Chapo Trap House - BONUS: Will Talks To Rail Workers

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

Will talks to Ross Grooters, co-chair of Railroad Workers United, Deven Mantz of BMWED Teamsters, and Jonah Furman of Labor Notes about the tentative agreement being forced on railroad workers, the demands of the unions, and where organizing goes from here. Visit www.railroadworkersunited.org to support the union.

Hey everybody, it's Will here coming at you with a bonus choppo episode today. It's a bit of a week of railroads here in the U.S. with a tentative agreement just about to be imposed on railroad workers in the name of averting a strike. So we're going to get into that today. Joined by Jonah Furman, a journalist at Labor Notes, and Ross Grooters, co-chair of Railroad Workers United, and Devin Mans of BMWED Teamsters. Now, so I'd like to get into the tentative agreement that's just been opposed and a little bit of Congress, the White House, all of that, but let's like to begin as a fan of trains

and the people who operate them. I'd like to begin by asking our two real-life train heads, I guess beginning with you, Devin, if you could just tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, where you're from, what your job is, and your perspective on the conditions at the railroads and your relationship with management that led to this current moment. So Devin, I'll begin with you. Yeah, thanks for having me on, Will. So I'm Brotherhood and Maintenance Away employees.

Basically we fix the tracks. We build buildings, we build the bridges, we construct tracks, the ties, the rail. When they break, we fix them. We don't do a whole lot of pre-maintenance anymore because we're running around with our heads cut off, it seems like now, but we do not drive the trains. The trains destroy our tracks and we fix them after the trains destroy them. So the trains are your enemy, you're fighting against the trains, to keep the trains running. They don't like to let us out on the track, do much fixing because they want the trains

running, which is our right to. So, yeah, so like I said, I work for BNSF, Railroad, North Dakota, and we started a caucus called Rank and File United within the BMWED, a Reform Caucus, and yeah, so anything else that you wanted to know? No, I guess just moving on to Ross, can you tell us a little bit about where you're from and what your job is like? Hi, everyone, I'm Ross Grooters, I'm based out of Central Iowa, I'm co-chair with Railroad Workers United, I'm a locomotive engineer, so I'm the one that's destroying Devin's

fine handiwork, and Devin's definitely a part of the crew that keeps us safe and keeps the trains moving down the tracks. I think my relationship with management is largely one of avoidance, I try to avoid them because they don't have my best interest in mind and what we want is opposed to what they want, and so the boss is obviously not my friend, so that leads us to this current moment where we're fighting for what we deserve. Well, in terms of what you deserve, I mentioned Jonah, could you chime in on the state of this tentative agreement and how it came to essentially be imposed by the White House

and Congress, and I know the sick leave was the big issue at play here, that was put into a separate bill which won't pass the Senate, I mean it would pass if they didn't need to break a filibuster, but it doesn't have 60 votes in the Senate, so that's going nowhere. What you're left with is this, quote, unquote, tentative agreement. Could you talk about what's in the tentative agreement, and then maybe Devin and Ross, could you talk about how you and fellow union members feel about what you're left with in terms of this agreement? Yeah, I mean, in terms of how we got here, the thing people should understand is that

negotiations on the railroads because of a history of striking and sending in the National Guard and shutting down the whole economy have the special laws over at the Railway Labor Act that basically provides for the federal government to have a heavy role, a lot of intervention in the contract negotiations. So what we saw this week is the end of three years of negotiations with no raises in that period, and essentially we got to the end of the line where it came down to it, are the railroad workers really going to strike, or is Joe Biden going to impose what the employers want on these workers?

