• @[email protected]
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    -21 year ago

    Every strike causes disruptions, and the bigger the disruption the stronger the strike. Accepting that workers get to use their power to decide what deal is acceptable is part of being pro-labor, even if it means your life is disrupted.

    There’s a difference between a disruption and the railroads shutting down in a country experiencing a pandemic and economic depression.

    Disruption is fine, shelves being more empty, non-essential goods being harder to obtain is fine. Vital goods and services not getting where they need to, people losing their jobs, homes, health, lives etc. is not. I don’t know if all of that would have happened, I leave that to the people who should have an understanding of that impact. Those people elected for that.

    But if you for some reason don’t believe that labor can engage in big disruptions to show their bosses they’re serious and decide you simply must intervene in a worker-employer negotiation, then enforce the contract the workers wanted. And if you’re not willing to force their bosses to accept a contract they don’t like, then don’t pretend you had no choice when you forced the workers.

    Can the President unilaterally force the acceptance of a contract on either side? Was there a claim made that the President had no choice by me? By Biden?

    It’s disingenuous to bring up the strike blocking without also acknowledging action taken afterward. It seems like narrative building used to present a skewed perspective. Especially when it’s often brought up not as a statement of fact but as an allusion to something else.

    • @[email protected]
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      31 year ago

      Vital goods and services not getting where they need to, people losing their jobs, homes, health, lives etc. is not.

      So your stance is that rail workers work for private enterprises but simply cannot strike. They can have pretend unions that join together to ask for stuff, but there’s nothing they can do if they don’t get it. That’s not pro-labor. No one was going to die because the rails weren’t running. The citations was always “the economy” and we literally just went through a crisis where supply chains were disrupted and people’s jobs were saved by emergency acts. Or if you actually believe the apocalypse proclamations, then rail shouldn’t be a private enterprise, and it certainly shouldn’t be run by sick people who haven’t had a good night’s sleep.

      Can the President unilaterally force the acceptance of a contract on either side?

      It was an act of Congress. It could do nearly anything. There was an amendment for sick days that failed and Biden could have made that a requirement. Or just temporarily seized the railroads while negotiations continue. Truman nationalized the rails to avert a strike.

      You can’t say this is going to be an apocalypse, with intervention by Congress itself, and then say “oh, but the only option is blocking a strike and forcing company approved solutions”.

      It’s disingenuous to bring up the strike blocking without also acknowledging action taken afterward.

      Oh fuck off with your “disingenuous” insinuation. My initial reply is exactly about how you can’t just give them a present after you blocked their core labor power and pretend it’s fixes the original harm. The stuff afterward is good positive work, but in no way addresses the core harm of blocking a union’s right to withhold their labor. He could have gotten them everything they wanted (he didn’t) and it still wouldn’t undo making a major attack on the rights of organized labor.

      • @[email protected]
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        -41 year ago

        In one comment you say I insinuate disingenuousness and in another you say I called you disingenuous. I stated that presenting just a piece of the whole situation and omitting the rest is disingenuous. I stand by this as being disingenuous can be, quite literally, defined as slightly dishonest, or not speaking the complete truth.

        So your stance is that rail workers work for private enterprises but simply cannot strike.

        No, that’s not my stance, and it’s not what I stated. My stance is that rail workers can strike, and the elected officials can use the Railway Labor Act to force a contract and delay a strike. My stance on the Railway Labor Act, the Taft-Hartley Act and any number of other pieces of legislation over the decades should be repealed and replaced with more modern legislation that favors workers.

        Yeah, Truman nationalized rails multiple times. Do you know what else he did? During the 1946 rail strike, President Harry Truman at one point called for a law to allow him to draft striking rail workers into the military. Even after the strike ended, the House of Representatives passed a bill to draft striking workers (it died in the Senate). In 1950, Truman ordered the U.S. Army to seize control of the country’s railroads in anticipation of a strike.

        The picture often changes when you provide all the information.

        • @[email protected]
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          21 year ago

          Holy fuck, I’ve been on the internet long enough to know when someone is making a personal attack while pretending they’re just objectively describing an argument. I think you’re a “disingenuous” ass who cries about people being rude to you all while doing the exact same thing.

          Yeah, Truman nationalized rails multiple times. Do you know what else he did? During the 1946 rail strike, President Harry Truman at one point called for a law to allow him to draft striking rail workers into the military. Even after the strike ended, the House of Representatives passed a bill to draft striking workers (it died in the Senate). In 1950, Truman ordered the U.S. Army to seize control of the country’s railroads in anticipation of a strike.

          What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Presidents can nationalize critical infrastructure in times of crisis. That he also did shitty things other times has zero impact on the ability of a president to handle crises with something other than force acceptance of management’s terms. Unless you’re suggesting we should be happy with a forced settlement because Biden might have drafted the workers into the military instead.

          And you call other people “disingenuous”. What a fucking joke.