The NPR Politics Podcast - Why Biden And Congress Are Trying To Stop A Railroad Strike

Episode Date: November 30, 2022

Railroad unions rejected a Biden-brokered deal to prevent a national strike over concerns that it did not include paid sick leave. Now, the president is pushing Congress to implement it anyway. Biden — who has described himself as the most labor-friendly president in U.S. history — is worried that a rail workers' strike during the holiday season would devastate the economy.This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, political correspondent Susan Davis, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.This episode was produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It was edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Research and fact-checking by Katherine Swartz.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And today on the show, can politicians prevent a national rail strike ahead of the holidays? That is the question we are going to attempt to answer in this podcast. Contract talks have been stalled for weeks. Several unions rejected this tentative agreement proposed by the White House because in major part it did not include paid sick leave. And President Biden is deeply concerned that any sort of rail strike could have a massive

impact on the economy and already existing supply chain kinks. And so Biden, who came into office promising to be the most labor-friendly president the country has ever seen, is now in this awkward position, having to ask Congress to force the unions to accept an agreement to prevent a strike. And Sue, I want to begin with a question I think a lot of listeners have, which is, you know, this is a negotiation that is taking place between railroads and their workers' unions. So where and why is the government even involved here? Sure. I mean, there was a deal on the table reached in mid-September, part through mediators appointed by the Biden administration. But of the 12 unions involved, eight ratified a proposed contract and four rejected it. And the two sides have been in what's been called a cooling off period. But it's coming up to a very key deadline of December 9th, at which point workers could go on strike. And so now Biden has asked Congress to use something

called the Railway Labor Act. It's a 1926 law, and it essentially gives Congress the power to enforce a labor agreement that union members have voted down. This law has been used before. Most recently, it was triggered in 1991 to end a rail strike and Congress passed a law and it was signed by then President H.W. Bush. So it has happened before. It's happening again. And it's a pretty high stakes negotiation when you consider what the White House and congressional leaders are saying could be a very severe economic impact if rail workers go on strike, specifically to the things like the cost of gasoline, the supply of grains across the country, a quarter of all U.S. grains

are moved around on railways, and even drinking water. A lot of the chemicals that are used to treat water treatment plants all over the country get those chemical supplies by the railroads. I presume the reason we have a Railway Labor Act is because getting goods around by rail is considered to be not just economically imperative, but also a national security issue. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's why I was pretty surprised, not just that Biden called for this. I mean, the president obviously has a huge interest in protecting economic concerns, but very labor-friendly Democrats. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was one of the first Democrats to come out in support of the president,

saying the House will vote to force this labor agreement into law. And the House already brought up that legislation this morning, and it passed the House with a pretty big bipartisan margin. So now what happens? 79 Republicans join ranks with Democrats to vote for it. The big question now is what happens to a separate legislative vehicle? Part of the agreement in order to get Democrats on board for this was to bring up a second measure that would address the union workers' concerns.

Specifically, the reason why four of the 12 unions rejected this deal is because it didn't include enough paid sick leave. Now, the Biden administration will unions rejected this deal is because it didn't include enough paid sick leave. Now, the Biden administration will say that this deal that came out was the product of years of careful negotiations, that not everybody was happy with it, but this was the best deal, and they should take it. Democrats are saying, hey, we want to be on the side of the workers here. So we're going to try to change the deal and add seven paid sick leave days into the agreement. That also passed the House, but on a very much more narrow party line basis. Republicans rejected that part of it, but supported the underlying agreement. And now both measures have to go to the Senate. I think that it will likely pass the

Senate, the underlying trade agreement, because minority leader Mitch McConnell and majority leader Chuck Schumer are working hand in hand on this. And when they do that, things tend to get done. But the fate of these seven paid sick days is a question mark. Will 10 Senate Republicans vote with Democrats and labor on this question? I can't answer that for you today. It sounds kind of unlikely, but it's also just, can we just stop here and say for a minute how unbelievable it is that railway workers, who were certainly frontline workers during the pandemic, do not have more than one day of sick leave? Yeah, I mean, it is pretty wild. But also, I would say as part of this contract, they did get, it's a five-year contract and they got a 24 percent pay increase. And you're talking about the tentative deal.

The tentative deal. Under the tentative trade agreement, they got a 24 percent pay increase over the course of a five-year contract and they got caps on their healthcare premiums. And what I think the railroads would say is they're getting more money to offset the cost of having to use paid time to take a sick day. Obviously, that is not coherent with what the labor movement wants or what labor advocates support. But that is the case against giving them paid sick leave in this deal. So you mentioned that there are two separate measures that now are going to the Senate. And I just want to better understand what's the likelihood of either or both of these passing in the Senate. And from my understanding, it doesn't seem like we've gotten a clear articulation of where the White House stands on this separate measure. Well, it's tricky because the position of the White House, and they've already said that they