And Joe Biden decided that we are going to impose a contract that was rejected by the membership. The overview of the tentative agreement, what's at stake here, I mean I think the thing people talk about is it was a 24% raise, that's over five years, including three of which have already not had a raise. The big thing became no sick time, there's no, I mean there has never been sick time for rail workers, and you know, sick time kind of, Ross and Devin you can say, but I feel like it stood in for the basic idea of we're overworking these people and there's

no time off the job and you don't really have a life if you're a railroad worker, especially if you're in the operating crafts, meaning you're riding the train, driving the train. So it became the flagship demand that at least can we get seven paid sick days after a pandemic, for a group of workers who are facing extreme, you know, harassment for management about if you miss a day you could lose a job that you've had for 20 years. So that became the flagship demand, and in the end the question was can we even get this? I mean Devin and Ross can say this is not what's going to fix the railroad system, seven paid sick days is a little band-aid on this thing, but even that was a bridge too far

for the Democratic Party leadership and for the unions it was like, are we really going to throw down and there was a lot of showdown moments where, you know, I think in a lot of ways the unions blanked when the members were ready to walk and that's a big part of what happened too. Devin and Ross, your thoughts on where things stand now with this tentative agreement? Yeah, I'll go first if you don't mind, Ross. Just real quick, it is a 22% raise, 24 keeps getting thrown around, but it's a big difference. Compound it is 24 and that's why that keeps getting thrown around, but yeah, and look,

they keep touting about our healthcare and how great it is, but now that's going up. They keep saying that that's not going to go up and that's going up on January 1st and then every year from after that and it gets capped out at almost $400, so like a month. So it's not premium healthcare anymore. That being said, we did fight like hell at the very end here, but it was a few people that were really fighting like hell here. It's been a lot of work throughout years and Brother Gruders knows exactly what I'm talking about.

I mean, these guys have been fighting for a long time for this kind of stuff and just for rank and file participation and I pushed back a little bit and say that Republicans really let us down. I mean, I know their leadership in the Democratic Party, they fucked up a bit, right? And I can nitpick and I will happily do that, but overwhelmingly, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party decided that we didn't need paid sick leave and no, I keep seeing over and over that, well, if we're so special and we can't shut down the economy and we'd shut the whole world down and all this different crazy stuff.

If we're that important that we're that essential, but we can't get seven days paid sick leave and people are going like people are going mad seeing it and just thinking what the hell is going on. This seems like not a big ask. They're not asking for more money, although, you know, not a bad thing, right? No, nobody's ever going to turn that down, but we're all we're asking for is seven days paid sick leave just to be able to stay at home. If your kid is sick, if you're sick, you don't be dragging your illnesses around.

I mean, I don't need to go through in detail the reason why we need it. It seems pretty obvious. So it's been very sickening to watch and it came down to the final hours and, you know, it failed on us due to the filibuster, as you said, and that's really frustrating. Yeah, just follow up on that and say that railroad workers sort of always knew this was the culmination of the process. We knew that Congress would, under the terms of the Railway Labor Act, would impose an agreement and put us back to work.

We just didn't know when that was going to occur and what those terms were going to be. And so at the finish line there, what was really the focus was getting everything we could get. And the seven days sick leave, again, it's sort of a placebo for all the ills that we're facing, the inadequate staffing and the working faster, doing more work with fewer people. And it was, it was frustrating to see the filibuster. I tried to explain this to a co-worker yesterday and, you know, normally when you score more points than the other team, you win.

And I'm telling my co-worker that, yeah, we got 52 votes for the seven days paid sick leave and 43 against and he was like, so it passed? I'm like, no. Yeah. We have the filibuster. And, you know, explaining that, and he just says to me, he says very seriously, he's like, well, if the goal is to make us lose faith in the democratic process, they're succeeding. And that's it right there.

I think, you know, Senate Republicans and Joe Biden let us down. Well, I mean, you talk about like the railroads are in an interesting position because of this, like the National Railway Act, which gives Congress the leeway to intervene in labor disputes because of how important things like, you know, running freight is to the supply chain. So, like the sick leave thing is, is fascinating because what the, what these rail characters are essentially arguing is that we cannot maintain our supply chains in this country. We cannot keep freight moving around this country if we give are the people who operate

the trains even like one paid sick day. So if trains are that important that Congress can like essentially strike break or intervene between management and labor negotiations, what does it say about these rail companies that they can't keep trains running if their employees get time off like paid sick leave to take care of a kid or just not spread illness at their workplace? The freight rail system in this country is already failing. They're treating it as a bank. They're just cashing out and, and they're taking that wealth and, and taking it away

from the American people. Like we're already facing the effects of, you know, similar to what we would with a strike, you know, with inflation and, and with the supply chain and with not being able to get the, the, the goods and services we need. Like that's already occurring on a smaller scale and these railroad, they're a part of doing that. Yeah. I'll add something to that.

