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United Steelworkers union endorses Biden
(thehill.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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If you don't earn over a million dollars a year then it's obvious that Biden is the right choice
The guy who broke the strike of an absurdly profitable rail company?
I mean it's a choice between open contempt for the workers, and open contempt, but occasionally putting on a union hat for a photo op before either doing nothing or siding with management.
If you actually look at the details of the story you're taking about you'll find that after Biden ordered them back to work he then ALSO got the train companies to give the workers everything the union had been asking for
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_labor_dispute
Thanks for posting and explaining some of this. I also had the mistaken impression that he just had forced them all back to work. It never sat right with me. I wasn’t aware that a lot of things happened after that.
Sounds like Bernie went to bat for them, and then Biden forced a compromise the industry wanted but most unions disagreed with...
I mean, Biden got them a single sick day when they were only asking for 7 days.
That's not a great win for unions, that's a middle finger.
It's literally the smallest amount of sick days they could have so they could stop saying "we do t get sick days".
And a cynic would say the only reason they got the one is "we don't have enough sick days" doesn't Garner as much sympathy in a headline.
But I'm just going off what you linked, do you want to try and find one that does back up your version of events?
The unions wanted 15 sick days, Biden forced them to accept the company's offer of 1 day unpaid sickleave. Later it was increased to 7, plus a wage increase of 14%+4.5% per year for 5 years. That doesn't even keep up with inflation.
Biden could have simply ordered the railroad to accept the union's demands, hell he could have nationalized the rail companies in question, but his job is to represent capital, not labor.
To put into perspective how much of a pittance this is, BNSF is so profitable, they could afford to give every worker a raise of 100,000 and still afford to give Warren Buffet a billion dollars every year. This is the equivalent of Trump giving the .1% billions in tax breaks and telling workers they should support him because they get an extra 12 bucks in their tax returns.
Dude you just moved the goalposts a million lightyears away from what you said in your original comment.
Secondly, YOU don't get to decide what the rail union's opinion on the matter is, only the rail union can speak for the rail union, and they've all publicly said how very happy they are with the outcome of Biden's actions
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/01/railroad-workers-union-win-sick-leave
I cannot conceive of how the leadership could both represent their workers and be happy Biden sided with the board, against the workers.
Because that's not what happened.
He literally required them to accept the board's offer. The company offering minor concessions afterword doesn't change the fact that he sided against the workers.
No, he literally did not. And the concessions he got were basically everything the union was trying to get.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-signs-bill-block-us-railroad-strike-2022-12-02/
The deal referenced was an offer by the board. Biden signed it.
Oy are you trying to be obstinate? That act got them back to work while Biden continued negotiations til literally days later when he won for them all the benefits they were seeking
Ah yes, the "president has a magic wand" theory of governance.
It is, in fact, not quite as simple as I'm trying to make it sound, and there are some things to complain about in what Biden did. Here's a pretty good summary of the "Biden did wrong" thesis.
My take on it is that Biden launched legislation to grant them 7 days of sick leave by law. It passed the house on a party-line vote, and then failed in the senate by 8 votes. When the senate passed an amended version that would grant 1 day of sick leave, what would you want Biden to do? Assuming he doesn't have the ability to just ignore the law and order the rail companies to give the benefits he thinks they should be giving, because we don't have a command economy under the total authority of one person?
Here's a partial summary of what Biden's labor department had done by working the issue after the fuss had died down in the rest of government. It's complicated by the fact that there are multiple companies and multiple unions all with separate agreements, but my overall take is that it looks like he's been trying to balance securing justice for the workers, with what he can get the rest of government to cooperate with, with keeping the economy running and not grinding to a halt.
Honestly, the point of view that he should have let the economy grind to a halt if that's what the people who actually do the work want to have happen, in order to secure some economic justice for themselves, I can understand that. It makes sense to me. Honestly, that is more or less my personal point of view on it. But I think calling him a shockingly anti-union US president because he won't do that is overstating how pro-union people in US politics tend to be.