Senate Votes To Avoid Rail Strike: The United States Congress has given its final approval to a bill that will prevent a national railroad strike in the United States, which could have had a devastating impact on the economy of the United States. However, Congress has voted down a measure that would have provided paid sick days to railroad workers.
Senate Avoids Rail Strike, Denies Railroad Workers 7 Paid Sick Days
A new contract between railroad companies and labor unions was approved by the Senate on Thursday in a last-minute vote, ahead of a deadline on December 9 that could trigger a nationwide railroad strike and severely hamstring the economy; however, senators rejected the unions’ demands for paid sick leave. The deadline was set to prevent a nationwide railroad strike that could severely hamstring the economy.
The accord, which was mediated by the Joe Biden Administration in September and includes a 24% hike through 2024, was approved by the Senate with a vote of 80 to 15, with 15 senators voting against it.
Rail workers have complained that present regulations keep them on call for days or weeks at a time and punish those who call out ill. A separate vote in the Senate resulted in a rejection of seven days of paid sick leave for rail workers by a vote of 52 to 43.
There were six Republicans who voted in favor of the paid sick leave program, but there was only one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who voted against it.
Before voting on those two measures, which were both approved by the House on Wednesday, Senators also voted down an amendment that would have extended the negotiating period by 60 days to give the parties more time to reach a compromise. The amendment was defeated by a vote of 26-69. On Wednesday, the House voted in favor of both of those measures.
The legislation will soon be delivered to the desk of Vice President Joe Biden, who on Monday appealed to Congress to accept the labor pact.
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The railroad firms, on the other hand, have argued that the raises in compensation that are promised under the deal are among the biggest seen in the past several decades. Progressive legislators took the side of the train businesses and offered revisions to include paid sick leave in the contract. These MPs supported the rail industry. However, the unions do not have many options left now that the Senate has given its approval to the accord even if it does not include the new sick leave policy.
“If Congress imposes the terms of our next contract, then under the Railway Labor Act, that’s the end of the line,” Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Spokesperson Clark Ballew told Forbes this week, referring to the 1926 labor law that gives the federal government the power to intervene in railroad contract disputes. “If Congress imposes the terms of our next contract, then under the Railway Labor Act, that’s the end of the line,” Ballew said.
On Thursday, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) stated on the floor of the Senate that “the problem is paid sick leave.” They are one of the few industries in the United States of America that do not provide paid sick leave of any kind. Unbelievably, if a worker in the training sector in today’s day and age falls sick, the individual receives a mark for missing work, and that work can, and in some situations will be fired.
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