You know, as, as you were referring to, look, the supply chain is fragile, right? And people didn't really realize what was going on behind their back, right? They're just doing their everyday thing. And now COVID happened and we're having this big supply chain issues and all this different stuff going on and we're, and we're seeing these issues. But this is all not just COVID related, right? People keep thinking that, oh, it's just, just because, you know, we shut down the country and all these different plants stopped and all, you know, got completely backed up.

Absolutely that's, that's an issue and part of it too. But that is not even close to the whole thing. The whole story, you got to include the railroads in this. They have been shutting down lines, they've been shutting down yards, they've been shutting down maintenance buildings with Carmen that, that fix these cars. I mean, it's, it's maddening to see how much stuff they've, they've actually shut down. Not only that, but their, their shippers are having an issue, like tons of issues, tons of delays.

I live in North Dakota, we're a big egg and energy state and you, I've heard nothing but complaining from the shippers in, in my area and, and that's not just here. That is all across the country and I'm sure if, you know, you went across the world, you'd see the same thing too, that, that the American shippers are, are fucking up right now. And that's a large part due to the railroads. And so we can't just blame it on that, but like, look, if, if you can't give your, your employees some paid sick leave, because so many people are quitting and like you have major workforce shortages, you can't hire anybody because you suck, then like, why wouldn't

you want to take care of those employees? It just, it's, it's maddening to me and I was talking to a guy about this yesterday and it just, when you think about it all, it like blows your mind to just think about the things that they do. I don't know how they're still in business. I really don't. And this contract was because of the, the inadequate staffing. Like they're trying to fit the operating model through the terms of this contract.

And so it's, the problems are going to continue to get worse as more and more people quit this industry and go and find someplace better to work where they can live their lives outside of their work. Yeah. You mentioned what it's like to work for these companies. I read in, this is something from the, the Intercept article about this. It mentions that real companies like Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern often compete for the first and second lowest ratings on Glassdoor for any employer in the U.S.

And you know, you talk about these companies like Union Pacific or BNSF or two of the big ones that I've read about. Their money spends in D.C. and you know, one of the things I've, I've read in the courage of this is that essentially the real companies knew that Congress was always going to intervene and they're always going to intervene to, like to avert any labor action on behalf of the, you know, on the part of the unions. So essentially the unions never had any leverage to begin with. So if they've bought essentially a checkmate against any labor action, what they're also

buying for themselves is the right to operate the freight system in this country with as few workers as possible in as unsafe conditions as possible. People should talk about precision scheduled railroading. So it's like, there is an actual policy that we're going to cut as much labor as possible out of the system. And the reason they can do it, so, so in the past five years, they've cut 30% of the workers on some of these lines. In the past 20 years, literally 50,000 rail workers disappeared and it's not because there's

less freight to move. Part of it is because these are, there's, you know, six or seven companies, but they're all monopolies. Like you have your routes, you have your shippers that you need to, that you have a captured market of, you hold 30 to 40% of the freight in the country. There's, you can't just build another rail line next to the existing one and compete. So there's no penalty for them sucking at their job. Like if you can't really run a train system, there's no financial penalty for you as an

employer. So your incentive becomes, how can I, like Devin's talking about people quitting and you can't attract people, the railroad companies see that and they're happy about it. I mean, it's great. They're trying to drop pensions, drop benefits, drop salaries as much as possible. That's the business model because there's no, what's the threat? They can't strike and they, you can't have any competition and you can just buy back your stock.

