Rail Strikes

1999-2022 | 23 years

CJ sums up this episode best when she says, “So, let me see if I have this. A hurricane's picked up speed and power and is heading for Georgia. Management and labor are coming here to work out a settlement to avoid a crippling strike that will begin at midnight tonight. And the government's planning a siege on 18 to 40 of its citizens, all the while we host a state dinner for the President of Indonesia.” This is a great episode, with fast-paced plot and dialogue, but the episode is also very dramatic, with many of these plotlines seeming to end tragically.

One plotline I want to focus in on is the trucker strike which the White House is trying to avoid. This plotline is especially interesting because it is never really resolved, with us never seeing whether they reach a deal or the White House does in fact intervene. One thing that has been in the news much recently is the possible rail strike which congress and the White House took measures to avert. The biggest thing that the railroad unions were arguing about was sick days, because the workers were being forced to use vacation days when they were sick. However employers countered with the fact that workers already get vacation days and personal days, which they are supposed to dip into if they are sick, what most companies all PTO, personal time off, and that workers were actually asking for something that most companies don't offer. While the employers and unions reached a tentative agreement on September 15th which 8 unions voted in favor of, four unions, the biggest ones which represent over 50% of the unionized employees, voted against it. This set in motion a plan for a strike starting on December 9th. Last Wednesday Congress passed a resolution to force unions to accept the tentative agreement previously reached, and President Biden signed it on Friday, December 2nd, averting the impending strike. This has caused, President Biden, a known friend of labor, to be criticized by unions and applauded by business, an interesting turn of events.

It was important for this strike to be avoided, as not only are the holidays coming up, but railroads are essential to the functioning of our country, transporting chemicals, food, and other day-to-day products. Leo lays out the severity of the effects of essential transportation labor, such as truckers or rail workers, going on strike when he says, “I'm talking about produce rotting in warehouses. I'm talking about fistfights in supermarkets over who gets the last bar of soap.” Although we don’t ever learn exactly what happened in the episode with the trucker strikes, President Bartlet is an economist, and given that and his threats, we can assume that if an agreement wasn’t reached, he would have taken action, as President Biden did.