Biden Administration Prevents Nationwide Rail Shutdown

“The bill I’m about to sign ends a difficult rail dispute and helps our nation avoid what, without a doubt, would have been an economic catastrophe at a very bad time in the calendar,” President Biden said this morning during a signing ceremony of H.J.Res.100, which averts a nationwide railroad strike. “We ensured workers are going to get a historic 24% wage increase over the next five years, improved working conditions, and peace of mind around their healthcare,” Biden said.

“Let me begin by thanking my team here. They did one heck of a job in averting what could have been a real disaster and – and ended up with a good product. But we still have more work to do, in my view, in terms of ultimately getting paid sick leave not just for rail workers but for every worker in America. That is a goal I had in the beginning, and I’m coming back at it,” Biden said.

The US Senate voted 80 to 15 on Thursday to enact a tentative contract reached in September by 12 unions representing 115,000 workers. They were about to strike next week on 9 December. However, the Senate failed to approve a measure that would have provided paid sick days to railroad workers.

“The labor movement will continue to mobilize and push forcefully until every rail worker – and all America’s workers – has the paid sick leave they need and deserve,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler after the Senate vote. 

Without railroad freight shipments, many US industries – including virtually the entire auto industry –  would shut down. White House economic advisors said as many as 765,000 Americans, many of them union members themselves, would have been put out of work within the first two weeks of the strike alone. Communities could have lost access to chemicals necessary to ensure clean drinking water. Farms and ranches across the country would have been unable to feed their livestock. The estimated cost to the economy was $2 billion a day.

“Thanks to the bill Congress passed and what I’m about to sign, we’ve spared the country that catastrophe,” Biden said.

Once again the  President appears to have out-foxed unwitting Republican obstructionists. In response to a question about paid sick leave, he said, “As soon as I can convince our Republicans to see the light.” Thereby once again using success to highlight opposition policy failures.

Biden also took the opportunity to reiterate the economic progress the Administration continues to make after the unending disasters and corruption of the previous Republican Administration. Republicans were thumped in the mid-term elections of course.

“I want to thank Congress, Democrats and Republicans, for acting so quickly. I know this was a tough vote for members of both parties. It was a tough — for me. But it was the right thing to do at the moment to save jobs, to protect millions of working families from harm and disruption, and to keep supply chains stable around the holidays, and to continue the progress we’ve made and we’re — continue to see on the economy,” Biden said. Then he made the following points:

• For months, you couldn’t look anywhere without seeing headlines screaming “Gas prices at the pump are up.” But, look, folks, gas prices are down and you barely hear anything about it right now. And they’re continuing to go down. There’s a lot more that’s going to happen. And they’re down more than $1.50 a gallon since the summer, and they continue to fall.
• Our economy continues to grow. The economic report shows the GDP is up even more than it was previously thought. We continue to create jobs, lots of jobs. Today, we’ve learned that the economy added 263,000 jobs in November. And
• We’ve now created 10.5 million jobs since I took office, more than any administration in history at this point in a presidency.
• And 750,000 of them are domestic manufacturing jobs – “Made in America.”
• The unemployment rate remains near an all-time, 50-year low at 3.7%.
• Wages for working families, “I want to say this again, wages for working families, in fact, over the last couple of months, have gone up, up. These wage increases are larger than the increase in inflation during that same period of time… things are moving. They’re moving in the right direction.”
• As we go into the holiday season, here’s what this all means. The Americans are working, the economy is growing, wages are rising faster than inflation, and we’ve avoided a catastrophic rail strike.
• It means our plan to build the economy from the bottom up and the middle out, you’re tired of hearing me say that, but it’s working. The wealthy are still doing very well, while the middle class and the poor are having a shot.