The Rail Strike is Dead, Long Live the Rail Strike

of insulin or whatever. The people who make those trains go have a pretty hard job and there's not a lot of them. And for a variety of reasons that boiled down to companies not wanting to spend money. Uh, it's impossible for that. They don't get sick days. Um. So there were a bunch of other ship things like things that were ship about the job, including pay, especially since rail company profits have been at like record levels, so they were threatening to strike. There were union negotiations.

Some of the union leaders reached an agreement with the rail companies, but it wasn't it didn't include the sick days. So a lot of workers, potentially most of them are We're at least willing to strike. And then Biden came in and had Congress basically say do the same thing Reagan did to the air traffic controllers in the eighties, where it's like, no, if you strike, it's illegal because this is a too critical a service for the country. Anyway,

that's broadly the situation. Chris, you know this a lot better than I the most pro labor president, the most pro labor presor okay, this is I think this is actually like that's that's why I don't like, that's my knowledge, and I think that's close to a layman's knowledge. So I'm waiting for you to fill in the gap. All right, let's let's let's start with what Biden has actually done, because it's it's it's slightly different than what Reagan was

doing there with the air traffic controllers. Um. Part of the reason everything is fucked up with the railroads is that, like railroads almost since their inception have had like an almost entirely different regulatory framework than like anything else. So you know, your normal strike is covered by the National Labor Relations Act. Right, you go through your National Labor

Relations Board, you do your votes, blah blah, blah blah. Uh. If your railroad workers are not covered by that, they're covered something by something called the Railway Labor Act, which lets Congress just be like, no, fuck you, you have to take this contract. And the other thing it does, I mean, there is like a it is a oh I didn't realize that so well before, so well before, like you know, the modern era, and Reagan did his

ship with the air traffic controllers. There was a it was written into the law that Congress could say like, yeah, you're a to a rail strike. That's really interesting, I guess, and it goes back to the days when they were literally making them out of human bones. Yeah. I mean it's been so it's been amended over time and it's changed a bit. And there's some other stuff that happened

in the nineties. After there's a there's a there was a failed rail strike in the nineties where Congress is also just like, no, fuck you, you have to take this contract. But yeah, the the important thing about this is that like, okay, so in order to even potentially strike, you have to go through so much bullshit. It's called

self help in the law. Like the people have been trying to strike for two years, and everything that we're seeing now is the product of two years of bullshit of these like there's all of this nonsense you have to go through. There's these like cooling off mandatory cooling

off periods. You can't like, uh, you know, you have to like wait before you do anything else, and you have to go to the next step, the next step, and the final step is Joe Biden had the choice to either let these rail workers strike and actually get the things that they fucking needed, or he could tell them to funk off and just eat a contract. And that that that that's what's happened right now, is that Joe Biden has just and also again with the support

of both Houses of Congress. And I also like explicitly want to mention here that a lot a lot of nominally socialist politicians, including like a lot of social Democrats have yet vote. Talk about that too, because that that's that's another part of it. That again, so my my surface and I guess I'm playing playing the podcast idiot

in this one, which is not abnormal for me. But my like layman's understanding of what happened with this is that, uh, there was a bill up in Congress as to whether or not to endorse this, and uh, a bunch of progressives said that they wouldn't vote on it unless it included seven days of paid sick leave, including Sanders that got pushed off into a separate bill, And there was like some kind of sketchy wording about like, well we

won't you know, like I I don't. I don't understand the congressional hijinks, but I know they just wound up voting for the the negotiate like what the union had negotiated without any sick leaf like it. Yeah, Like it seems like it kind of provided an opportunity for a bunch of progressives in the House to vote yes on the sick leave knowing that it wouldn't pass the Senate and knowing that the strip I would still get stopped. Right Like what am I? Um? I mean? It's basically

