US Workers Are Standing Up Against Railway Unions’ Raw Deal

Biden forced railway workers to accept an agreement that lacked paid sick days; now rallies against the deal have spread across the country.


BY SHUVU BHATTARAI
DECEMBER 15, 2022

Shuvu Bhattarai
A Railroad Workers United member speaks at the rally outside Grand Central Terminal in New York City.

On December 7, outside of New York City’s Grand Central Terminal, a crowd of more than 100 Metro-North Railroad workers, airline pilots, construction workers, teachers, and activists held a solidarity rally in support of railway unions.

The rally is the latest in a string of protests that have taken place across the country after President Joe Biden and the U.S. Congress imposed a tentative agreement on Class I freight rail workers, an agreement that had been voted down the membership of four rail unions representing a total of around 60,000 workers. The agreement grants only one additional day of paid sick leave, which was a major concern for the rail workers, many of whom are on call virtually 24/7.

Five days before the Grand Central rally, on December 2, about 200 protesters held a demonstration outside of Boston’s JFK Museum, while Biden was visiting. They called the President a “scab” and a “strikebreaker,” chanting “striking is a human right,” and demanding sick leave for all. On December 5, around 30 people demonstrated outside of the Brooklyn home of Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer. Schumer had voted for the tentative agreement.

On December 6, a small protest was held at the University of California, Berkeley, where striking UC Grad Workers spoke about how their struggle was connected to that of the rail workers. The next day, a group of twenty-five union members and activists in Baltimore, Maryland, gathered with similar demands.

At the Grand Central rally, which was partly coordinated by the December 12th Movement, a Black human rights organization based in New York City, organizer Omowale Clay echoed the feeling of betrayal by the Democratic establishment that’s been driving these outpourings of solidarity: “To take away the right of our brothers and sisters to strike is a violation of their human rights. To take away their right to be sick so that they can speed up and exploit us more is a violation of their human rights.”

Justine Medina, a worker organizing with the Amazon Labor Union added, “We won our election on April 1, eight months ago, and the bosses refused to recognize Amazon Labor Union, refused to come to the table to negotiate a contract, just like the railroad workers.”

Similar messages of support were echoed by teachers, construction workers, and others during the protest. A member of Railroad Workers United, a cross-union solidarity caucus of railroad workers, spoke of how the conditions in the job deteriorated especially over the past few years.

Recognizing that anger is running high among the workforce and the general public, the rail unions SMART-TD and BLET announced on December 9 that they would be hosting rallies across the country. That same day, Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, and Congressmember Jamaal Bowman, Democrat of New York, alongside seventy other lawmakers presented a letter to Biden calling for executive action to guarantee seven days of paid sick leave to rail workers.

On December 13, twelve rallies were held around the country, with the main protest in Washington, D.C. There was a crowd of roughly 100 people at the D.C. gathering. Among those in attendance were several Congressmembers such as Senators Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Democratic Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Jamaal Bowman of New York, Cori Bush of Missouri, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

Among the crowd were also workers and staff from a variety of unions including the railroad unions SMART and BMWED. Other unions, such as the American Postal Workers Union, the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, and the National Association of Letter Carriers, also showed up in support.

Speakers at the protest conveyed a general message against “corporate greed.” As Sanders said in a speech addressed to railroad workers, “What you have shown the country is how outrageous this level of corporate greed, and how we have got to in the rail industry and other industries, to tell the people who own this country that we will put an end to their corporate greed.”