And, you know, it's very telling that Warren Buffett is one of the biggest owners of these railroads. He doesn't pick losers. Well, it's a, yeah, it's a great business model if you own a railroad company. And I guess like you're talking about this model of, you know, do more with less as few people as possible, as much as possible with as few lines as possible, just to make the most amount of money. But Ross, I mean, Ross and Devin, for you, like, how does that manifest in your day-to-day

work life? I mean, what is it, what is it like? Like, how do these problems like metastasize when you're trying to do essentially impossible tasks in the time given? Yeah. So the typical freight engineer conductor is on call 24, 7, 365 days a year. They don't know when they're going to work. Somebody with just a couple of years experience might have 19 paid days off a year and that's

it. Other than that, their life is largely unpredictable. And so when we're talking about trying to schedule things, whether it be family time or time to just take personal care and go to the doctor, it is very difficult to manage those things. And the pressure as we've lost people in the industry and we're doing more work with fewer people is enormous. It is an unsafe job and we're being asked to really do the impossible, we're being

asked to physically and mentally push ourselves to the breaking point. And that is a part of the operating model and a part of the goal. And we're seeing that. We're seeing that system-wide, it's not just the equipment and the track that is failing and we're seeing more derailments and more injuries and fatalities. It is the people themselves, we're being broken by this. And the only way out of it is to remove that financial equation. I mean, I think near and dear to hopefully most of your listeners is we need to push

to take this back into the hands of the public and run it just like we would the interstate highways of the airports and nationalize this thing so that works for the public good of all people. Yeah. I mean, like you said, these railroad companies have occurred for themselves the right to have a near monopoly on vital public infrastructure that they're running into the ground. And if they can't run, if they can't use the cliche, if they can't make the trains run on time, then I think the state, absolutely, there should be public ownership of railroads

in this country. The state needs to step in and operate them so that it delivers freight, it does what it's designed to do, and that maybe making as much profit as possible needs to take a backseat to having railroads work in this country. Well, let's be clear about something. There are actual laws in the books that they were formed into these giant companies now, these giant corporations, not just because they wanted to, but because the government allowed that to happen, saying that they would have good service.

I can't remember the exact terminology that's used in the language and the laws, but they essentially are supposed to be. They're breaking the law, but it's who makes those decisions? Well, it's who says they're breaking the law? Well, right now, it's the surface transportation board. Well, who's saying that they're fucking up right now, the surface transportation board? What do they do about it? You can't do anything.

What are you going to do? What are you going to do? There's not a thing you can do. You can't go over the top of them. The only thing you could do is you can take them over, as Brother Gruders was talking about. That is literally it. So a co-op model, that would, in my opinion, would work the best, something that could work for the whole United States and really the whole world, because they're making

everybody suffer because of this. Devin, Ross, and Jonah, please feel free to chime in. How do you rate the performance of your union leadership in these negotiations? Is there discord between rank and file and union leadership over this? How do you rate their performance in these negotiations? I'll jump in first, Devin, and I know you have things to say. I'd say largely that the reason we got to this point was because of the rank and file. It was because brothers and sisters in four different unions stood up and said, no, enough

is enough. I give a lot of credit to the BMWED for organizing themselves inside and pushing, and getting the demand lifted up because the leadership wasn't lifting up demands at the end. They were trying to soft sell us on how good this contract was, and instead, they should have been going to Congress and doing the work of getting us more, and it was largely folks, rank and file folks in the BMWED that were pushing that effort, and Devin, I hope you talk about that. I am deeply disappointed in union leadership.

They have failed us in this moment, frankly, and if we are going to do better in the future, we're going to have to find ways to do it differently so that we can win. Yeah, I can jump in there. So leadership has failed us somewhat, right? They have done some good things, right? In the past, in the BMWED and my union, they had this CAT program, which was a communication action team. Basically, it was mobilizing the membership, right?

It was communicating with the membership. It was organizing internally. That's what you should be doing in a union, right? If you're not ready to mobilize, you're not ready to... I mean, you can't just expect your workers to walk out on strike, right? You can't just gain any support and scare the railroads or scare any company from just walking in the door and saying, hey, guys, we're going to go. Nobody respects you.