that like the I'm not a congress nowhere. Yeah, I mean there there's a bunch of sort of hiji inks that were happening in Congress where there's different there's a sciety different version of the bill in the House, and they had this whole thing. But okay, the House, the House one for sick leaved did pass with support of

every Yeah, and it's three three Republicans. But Okay, the thing I think I want to point out here and I want to move away from the sick leave thing because the sick that's the fact that these people don't have sick leave is important. This is also not like the main thing the strike was about, like things are, things are, things are so much worse like things are, things are so much like infinitely worse than people like

at all understands. Like what the thing that the thing that's real strike is about, if you if you go like actually talk to the people who are doing it, is that these people are on call for nine of their lives, like and and when I say then of their lives, they're on call while they were asleep. They're on call constantly. Uh, they're there's there's no way to even there's no way to plan a consistant sly schedule because you can just be on call. And you know,

and part part part of what's going on here. And if if you read the sort of detailed accounts, you will see a lot of people talking about this thing called precision scheduled railroading. Yeah, precision scheduled railroading was it was a great theory kind of that was implemented so

atrociously badly. It's basically fucked like the entire economy. Um that the idea behind it was like you could you could schedule when like a freight railroad was going to go right, and this this would give you a bunch of efficiency bonuses. You could plan like you could schedule

things around each other. Um, this just didn't happen. People implemented it, but what they implemented was just this nightmarror like amalgamation of we're going to reduce a bunch of staff and then we're going to make these trains that have like two hundred cars on them. And this has been a catastrophe. It's called monster trains. That there's there's Justin Rosniak, who's a podcast. See it doesn't seem like a good solution to the problem of not enough guys

to make trains work is make the trains huge. It's justnorable train crash. It's awful. Again, these are your twarter trains long right, So if if you don't get the wait you ship you should write, the train will fucking fall over. They keep doing this there's this has been happening for like several years now. Is there's just trains everywhere derailing. There's like no coverage of it. You know, you know, you know, you know where I knew that from. Chris Garrison will tell you when I get when I

get drunk or something late at night. My favorite thing to watch his videos of trains hitting stuff and train crashes are amazing to watch. It's incredible to think of all the human ingenuity it took to make that big, big boom. There's thousands of videos on YouTube of cargo getting stuck on train tracks and train happening through there yea, and boxes being pull verized in the air they rised.

It's so cool. So the downside is that one day we're gonna have one of these trains that is run by a person who has had three hours of sleep in the last forty eight hours, and it's gonna be caring like fucking I don't know, it's gonna be carrying like sodium nitrate on it or some ship and it's just going to explode and it is going to kill enormous every place. That just actually happened in Canada like a decade ago. But yeah, like these trains are too big.

They're so big they don't fit in the fucking rail yards. Like they're so big that most the training infrastructure doesn't work for them. They are so everything is okay. They're they're really really really badly planned, despite the fact that this is supposed to be precision scheduled railroading. Like they're

unbelievably badly planned. You have people just like being forced to just like sit there for twelve hours in a train, like waiting for the rest of like the other like ninety five cars that are supposed to be on this

train to show up. You know. The situation just like it is utterly nightmares and everything about this, Right, if you're an engineer, right, and you're in one of these trains and you're in there for twelve fucking hours in this train, you legally can't have your phone because you know, I mean, this is a safety thing, right, And in some sense this makes sense. It's like a safety measure. You can't have your phone because you know, you can't

be distracted what you're talking about. You're just sucking sitting on the tracks for like twelve hours, and you know this this this stuff is, you know, and the fact that the fact that people are on call constantly, the fact that the entire rail network is just physically falling apart. Because the other thing about these trains, right, they make a enormous amount of money, None of them ever fucking

show up on time. It's a disgaster. It's a catastrophe, like like like genuinely like part of the reason why we're having all these supply issues is that no train has fucking showed up on time in like four years. And it's there's a new contract. It's okay that the new contracts signed in says that workers can have up to three unpaid days off for medical appointments. Oh wow, that's something. It's a three unpaid tabs stays off for pre made medical appointments. Yeah, no, none of forever. Yeah.

