President Joe Biden scored a major victory when two of the unions representing railroad road workers agreed to a settlement. Or at least that is what some would have you believe. This allegedly includes a 24% wage increase. But that is over 5 years, and the way things are going, that may not be enough. But it is enough to raise the cost of everything shipped by rail. In addition, a deal is a deal, except in this case, if the workers vote no, there still is no deal. The union leaders don’t actually get to decide. This has to be voted on, and at least some reports say the railroad workers are less than thrilled.
The reality is that the railroad unions have Biden over a barrel, and they know it. His panicked approval for this contract is evidence of that. Compare that to when Railroad workers tried to strike while Truman was President. He called in the Armey to seize control of the railroads.
Truman orders army to seize control of railroads – HISTORY
Or when Air Traffic controllers tried to strike while Reagan was in office. He fired them:
Ronald Reagan fires 11,359 air-traffic controllers – HISTORY
Even FDR who was very pro-union was opposed to public sector unions. This was so obvious even the New York Times figured it out:
F.D.R. Warned Us About Public Sector Unions – NYTimes.com
“The founders of the labor movement viewed unions as a vehicle to get workers more of the profits they help create. Government workers, however, don’t generate profits. They merely negotiate for more tax money. When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers. F.D.R. considered this “unthinkable and intolerable.”
Joe Biden caved and offered the railroad unions a 24% wage increase over the next five years. The union leaders approved, we don’t know if the rank and file will agree. But the obvious problem is that when you cave to hostage takers, you just encourage people to take more hostages. When you think about it every public sector union has the ability to deny desperately needed services without regard to the consequences. People in California already know this, since every state-wide elected official was endorsed by a public sector union. It is almost impossible to get elected in California without their support.
At some point, someone is going to have to pull a Truman or a Reagan or this will spiral completely out of control The President least likely to do that is Joe Biden. It is also extremely unlikely that people like Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer will encourage him to grow a spine.
This is a lose-lose situation. At best, Biden just encouraged a deal guaranteed to make inflation even worse. At best even the threat of a strike has already hurt the already struggling supply chain. But what if all this was in vain because the workers strike anyway. If there is any way for a President to handle something even worse than Biden handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan, this may be it.
Also consider the stupidity of doing something that makes us more dependent on gas and diesel chugging trucks while simultaneously telling us everyone needs to save up for an electric car. The only thing dumber than this would be to cancel the Key Stone Pipeline, which actually was the most environmentally safe method of moving large quantities of gas and oil, trying to stop new oil leases, and making it much harder to frack for new oil and then act surprised when the price of gas skyrockets. Yes, that dumb.
If the American people understand the true impact of the feckless way the Biden Administration handled this threatened railroad strike, then those who engineered this fiasco will be the ones riding the rails to destruction and they just make take a significant portion of the Democratic Party along for the ride.
TDM