They don't know you, so you've got to earn that, and that's being done. We have stopped doing that, but there is a rank and file caucus that has taken that upon ourselves to start doing that now, but as Brother Gruders was talking about, the reason why it happened, and I've talked with Jonah about this as well, but this really... I give Jonah a lot of credit because he's the one who connected this and made the network and happened. The progressive people in the House and the staff members made it all happen, that the sick leave was even in there.

Otherwise, the sick leave was not going to be a part of it, right? Biden came out on Monday, Pelosi came out on Monday, they both said, oh, we're going to hammer this thing down, and we're not going to stop freight, and we're not going to start any legislation that has any poison pills in it, and AKA those poison pills that her statement said, that was the sick days. That's poison pills, she considered that. That is disgusting. So yeah, the poison pill is getting a sick day.

It's wild, man. I couldn't even believe it when I saw it. Look, you guys actually work for your constituents. There's no way. How many congressmen and women out there actually work for their constituents? Very little. So I give them a lot of credit in that progressive caucus for actually getting that thing going, and even though it failed in the Senate, look, this is a historic moment for us.

It passed in the House to get something more than the PEB. You guys can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that's ever happened before. It's astounding, especially for railroads, maybe in the airline industry there has, but it's pretty wild. So if you go back and you look at the history of PEBs, it's kind of gross and disgusting. You basically just take what you get. So we didn't win the sick days, but look, it was a win anyways, in a sense. Yeah.

I mean, Jonah, if you could speak on this, I mean, as far as the House of Progressive Caucus goes, I mean, I know AOC and Jamal Bowman, they've come in for a lot of criticism for separating the sick leave from the main agreement, which is sort of like Pelosi did a similar thing with the Build Back Better thing, where you take out essentially the things people want, and you say, if you vote for this bill, then trust me, the second vote is coming. But as Devin just said, and Jonah, you're not hearing a similar level of criticism for people who are involved inside this labor dispute?

Yeah. I think, I think, I'll just say, part of the focus on, you know, people on Twitter, on the squad, is they feel like that's their people they can have an influence on. So they're kind of, you know, looking at, looking at your own crew and trying to feel like, where can I really play? But that's not really where any of this happened. That was all, you know, we were on the fourth down goal line, no time left on the clock, and they threw the Hail Mary.

The deal was, if you vote for the TA, then you get a vote on the sick days. There was no deal where you vote on a TA with sick days. This was not on the table. They got the sick days back on the table through, honestly, public pressure and some internal maneuvering. And it's nice they had a vote, but this thing was cooked through years of this process. And I just, you know, Devin and Ross are two very brave members who will talk about their union leadership.

I get to be on the sidelines and sort of tell you what other people are telling me in the rank and file membership of these unions. There's a lot of people who feel like the strategy to have put all your eggs in the Joe Biden basket for three years, say, we're going to wait till the Democrats are in power. Once they get into power, we're going to rush all the way through the process. You know, if you look at this process, they got released from mediation, like with, you know, the fastest time ever. The reason they went for that is because it's Democrats and we think we can gamble on the

Democrats for a good deal. They got all the way to the end where now Joe Biden is supposed to deliver and their whole strategy has been, we're not going to strike, we're not going to talk to any other Democrats or progressives or do any outside agitation because we're playing the inside game with Joe Biden. So the moment that he turns around and says, no, we're not doing sick days. We're not doing anything. We're imposing a contract.

There's no strike. They have no other cards to play. They've put it all with Joe Biden. So I think if there's a criticism to make here, it's that you can't have, you know, something notable is it's in the weeds, but multiple unions didn't strike even though they hit their strike dates with no tentative agreement in place. Multiple unions agreed to new tentative agreements just to trigger more cooling off periods because they weren't ready to rely on the membership to actually fight and they didn't have a plan

for legislation besides whatever Joe Biden's going to give us. You could have easily had a deal where there's a bill in Congress that says, you know what? If they strike, we're going to force them back to work, but it's going to be with 15 sick days, cost of living adjustment and free health care. How do you like that railroads? The railroads would have taken that very differently if they thought that's where Congress was going to go. But the unions and the Democratic Party said, we're just going to play it safe, play it

inside. And then when the obvious thing happened, they basically said, we can live with it. So I get the focus on the progressives and it's interesting to talk about, but there was no time left on the clock and that was by design and it was a bad strategy. I think Jonah's exactly right here. And what I say when I say leadership failed us is what Jonah's talking about. We didn't have any internal organizing to ensure that people were ready to strike like Devin's talking about.