And it gets like like these people are on call

for of their lives. You can't even like like you can't schedule when you're going to sleep because you might be on call and on call might be you have to fucking like drive like several hours to a place so you can get on a train, and the train cannot leave, and the train eventually leaves like six hours later and you fucking drive and then you're just like dropped off somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and then unpaid, you have to go back to like where you live.

It is like, like, Okay, the thing, the thing I wanted to like get out of this is like the railroading system in general, that the system of freight railroading that we have in the US is in the midst of collapsing. Like it it is falling apart, It is not working, it is is becoming increasingly dangerous. It is I mean utterly inhumane for the people working on it. And and you know, none of the fucking even this

even the sick Bowl contract, like didn't do anything for it. Right, The only way this actually could have been resolved is if Joe Biden and in a fifth Democrats and if Congress hadn't been fucking hours and had let these people strike because these kinds of concessions like and you know, I also like I don't want to let the fucking unions off the hook here too, because they know all of this. But again, most of the sort of like senior union people are very tight with a very tight

with Democratic Party. This is part of why all of this ship was postponed until after the elections because they didn't you know, they didn't want to deal with the ship. They've been trying to force people to sign these contract too, and it's it's it's a ship show. It is a just absolute catastrophe on on every every level. Yeah. I mean, it's almost as if the rail system probably shouldn't be

run by private interests. Yeah, because there's going to be now a hundred hundred fifteen rail workers who are forced to work under these still not great conditions. Meanwhile, the managers and the owners of the railroads get to go back to just making tons of money. Yeah, and again record profits. None of this is happening, Not that that would make it okay, but none of this is happening in an environment well, well, you know, we're running at a loss and we we have no money and no

ability to like like they have. They're making hundreds of billions of dollars profits like this is this is like one of the most profitable times to run a railroad in US. You can incentivize more people to be railroad road workers if the job isn't a fucking nightmare. For example, what if instead of not being able to have their phones. We gave each of them a DVD player in a screen with a DVD of step Brothers, and they could watch step Brothers as much as they want while piloting

a train. I think that would actually get I think that would cause mass, mass layoff set at a rail yard. That's that's how we get the strike. We include this in the next provision for destruction. I was I was stealthying in my accelerationist beliefs here. This is the fastest

way it can transit infrastruction. We've got like two years before this holding fucking implodes anyways, because part part of what's keeping people in the railroading system is that so railroading also has its own pension system that's like disconnected from the regular pension system him and you have to you have to work there for ten years in order to collect your pension. This is why like enormous numbers

of people just haven't left right. People have been leaving right, But there's a there's a huge number of people who were hiring these giant expansion in two thousand four, and you know, like we're two years out from that contract from all these people being able to collect their pensions and fucking leaving. Yeah, that's just like it's like, this is the only chance I have to ever not work myself to death, so I have to tough it out. But yeah, yeah, but these those those people are those

people are going to leave. And you know, this is this is the sort of like this is the sort of hammer that capitalism has built over its own head, which is that like, yeah, congratulations, you you successfully flexibilized and casualized your entire workforce. That means that if people like don't want to do your shitty job, they can leave and find another job. And at some point, like there are there is a ship that in this economy

that like actually does need to be done. But these people have been sort of like so blinded by just like you know, they're so so blinded by lying goes up. They're so blinded by short term profit that they really don't understand that at some point there's just not gonna be fucking workers to run the railroad. Yeah, I mean, And a lot of this situation is built off of and instead of being compared to Reagan's stuff for their traffic controllers, it's actually more similar to what Carter did

with some with some airline workers. Um. Then also with the with the the nineteen eight kind of a railroad Deregulation act Um which which caused would would you, which gave a lot more power to companies to run the railroads. And that's that is what kind of shifted shifted things to our to our current, our current problem because they were they gave permission for these rail companies to close down lines that were less profitable and to set their

