industries.

I think that this is worthy of being stressed further. A rail strike would definitely suck, certainly, but it would also be long past due. The fact that railroads are so important is quite decidedly NOT a defense that should be offered to excuse and accept horrible mismanagement and exploitation. The situation is the way it is because of short-sighted profiteering of the sort that absolutely should be condemned. If railroads truly are so important, though, I would be more in favor of simply nationalizing any railroad that refuses to manage decently and stop exploiting the work force like that than I would be in favor of rewarding the mismanagement. After all, the ongoing damage being done is a state of affairs that will effectively break their value anyways in the long-term because of lack of willing labor and customers.

 

[Bob001]

"Not getting everything they want" is just more anti-union framing. The working conditions these people have been put through have been abusive to an extent that would be unimagined in most other industries. Just trying to get out of that and up to the already-not-good minimal level of worker treatment that most of the rest of us have is not greedy. It's just seeking to be treated like a people.
.....

I'm sure that's true. But it's a great failing of labor unions that they haven't communicated well with the broader society. Most employees of private employers don't belong to unions. They don't really know what unions are or what they do. Their primary experience of unions is when union rules keep bad teachers or cops from being fired or when their taxes go up to fund exorbitant government employee pensions. The railroad unions have been negotiating this contract for three years, but I don't recall hearing anything about it until the last couple months. If the unions had reached out to the public all along with ads and interviews about their crazy schedules, where they're on call 24 hours a day and can't take their kids to the doctor or even use the days off they're entitled to, there would have been a lot more public sympathy and support, and pressure on management to reform. Almost everybody agrees that they should get sick days and reasonable schedules. But as it is, the public now only sees the unions as an angry mob that wants to shut down the economy in the dead of winter two weeks before Christmas. Management wins.

Gee, maybe they could hire somebody who knows something about PR.

 

[Suddenly]

I'm sure that's true. But it's a great failing of labor unions that they haven't communicated well with the broader society. Most employees of private employers don't belong to unions. They don't really know what unions are or what they do. Their primary experience of unions is when union rules keep bad teachers or cops from being fired or when their taxes go up to fund exorbitant government employee pensions. The railroad unions have been negotiating this contract for three years, but I don't recall hearing anything about it until the last couple months.

The more sane conclusion here is that the corporate owned media is essentially operating a blackout. Working conditions are a mess and there is a ton of unionizing going on right now and the media is treating it as somewhere between a non-story and a curiosity.

If the unions had reached out to the public all along with ads and interviews about their crazy schedules, where they're on call 24 hours a day and can't take their kids to the doctor or even use the days off they're entitled to, there would have been a lot more public sympathy and support, and pressure on management to reform.

Almost everybody agrees that they should get sick days and reasonable schedules. But as it is, the public now only sees the unions as an angry mob that wants to shut down the economy in the dead of winter two weeks before Christmas. Management wins.

Gee, maybe they could hire somebody who knows something about PR.

It's a ridiculous take on this. You have massive amounts of capital, a bipartisan hostile government, and a media carrying water for capital. Which amounts to like billions in free advertising for anti-labor forces. They can't hope to compete at that level. It was hard enough when one of the parties was an ally. Now it's impossible. When a "pro labor" president is out there spouting the anti-union rhetoric the time for talk and PR is over.

The only way to call attention to this is to just quit working. It's the only way to fully communicate and demonstrate why and how workers are essential and important. Public sentiment stoked by propaganda isn't all that important because in the end propaganda and resentment does not move a train.

They strike and get concessions and that will embolden other strikers.

They strike and the government commits atrocities and that radicalizes people.

Strikes terrify capital, and that's why they spend so many resources on propaganda demonizing unions. Based on this post it's been effective.

 

[tyr_13]

As expected the GOP filibustered the bill to give a whole seven days of paid sick time to the workers.

Which is not to give a pass to the Dems on this. Passing legislation to stop a strike but not to force the companies to do substantially better? If you know you can't to the latter, don't do the former.

 

[Bob001]

.....
The only way to call attention to this is to just quit working. It's the only way to fully communicate and demonstrate why and how workers are essential and important. Public sentiment stoked by propaganda isn't all that important because in the end propaganda and resentment does not move a train.

They strike and get concessions and that will embolden other strikers.

They strike and the government commits atrocities and that radicalizes people.

Strikes terrify capital, and that's why they spend so many resources on propaganda demonizing unions. Based on this post it's been effective.

You can rant all you want about evil "capital" like an elderly Parisian Marxist, but the plain fact is that many, many Americans eke out their livings in jobs that pay vastly less than rail workers earn, with no benefits, no job security and no paid time off for sickness or anything else. That's maybe not the way it should be, but it's the way it is. And if Starbucks baristas or Uber drivers or adjunct professors have their holidays ruined and their livelihoods wrecked so a bunch of guys making over $100 grand can get more time off, they won't be blaming "capital."

For reference:

The railroad industry has said that average rail worker salaries will reach $110,000 by the end of the five-year deal in 2025.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/sep/15/joe-biden-tentative-railway-labor-deal-reached-ave/

I'm sure they're crying all the way to the bank.

 

[Random]

You can rant all you want about evil "capital" like an elderly Parisian Marxist, but the plain fact is that many, many Americans eke out their livings in jobs that pay vastly less than rail workers earn, with no benefits, no job security and no paid time off for sickness or anything else. And if Starbucks baristas or Uber drivers or adjunct professors have their holidays ruined and their livelihoods wrecked so a bunch of guys making over $100 grand can get more time off, they won't be blaming "capital."

For reference:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/sep/15/joe-biden-tentative-railway-labor-deal-reached-ave/

I'm sure they're crying all the way to the bank.

Yes, and those workers should be treated better. There should be minimum standards for all workers that are superior to what we have. So what? That doesn't mean that this particular group of workers should be treated poorly.

Seven days a year of paid sick leave? Predictable work schedules and time off? Those are things they should have to fight for? That should be basic to everyone.

And frankly, if a few thousand workers going on strike is enough to cripple the US economy, those workers should probably be getting more than 111K in any case.

 

[Bob001]

.....
Seven days a year of paid sick leave? Predictable work schedules and time off? Those are things they should have to fight for? That should be basic to everyone.
....

Yeah, it all sucks. But there's an argument to be made that their high pay is compensation for their crappy working conditions. I note again that a lot of people paid much less also don't get paid sick leave, or even paid vacation, let alone paid health insurance. There's no evidence that the union offered to give up anything else in exchange for sick days. They already get 15 paid days off and generous health care coverage.

Also from the above link:

The deal includes a substantial increase to hearing aid benefits and coverage for autism without age limitations. Union members will not have any changes in copays, deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums.

That just doesn't sound like abuse.

.....
And frankly, if a few thousand workers going on strike is enough to cripple the US economy, those workers should probably be getting more than 111K in any case.

The other side is that if a few thousand workers going on strike can cripple the economy, they shouldn't be allowed to strike.

The biggest mistake the American labor movement ever made was the air traffic controllers' strike. That had the potential to hurt everybody and even endanger lives, and made the union look selfish, short-sighted and greedy. They gave Reagan good reason to bust them, with broad public support, and unions haven't been the same since.