Threat Of A Freight Railroad Strike Looms

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   Sharlee01posted 18 months ago

   
   Biden’s administration's tentative railroad union deal fell apart on Monday after the freight rail workers union flatly rejected it, raising fears of a looming strike, that could add to Biden's economic problems.
   
   The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division of the Teamsters rejected the deal on the grounds that management refused to offer paid time off to workers for sickness or family emergencies. In a statement Monday, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division of the Teamsters said 56% of its more than 11,000 workers had voted against the tentative agreement. Some of the provisions would allow workers to avoid attendance penalties for routine medical visits and hospitalizations, and the proposal included the biggest wage increases in more than four decades.
   
   “Railroaders are discouraged and upset with working conditions and compensation and hold their employer in low regard. Railroaders do not feel valued,” Union President Tony D. Cardwell said in a statement.
   
   “Railroaders do not feel valued. They resent the fact that management holds no regard for their quality of life, illustrated by their stubborn reluctance to provide a higher quantity of paid time off, especially for sickness.”
   
   Cardwell said the union would continue negotiating with the rail companies until five days after Congress reconvened on November 14.
   
   Last month, the Biden administration brokered a tentative agreement with the unions and the railroads, boasting of his success as a dealmaker.
   
   “Today is a win — and I mean it sincerely — a win for America,” he said triumphantly on September 15 in a speech in the Rose Garden.
   
   “This agreement is validation — validation of what I’ve always believed: Unions and management can work together for the benefit of everyone,” he added.
   
   The union’s rejection of the deal sets Biden back and again raises the possibility of a national rail shutdown which would cripple the economy right before the Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays.
   
   https://www.washingtonpost.com/business … ects-deal/
   https://www.nbcnews.com/business/busine … -rcna51543
   https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/10/business … ike-threat

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      Nathanvilleposted 18 months agoin reply to this

      That’s nothing compared to the summer of discontent we currently have in the UK, widespread strike action across all economic sectors; a level of civil unrest (industrial action) that hasn’t been seen in Britain since the winter of discontent in 1978.
      
      A full list of economic sectors that have been taking industrial action (strikes) this summer, with most still ongoing, include:-
      
      •    The Railways
      •    Postal workers
      •    Internet Services
      •    Port workers
      •    Funeral Directors
      •    Universities
      •    School teachers
      •    Buses
      •    Dock workers
      •    Oil and gas workers
      •    Local Government workers
      •    Libraries
      •    Refuse (Garbage) workers
      •    Nurses in the NHS
      •    Civil Servants
      •    Fire Brigade
      •    National Union of Journalists
      •    British Medical Association e.g. doctors in the NHS
      •    Criminal Barristers
      •    Airlines
      •    Care home workers
      •    Traffic wardens
      •    Unions in various private companies/Industry and manufacturing etc.
      •    Ferry workers
      
      In the UK Criminal Barristers (Lawyers) went on indefinite strike on the 5th September, which ended on the 10th October when the Government offered them a 15% pay rise.
      
      Britain faces the biggest rail strike in three decades:  https://youtu.be/smz_82uHX20
      
      To put it into prospect, on top of the cost of living crisis and hyper rise in energy bills due to the Ukrainian war, the current rate of inflation in the UK is 9.9%

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         Sharlee01posted 18 months agoin reply to this

         I am shocked to see what the UK is dealing with.  I would guess we will soon be seeing our inflation rate rise in the near months. It would seem that economic problems are worldwide.
         
         And it seems the problem will be hard to solve.

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            Nathanvilleposted 18 months agoin reply to this

            Yep, absolutely; and it doesn’t help with our new Prime Minister (Liz Truss) who took over power on the 6th September, following our previous Prime Minster (Boris Johnson) being forced to resign on the 7th July.
            
            Liz Truss is the most extreme right-wing Prime Minster the UK has had since Victorian times; even more extreme than Margaret Thatcher back in the 1980s was. 
            
            Liz Truss is completely ignoring economic advice from ‘all’ economic experts worldwide, including the IMF (International Monitory Fund), who has condemned Liz Truss’s policies.  Liz Truss is more intent on following ‘out-dated’ (19th century) Conservative Political Dogma than on economics; with the consequence that, during a time of stagnation (with a risk of recession looming) and hyper-inflation, her policies is spooking the international financial and monetary markets to the extent that the value of the £ is plummeting, making imports more expensive (fuelling inflation), and faith in Government Bonds is falling, threatening pensions funds (who normally invest in Government bonds as a secure form of investment) and making the cost of Government borrowing more expensive; exasperating the situation.
            
            So in the UK things are going to get a lot worse before they get better; which has led to infighting within the Conservative party, leading to disarray within Government e.g. the next General Election is only two years away, and if the current Conservative Government continues to trash the UK economy, come the General Election the Conservatives face the real risk of humiliating defeat.
            
            Currently the Conservatives have 356 seats out of 650 seats in Parliament; if a General Election took place tomorrow, based on current opinion polls, the Conservatives will end up with just 60 seats (less than 10% of the total number of seats) – so a lot of Conservative MPs are very unhappy with their current leader (Liz Truss).

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               Sharlee01posted 18 months agoin reply to this

               It seems our leaders feel they know more than the experts when it comes to our failing economies. So much of what has occurred here is overspending, and a to speedy push to turn off our oil industry. Plus, a president that feels he can tweak the nose of OPEC. I think we might agree that the oil industry at this point in time is still needed. This industry carries the power to literally collapse our economies.
               