own um freight rates. And yeah, it's it's not being controlled by the inter State Commerce Commission. Instead it's being controlled by execuity. That that thing's weird, right because like, on the one hand, like the wave of corporates, all dation that happened after that is like a disaster, and the fact that there's basically like four real like reil companies now is a disaster. On the other hand, like it is also true that the Interstate Commerce Board was

like dogshited his jaws. It also sucked. Yes, absolutely it sucked, and for a short period of time it actually did improve things. But now it's it's it's it's powers coalescing again into the very types of monopolies that caused the that caused railroad regulation to be necessary back in the nineteenth century. Like in the first place, um power is being consolidated again, and it's it's this vicious, vicious cycle that are that fundamentally puts short term profits above of

the conditions of workers. Yeah, I think, like, you know, okay, so there have been a lot of people talking about, like what the potential solutions to this are in a sort of macro sense, because like, okay, even even with a better contract, right, like, something actually has to be done in order to force the railroads to not fucking suck and to like actually properly scheduled their goddamn trains

and not work everyone to death. And you know, I want to put that it is worth noting like we actually did like have national nationalized railroad company for a while, and it was kind of a ship show like it. Okay, Okay,

this is something that's also important. Think about this, Like there's a lot of like there's a lot of different kinds of nationalization, right Like there there there was a huge difference between a firm that's like like you know, like we we we we sort of technically nationalized a bunch of the like car companies after two thousand eight, right, we bailed them out, but you know, like we like when in that stuff, we didn't really like take it. We did we owned, we owned like a bunch of

their stock. We didn't like take a control employees, and like we we got like Nick Tonight like proto neoliberal nationalization of the railroads last time, and it kind of

atributed so the problems we have now. There was also a period where Conrail's union was trying to like buy like the railroad, so we all we almost we almost got a railroad system that was run by its by it was owned by its own union, and then the company just like refused to sell it to them because they were like waiting to hold on, we can't have a worker run railroad. But one thing, one thing I am interested in is I I don't actually know this. What would what would the how would how would an

illegal strike actually work? Like, what's what's the what is

the differences between people striking illegally? Now, Like there's some some discussion of that, who knows that's actually actually happened, But what is the main kind of difference between that and um, the non illegal stow Okay, so the big thing is Okay, So the thing about the National Labor Relations Act, right, which is the thing that covers normal strikes, was that like and this is also true to sem I sent under the rover, but like, okay, so if

you're doing a legal strike, you have legal protections right like they're they're there are things corporations can't do to you. Um, like yeah, there there there, there's there's a bunch of stuff that can't Like, I don't like it's it's it's a lot harder to just sort of fire people. The other thing is that also, like especially something like this, there's a like you you if you do if you do a wildcat strike like this and you do you specifically a strike that is like that is specifically illegal

under this act, like you can all get fired. Um I'm I think that I think they could technically arrest you. Like it's it's I don't know that that part of it's not exactly clear to me, But yeah, I don't know. I mean there there's sort of like I feel like if if if they arrest you just for not going to your job, I feel like that is a I mean that that has happened to people like I know people have been yes, like in the long history of

labor struggles, people have been straight up killed. Um, but at least in twenty two I think it would be a bad look. Yeah, I mean I think, Okay, so I think where we're headed, and I think what they ought to do is just force get all of like the worst criminals and I mean the murderers, the terrorists, all of those guys, and you make them run the trains. Whoever blew up all of those power transformers in North Carolina. You make them run the trains, and it'll be fine.

