Originally Posted by
stripernut1
let me try to answer your questions. but before I do let me assure you I KNOW the answers as I worked under this very rail contract for almost 20 years. Also my brother is one of "the union leaders" involved at a local level and his fight is relentless. Local union reps are livid and feel very betrayed, I told every one of them this **** would happen one day, well today is one day.
The dem politicians are the same as republican politicians, self preservation and vote harvesting is all they care about. they all pick a flavor of the week and sell it. none of them have ever stuck up for labor when push came to shove. we've had to fight tooth and nail for everything we ever got in a contract only to have half of it overturned by a government arbiter.
Here's what's in the contract...
The biggest misrepresented item is the "24% raise", sounds ridiculously good at a glance.
But when you find out the last raise was almost 5 years ago and this one will be spread out over the next 4 years you come up with an annual raise of 2.66% per year. ok , still not bad you say? the increase in employee contributions for Healthcare all but eat that up. so while the media and crooked politicians hail the big victory for labor , now YOU KNOW THE REAL STORY.
ok so on to the real red meat and biggest point of contention and impasse, sick time.
Historically a thru freight railworker is on call 24/7/365, including Christmas and every other normal holiday. Once upon a time if you were sick or just plain flat out exhausted after working day and night for months you would call and mark off "sick". And once upon a time the railroad company was lenient with this arrangement as they had enough decency to admit when enough was appreciated and a day off was acceptable.
And then everything changed with "kean operating plans" which meant as employees retired, quit or died they weren't replaced. So less staff was expected to do more . so now we have a situation where if you take off sick you may be subject to reprimand including termination.
Realizing this was completely unrealistic the "working man's president" stepped in to force the railroad company to concede and give the employee 3 unpaid sick days a year. These "sick days" could only be used on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday and only if the request for this sick day was given 30 days in advance and approved by supervision.
If I KNEW I was going to be sick 30 days from now I would got to the doctor prior to that time and get med's to head that off.
And yes rail workers are licensed and considered essential workers and could be arrested for participating in a wildcat strike.
Now to your point of union leaders and bribes, I have been suspicious on more than one occasion when things transpired that smelled fishy. these suspicious events always involved legislative union reps that spent a lot of time in...you guessed it....Washington.
Railroad lifestyle is **** near unbearable.
A living railroaders wife is called a railroad widow.
A dead railroaders wife is called retired.
And let me tell you the over 100,000 railworkers are seething with disgust over being conned.
Hopefully this helps you to understand what is REALLY going on.
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