               In my opinion, and I take no pleasure in saying this, Biden is responsible for the economic problems we are seeing around the world. His poor decisions have reverberated around the world.
               
               I feel we will see it all get worse, before getting better.

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                  Nathanvilleposted 18 months agoin reply to this

                  I don’t think “Biden is responsible for the economic problems we are seeing around the world.”
                  
                  Yes, the Great Depression that swept the world in the 1930s and the financial crisis of 2008 which swept across the world were both of American making e.g. the collapse of Wall Street in 1929 and the American bank being left with trillions of dollars of worthless investments when the housing bubble burst; both crisis causing a domino effect worldwide.
                  
                  Since 2010 both the EU and UK have ‘ring fenced’ their domestic banks to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis; and those set of Regulation have held up well.
                  
                  But the current world economic crisis has nothing to do with Biden, it’s all to do with the Pandemic and the war in Ukraine; and the crisis in the UK is further exasperated by a Government that is ignoring economics in favour of political ideology.
                  
                  In fact, if you look at the recent IMF forecast for 2022/2023 for the G7 countries (image below) you will see that the USA is doing relatively well compared to the rest of the world; only Japan and Canada is expected to do better than the USA next year.  While the UK, although it had the largest economic growth this year (when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister), next year (under Liz Truss) only Italy and Germany are expected to be worse off than the UK; and Germany because until the Ukraine war got 50% of its natural gas from Russia.
                  
                  Oil is obviously a subject we don’t see eye to eye on.  Keeping our dependence on oil (and all other fossil fuels) is a false economy because of the chronic damage that the use of fossil fuels are doing to our planet.  For as long as we continue to be heavily dependent on fossil fuels (and long after) the heatwaves, hurricanes, droughts, floods and rising sea levels, all of which plagued the planet this year, including the USA, will only get more frequent and worse – It’s not a price worth paying.
                  
                  Most countries in the world, including the UK, EU and China, recognise this and, in spite of the current crisis, are making concerted efforts to transition to Renewable Energy as quickly as is feasible.
                  
                  The UK is sitting on oil and gas reserves far bigger than what was in the North Sea (off the coast of Britain), but what’s there can only be extracted through ‘fracking’.  Scotland banned fracking in 2015, the UK banned fracking in 2019; and although there is pressure on Liz Truss, given the current energy crisis due to the Ukraine war, to allow fracking to resume, she is also under pressure to resist the temptation to allow fracking because of the severe environmental harm.  Therefore she’s only paid lip service to the pressure to allow fracking, and has implemented strict criteria (by tightening planning laws) that will effective make fracking impossible in the UK.  Instead, she has relaxed planning laws to make it easier, cheaper and quicker for investors to build on-shore windfarms, which is the only long term sensible answer to meeting our energy needs while at the same time limiting the damage to the planet, and everyone who lives on it.
                  
                  UK is Building the World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm:  https://youtu.be/VM-m_vRSh6E
                  
                  

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                     Sharlee01posted 18 months agoin reply to this

                     I respect your view and always have. We don't disagree on the need to become more energy efficient. I feel this requires a substantial intelligent well-laid plan, that does not collapse our world economies. I truely feel Biden rushed into his poorly laid out plan, and did damage to the world economy. I feel now that he has openly challenged OPEC, and America's oil industry, the world is in for some big pain.
                     
                     We need to move into greener energy quickly, but smoothly. I truely feel Biden has set us all back. You do realize if we get a new Republican president most all of what Biden has passed will be done away with?
                     
                     If he would have had a more constructive plan I venture to say the majority of Americans would be on board. Now we have a great divide, and half are very angry and could care very little about going green.
                     
                     Our middle ground has eroded.

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                        Nathanvilleposted 18 months agoin reply to this

                        Yes, “to become more energy efficient” does require “a substantial intelligent well-laid plan”; but it’s not just a question of becoming more energy efficient, the most important aspect is the transition away from fossil fuels to Renewable Energy as a matter of ‘urgency’. 
                        
                        You can’t put all the blame on Biden for the USA being behind most of the rest of the world in transitioning towards Renewable Energy.  It was Trump who withdrew from the Paris Agreement and switched to supporting the oil and coal industry at the expense of Renewable Energy; putting the brakes on the USA’s transition away from fossil fuels.
                        
                        Yeah, Biden had no choice other than rush in his plan to transition away from fossil fuels to Renewable Energy because he was reversing Trump’s policy, and TIME is RUNNING OUT; the longer the USA leaves it to transition away from fossil fuels the more costly and the more painful the transition becomes. 
                        
                        But I don’t see how what Biden is doing is damaging the world economy; the damage to the world economy is NOT Biden, it was initially the pandemic, and currently the war in Ukraine – both events being worldwide, and neither of which Biden (or any other Government in the world) has any control over.
                        
                        That’s what worries me, if you do get a Republican President; most of what Biden has passed will be done away with e.g. A Republican President will go back to supporting the oil and coal industry rather than pressing ahead with rolling out Renewable Energy as a matter of urgency – and that is something that would have a negative effect on the rest of the world.
                        
                        I don’t know why Americans are so divided on the subject of Climate Change (Global Warming); across most of the world, including the UK, both left and right wing political parties are all united in supporting the transition to Renewable Energy at haste e.g. in the UK, in 2019 the right-wing Conservative Government passed a law making it a ‘legal requirement’ on the UK Government to achieve zero-net carbon emissions by 2050.
                        
                        UK’s Legal Commitment to Net Zero Carbon Emissions by 2050:  https://youtu.be/hj7v8e1uLyE

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