[Railroad workers bargaining for better pay and working conditions
are at an impasse with their employers, causing the federal government
to intervene to ward off a disruptive strike. But railworkers should
be allowed to strike if and when they want to. ]
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THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS TRYING TO STOP RAILROAD WORKERS FROM
STRIKING  
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Joe Burns
September 9, 2022
Jacobin
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_ Railroad workers bargaining for better pay and working conditions
are at an impasse with their employers, causing the federal government
to intervene to ward off a disruptive strike. But railworkers should
be allowed to strike if and when they want to. _

Despite record profits, US rail employers have cut staffing, placing
enormous burdens on workers that aren’t reflected in their pay.,
Jack Sloop / Unsplash

 

For months, 140,000 union railroad workers have been stuck at an
impasse with their employers, who are united under the banner of the
Association of American Railroads. The terms of the dispute
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be familiar to most workers: attendance policy, staffing, and wage
increases. Despite record profits, rail employers have cut staffing,
placing enormous burdens
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workers that aren’t reflected in their pay.

By all accounts, railworkers are in a militant mood
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An attendance policy prompted rail unions to attempt to strike
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this year. In July, 99 percent of union members who cast
ballots voted to authorize
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strike, prompting President Joe Biden to intervene in August.

In order to avert a strike, Biden appointed a presidential emergency
board (PEB) to reach a compromise and settle the dispute. The PEB put
some money into wages but predictably did little on the workers’
core workplace concerns. The rail unions are unenthusiastic
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the PEB ruling, and the largest groups have not been willing to put
the recommendations out for membership ratification. While bargaining
continues, the unions will be eligible to strike on September 16,
which is thirty days following the PEB recommendation.

That eligibility requirement is a term of the Railway Labor Act (RLA),
passed in 1926, which regulates bargaining in the rail and airline
industries. Even though the RLA protects the right to strike in words,
politicians in both parties have used the legislation to strip
railroad workers of that right in practice, often ramming settlements
down the throats of striking workers.

Over the years, Congress has intervened
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times to delay strikes and sometimes even impose terms on railroad
workers. President Harry Truman threatened to have the Army run the
railroads in 1950 during the Korean War. In the 1960s, President
Johnson imposed a longer no-strike period
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rail workers. President Barack Obama delayed a threatened strike
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2011.

Just hours into the last nationwide major rail strike in 1991,
Congress passed legislation imposing the very contract workers
rejected. The legislation required further bargaining but held that
if no agreement was reached the terms of the PEB
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implemented, even though the unions had already rejected those terms.

Republicans and nearly all Democrats lined up to take away
railworkers’ right to strike in 1991 — the final vote was 400 to
5. This controversy created widespread disaffection with the
Democratic Party, even spurring the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way
Employes to endorse Labor Party Advocates
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serious attempt to create a labor party in the US.

The Right to Strike

Technically speaking, the RLA doesn’t revoke the right to strike,
only restricts the timing of strikes. Nevertheless, it has been used
time and again to diffuse militancy and limit strike activity. The
legislation was a subject of vigorous debate in the 1920s. Even the
conservative rail unions — the epitome of business unionism —
understood that the legislation undermined the right to strike and
fought against it.

There were several attempts prior to 1926 to completely eliminate
workers’ right to strike, but none passed Congress. Given the
“futility of attempting to pass legislation providing for compulsory
arbitration,” the pro-labor Minnesota representative William
Carss explained
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anti-labor legislation needed to be more subtle. Carss observed that
“no sane political party will ever pass a law to compel an American
citizen to work against his will.” Employer representatives had to
content themselves with legislating a lengthy process that would make
strikes unlikely, a stance they rationalized with reference to the
necessity of rail freight to the economy.

Fast forward a century, and no such subtlety is required: many in
Congress believe it’s completely acceptable to strip railroad
workers of the right to strike in plain sight. It’s incumbent on us
to defend that right. As I discussed at length in my book _Reviving
the Strike_, classic collective bargaining theory holds that striking
is essential to collective bargaining, pushing both labor and
management toward an agreement. Taking away the right to strike thus
violates workers’ right to collectively bargain. If Congress imposes
an agreement on rail workers, it will not only be restricting the
right to strike but setting contract terms under which over 100,000
railworkers must work for the coming years.

Legal scholar James Pope has long argued
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labor rights should be grounded in the Thirteenth Amendment to the
Constitution, which bars involuntary servitude. Drawing on popular
labor theory prior to the 1930s, Pope’s argument is that
restrictions on the right to strike force workers to accept oppressive
working conditions, since they’re denied their most powerful tool
for changing those conditions. While Pope has had an uphill battle
gaining acceptance for his rights-based argument, in this situation
his argument must be given a closer look.

The question today is: Will Congress intervene to impose an agreement?
Doing so will compel railworkers to work under conditions that were
not negotiated but were instead dictated by congressmembers who
don’t have to live under the contract. This is the opposite of free
collective bargaining and falls squarely within the scope of Pope’s
argument.

For decades members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, have
stood by while unions have been busted in industry after industry.
Supposedly labor-friendly Democrats might show up on the picket lines,
but when the rubber hits the road they claim they are helpless to
intervene on labor’s behalf. Now, all of a sudden, they are not
helpless — indeed, they have great power to intervene in labor
disputes. They can’t have it both ways.

The right to strike of necessity must mean the right to win
strikes. That means striking in strategic sectors such as rail and
longshore. But if labor is only allowed to strike where we have no
power, then we do not truly have the right to strike. For those who
want a revitalized labor movement, we should not give up the right to
strike so easily.

_JOE BURNS is a veteran union negotiator and labor lawyer and the
author of Strike Back [[link removed]] and Reviving
the Strike [[link removed]]. His forthcoming
book is Class Struggle Unionism, from Haymarket Books._

_The new issue of JACOBIN is out next week. Subscribe today
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print and digital subscription._

* Labor
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* right to strike
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* US Congress
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* collective bargaining
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* railroads
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* unions
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* Labor Law
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