very much support the underlying trade agreement, is like, don't mess with it. It's been negotiated, just enforce that part of it. But if Congress can somehow send a separate measure to the president to sign into law that provides paid sick leave, you know, labor sources that I've talked to think it's very hard to believe that Joe Biden would veto something along those lines. The part that we're going to watch, and it's unlikely that there are 10 Senate Republicans who are going to vote with Democrats on this, but it's not impossible. And part of what's interesting here is the shifting politics of who the Republican Party is. You have Republican senators like Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley putting out statements saying they won't support the deal because they're on the side of the workers. Josh Hawley is someone who has said that the Republican Party is more a party of the working class people, that they should be voting more sympathetically with working class people. So it is possible that some combination of Republican senators, particularly those with 2024 aspirations, might be a yes to extend those

paid sick leave benefits, but 10 is still a pretty high threshold and it seems unlikely, but we live in unusual times. Well, what's so interesting about that is being pro-working class on a lot of cultural issues is quite different than being pro-union. And what I wonder is if the Hollies and the Cruzes and the Rubios of the world will take this any further than basically what is a free vote since they know that this particular sick leave measure is not going to pass in the Senate or they can be pretty confident that it won't. How far do they go on that? We know that Donald Trump won big numbers among white unionized workers. And the base of the Republican Party is getting less college educated, more blue collar. But this is a strange bedfellow situation.

It's one thing to, you know, identify culturally with white working class concerns. It's another thing to cast a vote in favor of the unions, which have been a sworn enemy of the Republican Party for years and years and years. Yeah. And I think a lot of Republicans, particularly in the Senate, might try to thread the needle in which they would say they substantively, they ideologically believe that these workers should have paid sick leave, but they are still philosophically opposed with a heavy handed government coming in and forcing a labor contract into law by legislative fiat, that they oppose it through the process, but not the substance, which is generally a pretty comfortable way to try to oppose something without actually dealing with what's in it. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk. I just want to make sure I understand what happens if the House and the Senate pass this legislation that will essentially force, you know, the railroad workers and the railroad companies to agree to this deal. Is there any recourse for the workers who did not want this deal? No, I mean, this would be the end of the road. If Congress passes a law and Joe Biden signs it, that's it.

And that's why I think it's making such an uncomfortable situation on Capitol Hill, because on the one hand, you've put the Democratic Party, long aligned with the labor movement, in a position of having to force a contract down the throats of union workers, many of which don't support it. And for Republicans, don't really love that the government is stepping in to enforce a labor contract with private companies and essentially acting on their behalf. I mean, nobody loves that Congress is doing this right now. I think it speaks to how severe everyone seems to agree that a rail strike at this moment in this economy is almost like a national security

threat and that a strike just cannot be allowed to happen because of what the implications of a strike would be for the rest of the country as compared to the 115,000 union workers affected by this contract. So let's talk a little bit more about what this would actually mean for the economy, because we've been talking about, I think, in a bit of abstract terms. I mean, we are, of course, just around the corner from the holiday season. I know there were concerns last year about holiday shipping, just remnants of the COVID supply chains. I mean, Mara, what does it mean if an agreement is not reached soon? It could really be a problem. This is the tight spot that President Biden finds himself in. There's no other modern Democratic president that I can think of who has more union cred than Joe Biden. And he even says in his

statements, as a proud pro-union president, I'm really reluctant to do this, but he has other concerns to weigh. He's president of the entire country. I mean, this is an administration that has a lot of political capital with unions. And I think the midterm election, I don't want to call it a victory because they lost the House, but the fact that they did come out so much better than anyone thought gives him even more political capital. So this is a difficult decision. He has to weigh two competing equities, but he's in a pretty good political position to do it. Someone else in the Biden administration who I think has a lot of credibility with the labor

movement is the Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, right? Like he is someone who has street cred among these folks. And the White House is sending him up to Capitol Hill. He's meeting with senators this week to try to also make the case for this deal. So it's probably easier to get it done when you have people like Biden and like Walsh saying, no, seriously, we might need to roll labor unions here. It's that serious. If it was different messengers, I the additional paid sick leave measure isn't also approved by the Senate. So it's ugly stuff. I think that this is one of those things that has to get done. But there could be some hard feelings and some recriminations because of it. You know, and just in terms of talking about the impact, the White House just sent out an email with a statement from the president. And, you know, it's not just about making sure gifts can get to people underneath their trees before Christmas. I mean,

the president is saying that without action this week, it will limit their ability to put food on tables, their ability to remove hazardous waste from gasoline refineries. I mean, this, they're saying, is much more consequential than just the holiday shopping season. You know, and one of the things that the administration and everyone involved in this negotiation point to is gasoline. Almost all of the ethanol used in gasoline is transported over the railroads. pressures but to politics to the president and having a rail strike that might again force gas prices to go through the roof just seems like a politically untenable situation and I think that also explains why there seems to be pretty universal from the four corners of power on Capitol Hill agreement that this needs to get done and it needs to get done fast before that December 9th deadline. All right well we will leave it there for today. I'm Asma Khalid.

I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And as always, thank you all for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.