My union leadership dissuades me from talking to Devin and people in his union, even though we're both teamsters and the work to build alliances and have an outside strategy where we leverage the people that have come to the table and fought for us in the recent weeks, all this public support we've gained, that was gained because of folks like within the BMW E.D. rank and file caucus and because of folks at RWU Railroad Workers United. That didn't happen because of our rail unions. And so without that extra work being put in, this is always going to be the inevitable result.

And that's what I say when I mean that union leadership has failed us and we need to find a way to do something different to win. We've talked about the start like this week was the culmination of about three years of back and forth on this issue. Like, okay, we've reached a point now with this tentative agreement. But what about, I mean, Ross, Devin, where do you and your rank and file or what you're trying to do in your unions, where do you go for the next three years? Like, am I right that like 2025 is the next like sort of session when this will like these

types of negotiations will come up again? I mean, where do you go from here? Yeah, sure. You know, we've got 23 months until our next negotiations start. I mean, this is a five year agreement. We went three years without an agreement and by the Railway Labor Act, technically we don't have time limits because they don't want us to walk out or use any self-help. So technically we weren't without an agreement, but we were.

We haven't had any raises or anything for three years. And so we have 23 months until we're back to the table doing the same process over and over. Just bash your head over. It's wild. But as far as organizing beforehand, yeah, like we got a lot of work to do. And we need to push our leadership to do it. I think a major thing and this is used in all kinds of organizations and not just unions,

but unions, they do it too, where they just don't, they don't educate their membership on how to do things, right? They don't educate them, hey, you want to do something? Start with the resolution, right? Push it up, make a petition and start pushing up the ladder, right? Getting those things changed within your own organization. And so people just don't know. They don't know that, which is something that RWU and our caucus in the BMWD has started

doing. We want to start educating our membership. People like Labor Notes and the TDU, they all do great work too to start a reform caucus. Something that will actually change you fundamentally because it's not going to happen with your union leadership. You're not going to get union leadership that's played politics for how long to get to where they're at to let somebody else take over the reins and start playing. They want to play those chess games.

They're going to play those chess games to stay where they're at and it's really unfortunate. But I think there is some really good leadership out here that we can get in these spots. But look, there's a hell of a lot of work to do and we have to start now. We need to organize inside and outside of our unions and yeah, that work doesn't start in two years, that work has got to happen now like Devin Sand. And I think a big piece of this is just finding those critical leverage points like public ownership of the railroads, for instance, that we can scare the shit out of the carriers and make them come to the bargaining table with some good faith.

So I'd lift up that as perhaps the next place that Railroad Workers United might try to go. And at the end of the day, I'll get this out of my system and just say, fuck Joe Biden. Wait, he's the most pro-labor president we've ever had. Amtrak Joe. He loves trains. I just want to say one other thing. Just a shout out to Devin and Ross who are doing amazing work in their unions.

There's also been in this fight a bunch of, there's 12 rail unions here. Some of them really do not have a super active membership, but through this fight, I've met some amazing people. One of them is Reese Murtaugh who is the local lodge leader in Richmond, Virginia, local lodge 696 of the rail machinists. They represent about 5,000 members across the country and he saw what happened with there. They were one of the unions that just moved their strike date with no plan.

And he saw what happened and said, fuck it, I'm running for national president of my union. This is like, just a guy who works on the railroad and decided that it's time for changing his union. So it's really interesting to see, there's going to be a lot of mobilization, there's going to be a lot of demoralization, but it's exciting to see people like Devin, Ross, Reese Murtaugh who are actually making a plan to, we can fix up these unions to actually fight. And I do think because of what happened this time around, 2025 could be a lot different

or 2027, however long they keep you guys waiting. I guess I'll just close out with this, you just mentioned demoralization, Ross at the beginning you described explaining how something can pass the Senate, but not pass the Senate because you need 60 votes instead of just a majority and how that leads to like a real sense of demoralization with like the democratic process. But I mean, and like also the conditions imposed by this agreement you mentioned will likely lead to worse rail service and more and more people just dropping away from working for railroads.

