The House leapt into action Wednesday morning, taking up legislation that would enforce a tentative agreement that was brokered by the Biden administration in September between the railroads and union leaders. Congress and the administration are trying to avert a rail strike that would start on Dec. 9. The legislation, and the contract, are complicated by what was left out: the concession from the rail companies to provide paid sick days for workers.
Four out of 12 railway unions have rejected the tentative contract because sick leave was not included in the tentative deal. Yes, rail workers do not have paid sick leave. They have paid time off, like vacation, but they have to schedule it ahead of time. They don’t have any sick leave or anything they can use on an unplanned basis. They can’t take a day for a family funeral, or to care for a sick kid, or to have their own health emergency. It’s frankly a situation that’s worth striking over. That’s why the remaining eight unions that agreed to the tentative contract will not cross a picket line if the other four strike. Freight and passenger rail could be shut down entirely, something Republicans seem to be rooting for.
The legislation the House is taking up Wednesday is in two parts, Speaker Nancy Pelosi told members Tuesday. They will “consider the strike-averting legislation to adopt the Tentative Agreement, as negotiated by the railroad companies and labor leaders” in the first vote. Then there will be “a separate, up-or-down vote to add seven days of paid sick leave for railroaders to the Tentative Agreement.”
Those bills will be paired, Rep. Pramila Jayapal told reporter David Dayen, “Through a House procedure known as ‘enrollment correction,’ we have been able to mandate that any House legislation to codify the [rail] agreement will be accompanied by legislation that addresses the workers’ long standing demand for fair paid leave.” That means that if both the enforcement of the tentative agreement and the paid sick leave measure pass, the Senate has to take them up together. Both have to pass in both the House and Senate for this to work.
RELATED STORY: Congress to intervene, force agreement to stop threatened rail workers strike
That has brought progressives on board in the House and should allay concerns of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont as well. “What we are fighting for, and I think we stand a reasonable chance to succeed, is to take the agreement the president and the Labor Secretary negotiated and add seven days of paid guaranteed sick leave to that,” he said Tuesday evening. But he vowed “to block consideration of the rail legislation until a roll call vote occurs on guaranteeing 7 paid sick days to rail workers in America,” so this process in the House has to work. Both bills have to pass.
Even with that, Senate passage is not guaranteed because Republicans really would be okay with a rail strike that could cost the economy upwards of $2 billion per day, because they could blame that on President Joe Biden.
On Tuesday, Republicans were making a lot of noise about supporting the workers. For example, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who insisted that the “railways & workers should go back & negotiate a deal that the workers, not just the union bosses, will accept. But if Congress is forced to do it, I will not vote to impose a deal that doesn’t have the support of the rail workers.”
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas also backtracked from saying he’d consider increasing the paid leave to seven days on Tuesday, to saying Wednesday: “I just think it’s a bad idea for Congress to try to intervene and renegotiate these collective bargaining agreements between labor and management.”
Obstruction from the Republicans in the Senate, where any deal would like have to pass with 60 votes, could tie up Congress and preventing it from taking up other measures if Pelosi and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are having to negotiate another plan, like extending the cooling off period between the companies and labor past the Dec. 9 deadline. That would buy time on the strike, but it would eat up legislative calendar days during a few weeks in which there are none to spare.
Congress still has to make sure government is funded after Dec. 16, when the current funding resolution expires. It also needs to make sure that Republicans don’t have the catastrophic weapon of the debt ceiling in their arsenal for the next two years.
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