Away From The Limelight
After months of negotiations, the IBEW’s Railroad members at four of the largest U.S. freight carriers finally have what they’ve long sought but that many working people take for granted: paid sick days.
This is a big deal, said Railroad Department Director Al Russo, because the paid-sick-days issue, which nearly caused a nationwide shutdown of freight rail just before Christmas, had consistently been rejected by the carriers. It was not part of last December’s congressionally implemented update of the national collective bargaining agreement between the freight lines and the IBEW and 11 other railroad-related unions.
“We’re thankful that the Biden administration played the long game on sick days and stuck with us for months after Congress imposed our updated national agreement,” Russo said. “Without making a big show of it, Joe Biden and members of his administration in the Transportation and Labor departments have been working continuously to get guaranteed paid sick days for all railroad workers.
“We know that many of our members weren’t happy with our original agreement,” Russo said, “but through it all, we had faith that our friends in the White House and Congress would keep up the pressure on our railroad employers to get us the sick day benefits we deserve. Until we negotiated these new individual agreements with these carriers, an IBEW member who called out sick was not compensated.”
While President Joe Biden was calling on Congress in November to pass legislation to implement the agreement, he stressed that he would continue to encourage the railroads to guarantee paid sick time for their employees.
“I share workers’ concern about the inability to take leave to recover from illness or care for a sick family member,” Biden said. “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.”
...After almost 2½ years of ongoing refusal by the Class I rail carriers to accept the unions’ good-faith settlement offers or to offer their own, the IBEW and the other unions sought help from the National Mediation Board in early 2022. By July, the carriers still hadn’t budged.
Once the mediators determined that negotiations were at an impasse, Biden appointed a Presidential Emergency Board to hear testimony from both camps. While this board made a number of positive recommendations in its proposal — including improved health care benefits and one additional personal day — guaranteed paid sick days still was not among them.
Even so, the IBEW said Sept. 1 that it had reached a tentative agreement with the rail carriers that included the board’s recommendations. Negotiations with the other labor coalition unions continued toward a Sept. 15 deadline, but when it became obvious that the bargaining parties would not reach consensus by then, Biden asked then-Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh to assemble the sides and reach an acceptable agreement that would head off a national freight rail strike.
On deadline day, the parties reached an agreement on an updated contract that included the biggest wage increases in 47 years. Over the next several weeks, while acknowledging that the agreement was less than perfect, the IBEW and several of its fellow coalition unions voted to ratify the agreement. A handful of others, however, did not, instead threatening a December freight rail strike.
Biden, citing the potential economic impact of a national freight rail strike during the winter holidays, on Nov. 28 called on Congress to impose the emergency board’s agreement.
Since then, several other railroad-related unions have also seen success in negotiating for similar sick-day benefits. These 12 unions represent more than 105,000 railroad workers.
“Biden deserves a lot of the credit for achieving this goal for us,” Russo said. “He and his team continued to work behind the scenes to get all of rail labor a fair agreement for paid sick leave.”
History will look back upon the Biden-Harris Administration as a return to normalcy. But more than that, history will look back upon this administration as a master class in good governing. Because while our armchair revolutionaries bewailed and bemoaned the November 28th agreement as Biden selling out to Big Rail, he and his team averted a potential nationwide strike and then burned the midnight oil for the proceeding 7 months, working closely with labor leaders from IBEW to help get them closer to achieving their goal of earning paid sick leave. They all knew the deal was imperfect. But they didn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Instead, the administration and IBEW continued negotiating with the rail carriers, gradually wearing them down. When it was no longer front-page news with the threat of a nationwide strike, the rail carriers realized that they could no longer paint the rail workers as potential villains for upending nationwide rail transport. They were forced back to the negotiating table and it was only a matter of time until they caved to IBEW's demand for paid sick leave.
We have learned countless lessons from the failed presidency of Donald Trump. But more than anything we have learned that the presidency is not something that just anybody can do. You need a specific skill set to do it successfully. You need an understanding of the ins and outs of the Executive Branch. You need to understand when and how to use the bully pulpit. You need to understand when to lobby Congress and when to take a step back. You need to keep your ego in check and not act on every impulse and instead consult with your team when critical decisions must be made. You need to understand that you are the face of American foreign policy and how you act on the world stage and how you treat our allies matters on the global stage. And you need to understand that the presidency is not about you and your interests but instead about what is best for the American people.
Joe Biden has not governed by tweet. While this has caused much frustration to our friends in the media and on the Far Left, the truth of the matter is that Joe Biden quite frankly doesn't care about your goldfish attention span or your Twitter temper tantrums. He doesn't care that he will be vilified for 48 hours when a less-than-perfect deal is enacted to avert a nationwide rail strike. No matter how many times he's called a sellout by the Bernie Bros, Joe Biden knows that like a marathoner, you need to be strategic about completing the race at hand. Joe Biden knows that sometimes you have to pace yourself, even when your supporters think you should be running much faster. Joe Biden even knows that sometimes you have to drift back to the pack in order to save up for the home stretch. Because like any good marathoner, Joe Biden knows it doesn't matter your final time or how graceful you were. All that matters is that you get over that finish line, no matter how rocky that road may have been. All that matters is you completed something you promised to do, even if your supporters might not have believed in you the entire time.
Joe Biden gets it. Other Democrats do as well. Behind the scenes, Senator Jon Ossoff is quietly bringing thousands of jobs to the state of Georiga. Behind the scenes, Representative Lauren Underwood is quietly amassing an impressive legislative resume, having already authored multiple bills that have become law. Behind the scenes, Vice-President Kamala Harris has met with over 100 world leaders, helping restore America's standing in the world. They all do it without thundering tweets or raucous rallies. Instead, they put their heads down and do the work. Since one's good old-fashioned dedication and commitment to governing isn't headline-worthy, these Democrats rarely, if ever, get recognized in the public sphere.
But those of us in the know see them. We appreciate them. Because we know that honest and true legislation is not done on social media. It's not done holding performance-based press conferences. It's not with whiteboards during televised committee hearings. Real legislating is done over weeks and months. It's done making compromises at first but doubling back later to get even more. It's about good faith negotiations and understanding where the opposition is coming from. It's about advocating for your side but not blowing up the deal due to publicly disparaging your opponents. It's about understanding that there still remains an arena where two sides can sit in a room and hash out a deal where the details are leaked 30 minutes later. And it's about knowing that your side is negotiating in good faith and not simply to score a big PR win for the cameras and networks to gloat over for the next 48 hours.
The adults are back in charge. Events like this past week's rail worker paid sick leave victory only happen when that is the case. When all is said and done, Joe Biden might very well become the greatest labor president in our country's history. That doesn't happen without his half-century of experience in deal-making in Washington.
And that doesn't happen without understanding that real deals happen away from the incessant glare of television cameras.