But I mean, is there like out of those embers, can sometimes you think demoralization or just sort of facing the bearstark facts of things lead to better organizing and like some of these reform caucuses that you've mentioned? I can go on that. Look, I've gotten phone calls already, people extremely pissed off my own local, other locals around that are really upset. And even without the paid sick days as Brother Gurdurz was talking about that people are still going to be demoralized.

I've had people call me and say, man, if they thought I was sandbagging before, they haven't seen me now. I mean, look, our membership, they're pissed. And it's not our job to make sure they're happy and to make sure that they're efficient. It's the railroad's job. There are fucking bosses. They can do something about it. You know what?

Money does talk. It's not all about pizza parties. You know, great. I love pizza just like anybody else, but come on now. Let's do something better. Let's make a better work environment. Let's not get pissed off and send 300 executives to DC the same day as there's a legislation going in to give us seven days of paid sick leave.

Like that's fucking ridiculous. How much money do you guys spend on just doing that? How is your lobster that night? I mean, it's so frustrating. And I share that same sentiment as brothers and sisters that I work next to every day. But as you were saying, yeah, look, it's hard to get people to care because they feel so defeated. That's the truth.

But if you can start getting organizing and start showing people that you actually care, I've also gotten a phone call some people saying, thanks for everything you do, Devin. Like, you know, we appreciate you. And this is from my local, right? Like these guys, they like me because they see that I give a shit and I care. Like, and I think this kind of stuff is fun, right? Like that. And I enjoy organizing, right?

So there are people out there that want to do that. There's plenty of them. But we just need to find those leaders and we need to raise them up and give them a mic. And I think that can be done. I think it's very, very possible with, you know, people like Jonah and Labor Notes and Joe and people at TDU that are really supporting rank and file action. Like, that's a beautiful thing. That's all about the education and I think can be done.

And, you know, Gruders has a tougher time than I do, honestly, the BLETs, a whole different animal. And I was kind of fortunate to get the reins handed down to me, but he's got a lot harder battle and we're going to help them as well. And I guess just to close out, like, Ross, Devin, if any of our listeners want to learn more about either Railroad Workers United or BMW ED Teamsters or any of these organizing struggles that you guys are involved in, what should they do? Where should they go?

Can you direct them anywhere for, like, you know, if they want to contribute in any way, shape, or form? Well, you can follow me on the bird app at Ross Gruders as long as it exists, R-O-S-S-G-R-O-O-T-E-R-S. And Railroad Workers, all one word at Railroad Workers, also our website is railroadworkersunited.com. When you can join as a solidarity member for $25 a year, I'm going to plug that. That helps us keep doing the work. It helps us pay for our wonderful staff person's cigarette and appreciate all the support we've gotten in recent weeks.

Let's keep it going and work together to make these carriers pay. Yeah, Railroad Workers United has been around for, like, 15 years. These guys have been organizing for a long time. We just started our caucus a little less than a year ago, so we're newborn compared to them, but we're ready for action, we're ready to start going, too. So ours is the Rankin' File United, BMW-ED, we're a division of the Teamsters, just like Brother Ross's, and we're going to keep fighting, and hopefully people reach out. We're looking for alliances, we're looking for that help, I think that's the next step.

We really need to work on that, right, getting other organizations involved. And the RWU has been doing good at that, right? They've already got a bunch of people on board, but we need to do more of that, and our union leadership does, too. And Jonah, we can find your work at Labor Notes. I'll leave it there for this bonus episode about the Railroads and the wonderful people who operate them and keep that freight moving around this great nation of ours. Ross Gruders, Devin Mans, Jonah Furman, I want to thank you all so much for your time

today. Thank you, Will. Thanks for having us. We'll see you in the next one.