Nothing bad will happen as a result of this. It will work out perfectly well. The the the alternative plan and the thing that maybe these rail companies are just holding out for because maybe they're just making conditions be not great and underpaying and not giving sick days, is because they're waiting for trains just to become autonomous. They're already planning to severely cut down the crews that are

on the trains. There's already trains in Australia that are a totally autonomously run that carry mining materials over for hundreds of miles, and that is the future that these that these companies want, because then they don't they need

to pay for employees to actually run the train. Frustrating because like in an actual if we were anything that approached a society that like dealt with things ethically and humanely, uh and equitably, then this would be good, like because it seems like working on train sucks and it would be great if we could automate most of that work. Uh, and then people less people would have to work in order to keep society running. But that's people don't have

to work. We were just going to run through these people's bodies by like as we get up to autonomy automization,

and then we will throw them away. Yeah, and then there will and then because they'll do it badly, there's going to be a disastrous train crash caused by the fact that they got all of the people off of a train and hauling nitro glystener or whatever, and it's going to destroy I don't know, duluth Um, which you know, not the worst city to lose, but I I sorry, duluth y'all are fucked well, Okay, it's it's worth one.

Like this stuff, like the automation stuff is already happening right like that we have, right, we have like this well and I mean it's like a very real sense that there's this sort of nightmare. One of the other sort of nightmare things that's going on right now is that there are these like like I don't know, like driver assistance programs basically that are being run on trains. Now. Where that are that are? You know, they're supposed to be like making decisions like for and with the drivers,

but ay, they suck ass um be there. They're they're design. They're designed to basically maximize design to maximize profitability, right, And the way you maximize profitability is by running trains really really slowly. And you know that's contributing to the fact that every train is fucking late now and the phrases it doesn't work. And the third problem is that these is that these things keep fucking running trains off Like this is another reason why trains keep sucking crashing

is that they suck. They keep they keep running trains off the tracks and like you know, and like that there's there's there's like there's there's a lot of ship here, right because it's like if you if you override the system, like you can, you can get disciplined for for for overriding the system, but then you have this sort of like you have this thing where it's like, okay, so do I do I get disciplined for overriding system and not making the train crash or do I just make

the fucking train crash and doing the trolley problem? Yeah? Yeah, it's literally yeah, just a lot like like you love that this is just gonna inevitably gonna result in an exact recreation of the trolley traffle. It's already like this is already happening to people, and it's just like like it's none of the none of the stuff works automatics into this orphanage. I can divert it instead of this old folk. So it's like it's literally happening, like it's

just like none of this stuff, Like Okay. The thing that's like frustrating about this, right is okay, if any of the people at the sort of like at the level of where they're planning these trains could even sort of do their job right that this isn't even a thing that's like an inevitable contradiction between capital and labor, Like this is just if any of these people could actually fucking schedule the railroads, which is the thing they're

supposed to be trending to do. If they could actually schedule when the train was supposed to go and when it was supposed to leave, you wouldn't have these problems because then all of the people who worked there would also be told when the fucking train was leaving and they could schedule around it. But no, they can't fucking do it because they're too fucking lazy, they're too fucking stupid, and they don't want to spend the money to actually make any of these systems fucking work. And so the

consequence is just this bullshit. And then also because again and this is everything like that, like capital is also really falling down in the job here, because like the rest of capital needs to get their ship together and force the railroad to do something, because like, it's your asses on the line too if this railroad then collapses.

But because of because of the sort of immediate amount of money that that that these these shitty rail companies that pumped into Congress, they were able to buy people off, and the rest of capital was just like, yeah, we don't care. That's like three years out, we don't have

to care about this ship. It's like guys like Bernie Sanders is fighting to save capitalism, right, these people are trying to save you from yourselves and you know you won't won't even let's that's their entire job though, like of course, it's like, yeah, what what what is happening here? Is that like is liberalism is running an accelerationist program to like cause the American American infrastructure to fall apart, and social democracy is attempting to save capital from itself,

and capital was like literally, fuck you eat ship. No, it's it's I've i've I'm reading right now in interview with the railroad Workers United member and they're they're talking about how like there's this plan to increase, uh increase their pay over the next five years, and they're like, he says that lots of the railroad workers that he's talked to as a part of the union is saying, like people are willing to work for less money and take a job at like an Amazon factory or like

