Freight Rail Unions Reach Tentative Agreement That May Avoid Strike

The freight rail companies and holdout unions have reached a tentative agreement on a new contract that temporarily puts the possibility of an economy-crippling strike on hold, according to a statement released by the White House Thursday morning. However, the agreement still needs to be ratified by union members and there are so far few details on the agreement, including over critical work-life balance issues that are motivating workers to strike. The only rank and file union members to vote so far on a tentative agreement, the International Association of Machinists District 19, rejected the agreement and voted to strike.

As Motherboard has been reporting for more than a year, the labor dispute is the product of years-long resentment between workers and an increasingly popular management philosophy in the freight rail industry called precision scheduled railroading (PSR), which sees corporate executives slashing workforces and resources, delaying shipments, and increasing profits at the expense of workers and customers while the industry consolidated through mergers to enforce geographic monopolies or duopolies. Workers say staffing and resources have been cut to the bone while corporate profits are measured in the billions. The worker shortage has gotten so acute several major railroad companies have enacted draconian attendance policies that force workers to be prepared to go to work at a moment’s notice for 90 percent of their lives until the day they retire or quit. Thousands are choosing to quit instead. 

Earlier this summer, President Biden appointed a three-member Presidential Emergency Board (PEB), which recommended terms for a compromise deal. However, workers broadly do not view the terms as a compromise, but a capitulation to the companies, because on the most important issue for them, work-life balance, they were awarded one extra day of paid leave per year. There is nothing in the suggested terms that mandate workers be able to schedule that day off far enough in advance for it to be useful. Workers expect it to be like all of the other “days off” they have on paper, useless in reality, subject to being rejected upon request by the railroads if they’re short staffed—which they often are due to years of attrition and cuts—which they spend having to sit by their phones or sitting in some hotel room far from home waiting to work another shift on a train that brings them back to where they live.

The railroads have a trump card in the Railway Labor Act of 1924, which permits Congress to intervene in any labor strike. As stakes heated up this week, railroads began to curtail shipments, and Amtrak canceled trains in advance of a potential strike, the White House took an active role in negotiations and Congress signaled it would intervene, although there was widespread Democratic opposition to enforcing the terms of the PEB on workers.

A joint statement from Jeremy Ferguson, President of SMART-TD and Dennis Pierce, president of the Brotherhood ofLocomotive Engineers and Trainmen, the two largest holdout unions, says “For the first time, our unions were able to obtain negotiated contract language exempting time off for certain medical events from carrier attendance policies” and the agreement “provides our members with the ability to take time away from work to attend to routine and preventative medical, as well as exemptions from attendance policies for hospitalizations and surgical procedures.”

Although a temporary agreement has been reached, a strike has not yet been averted. And even if a strike is ultimately averted through Congressional legislation, it won’t fix the underlying problem on America’s rails. The current labor conflict is the result of years of penned-up frustration. Workers regard the current moment as their only opportunity to win better working conditions so they can see their families, schedule doctor’s appointments, attend funerals, and generally live a life outside of their job.