Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, a sign of the president’s strength in uniting his party to have the backing of one of its most liberal members
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, a sign of the president’s strength in uniting his party to have the backing of one of its most liberal members
Man you are debating in serious bad faith of you’re going to posit me as anti union.
You’re right, all unions had not agreed in the contracts months before, several agreed, but after brushing up, 3 of the 12 unions objected and it only takes 1 to spike the negotiations, that’s my error. I was mistaken in believing that when they sent the negotiated contracts to Congress in September that they had reached agreement, but moved to strike after negotiations feel apart in the cooling phase.
As far as everything else goes, yes, the point of strikes is to cause discomfort as a way of balancing power between labor and capital, however that doesn’t change the government’s obligation when it’s of such large consequence. They had exactly one lever and were forced to pull it, some more gleefully than others. At the end of the day, the Biden administration didn’t let the conversation stop there, and that is what sets the administration apart for the alternative.
again, this applies to every major labor movement in history, I would definitely call this anti-union if you’re saying governments should prevent their one point of leverage over employers. You know what happens without the government intervening? The employers cave, and that’s what prevents the strikes that would hurt everyone else. But why would they have in this scenario?
Alright, I’ll bite. Name me any other labor movement where a single union’s negotiations have the power to evaporate up to 4% of the nation’s GDP in its first month?
I ask you that to illustrate that the rail situation was absolutely dire with a projection on 90+billion in losses for the country each day after the first day and a projection of 700,000 lost jobs after the first month. It’s the only reason the government even has a seat at that bargaining table and it’s a damn good one. I wouldn’t dare give that power carte blanche, but I’m not faulting the government for taking the steps it took in that situation. Instead, I’ll choose to reward the further efforts to get the unions what they deserve even after being forced to play their hand.
The progressive move forward would be to dissolve and nationalize the rails after that shit show, but that’s a completely different conversation. We don’t have a system built on progressive values, we have one that’s been shattered and glued together several times and these are the late stage knells that we can expect at this point. But the path to actually building those progressive systems isn’t to throw away progress due to imperfection. The Biden admin getting those wins is progress worth preserving and building upon is my point.
Yeah, they’re a very important workforce, that was rapidly dwindling over time, over shit like not being allowed to be sick. How much does that hurt the GDP? The railroad companies made the situation dire themselves by teetering the economy on fewer and fewer, harder and harder worked workers. How about this, to save the economy, Biden forces the employers to agree to what the union workers settle on.
I don’t disagree with that being a better solution, but it wasn’t an option. Unironically, this was the train car moral dilemma. I think you’re undermining your own argument, though. That while rapidly declining workforce due to the sick day issue and the issues that arise from that may very well be a reason the Biden admin is trying to right that wrong. I still argue that instead of changing who the government forces to agree, the rail system should be nationalized. We’ve seen that the companies in charge of them clearly can’t manage them not just for their playing chicken with the economy forcing the government to bail them out of that disaster, but also the several toxic derailments since.