a trucking job because at least those offer slightly more consistent hours, and like, yeah, like it's it's at least when you're not working. You're not working, yeah, And I just wanted to mention that because because we were bringing up like how these people are getting not very good pay, which is which is true, but for a lot of people, it isn't even just to pay question, it's it's it's

just overall working conditions. And like when you're thinking about moving to an Amazon factory instead because they have better working conditions, like oh god, yeah, it's like, I mean, they've they've managed to create like one of the worst systems that is imposed on like any worker in the country. Like it is. It is genuinely stunning. And right now again they're they're getting bailed out that people are by the fact that people are stuck in because they want

their pensions. But like, but as soon as as people are done and we start moving to more autonomous things, then it's not it's not going to be worth it. I know, media companies have spent decades trying to convince kids to work for trains, with Thomas the train chuggington for for decades and decades, You've tried to send train propaganda to these kids, and I don't think I don't

think they're gonna buy it. Yeah, did you guys know that in Thomas the Tank Engine, canonically World War two happened and canonically all of the diesel engine signed sided with the Nazis. Well, that doesn't rest today and that is official Thomas the Tank in Jin Laura, I wonder how many other zoomers will um symbolize with me on this.

I recently found out that Thomas the Train wasn't just the uncanny train segments that used to have live action actors in like little inter cut scenes, because it was fucked up because by the time Thomas the Train was airing on television when I was a kid, all of those were re edited. They had they had, they had no live action segments at all. It was all the weird stop motion animation, which is still very uncanny, with

like the faces. But I had no idea until like a year ago that there was live action actors in the original additions of Thomas the Train. Completely oblivious. Well, I'm glad, I'm glad we could have this important union discussion. I am too. I'm gonna I'm gonna admit to you all right now. There was a moment earlier where Chris You kept saying that that the owners of the railroads were blinded, And I very nearly went into a bit where I just started reading the lyrics to Bruce Springsteen's

Blinded by the Light. But I didn't do it. I didn't do it that. I'm glad we were saved from that. That's that's that's because everybody, nobody, nobody gets the lyrics to that one, right, because of the Manford Man's earth band version, which makes it sound like he's saying douche when he's really saying deuce and talking about an engine, which is why it would have been relevant to railroads. But none of you all would have got that, and you would have fucking made a big thing about it

on Reddit. So to hell with you all. Anyway, support rail workers if they do an illegal strike, make sure we set up things so that they get protected and they get food and things to fight cops, go make rail way, I mean, people like, just keep it, keep an eye on what's going on, and if it happens, there will be ways. There will be ways to support these through the US government. Like I don't know things of this nature. Yeah, I mean that would be that,

that would be nice. But if we got to put a pin in that you know, keep an eye on the situation. And if these people go on strike, there will be community resources and what not popping up to support the wildcat strike. It's the thing that's happened before. Wildcat strikes have a long history in this country too, um, you know, and we will we will be collecting resources if that happens for ways people can help with the wildcatters.

So this is a thing to have on the old on the old noggin as we as we lurch forward into the holidays and uh possibly gigantic labor battle. We'll see. And I like people in the UK have been doing rail strikes, uh like for a good part of this year, like they've been they've been. There's been on and off rail strikes for most of for like, for like the most of the past few months. Um, it's possible, except again they're they're they're they're British, so they stopped doing

the strike when the Queen died. Well of course, So look, look, there's certain realities that can't ever be eclipsed. Regram. Here's the here's the thing we have thrown off the shackles of the anglos are where all rail strikes stops for no one, al right, except for the most pro labor president, Joe Biden. Alright, and that's the episode. Yeah, it's the episode. And remember, if you see a Diesel train, it is

a Nazi you you were obliged to punch it. M M. It could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media and more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.