Wasn't railroad workers recently on strike for better conditions and Congress basically forced them back to work under threat of arrest?
Rail workers wanted to strike. There's a law allowing Congress to prevent that to avoid a catastrophic disruption to the economy - and it would be catastrophic. They voted to prevent a strike and Biden signed it. This was IMO a smart move, deliberately tanking the economy would have been good for nobody.
There was a separate vote to force the companies to agree to some of the workers' safety and working conditions demands, which Republicans blocked.
Place blame where it belongs.
There are certain functions that are so critical that people who work there are not allowed to strike and disrupt the economy. Railroads are one of them. Democrats tried to get them the best deal possible while also preventing an enormous economic recession which would have been the inevitable result of a freight shutdown.
I personally think those critical functions should be nationalized under government control, rather than having private companies reap the benefits of their special control, but that's a conversation for another time.
So far the working conditions haven't got that bad for enough to be noticeable, but at some point you'll have no new employees and the old ones will quit or die off.
I also think Democrats are happy to let them be the bad guys, while they make a lot of noise and token efforts to make things better, but never enough to hurt profits.
Except that's exactly the point of a strike. And I think catastrophic is an overestimation if we were to shut down the rails for a week, maybe it would've instead gone towards equalizing the disconnect of wealth.
I don't really think it's supposed to be "good for anyone". It's not supposed to be comfortable and civilized and concessionary. It's not supposed to preserve the status quo because the position of the striker is that the status quo is bad and un-preservable.
It's supposed to hurt. That's the only lever workers have in these systems.
Unfortunately, a rail strike would have put something like an estimated 3 million people out of work immediately, and would have cut off food and water supplies to millions of people. That's why there's a law preventing strikes that extend beyond the industry to have negative effects on the whole nation.
But your logic would suggest to me that what instead would be needed is a law or set of laws preventing the situation from getting so bad that it would come to such a thing.
If it hurts so much for the system to break, then why is it allowed to rot? A strike isn't supposed to hurt "the company", it's supposed to hurt so that people with power are forced to take action to make it stop hurting.
All I'm suggesting is that a class analysis of this situation has a lot more explanatory power than an aesthetic party alignment one. Because if it can never hurt, then it is purely aesthetics.
Ah yes, both sides are to blame because the difference is only aesthetic, despite one voting to give workers what they wanted, being blocked by the other party.
Seriously, Democrats basically went to the table with "you can't strike because that will ruin the economy but we will give you the vast majority of what you want", the labor unions agreed, and then Republicans prevented it. And your takeaway is that the Democrats are equally culpable?
California homelessness crisis.
Then Reddit is that way. ---->
Everyone weighs the value of information differently and has vastly different information to use in making decisions. Additionally there are various weights applied based on impact to individuals, community, and society as a whole. Pretending you are right, or that I am right, isn't valid. Everyone gets their opinion and everyone believes they are right.
Republicans come to you and say: either we pass this bill without safety provisions, or we will gleefully destroy the entire economy and the public will blame you for it.
What do you do?
If the American people still decide to blame you and elect one of the saboteurs instead, well, they get what they deserve.
...I have learned that I have an above average capacity for spite, though.
Have you been paying attention since 2010? That is exactly what is happening. Republicans break government, say government is broken, then win elections with votes from people who are harmed by government disfunction.
Besides which, I can't say we aren't getting what we deserve.
Section J, paragraph 2 indicates "blah foo bar".
The people seeking to pass this bill are trying to "bar" your "blah foo", and I don't believe "bar" should be "blah foo'd". "Bar" should be "bazzed", and I'm doing everything I can to 'baz' 'bars' whenever possible.
I realize that sometimes legislative language is dense or difficult, but that shouldn't be a reason to gloss over it.
I got hung up on the Clinton Health Care act in the early 90s. Right wing radio folks got me hung up on it - I was convinced it was evil. I bought a copy to review in detail. It was complex, but I found that many of the radio talking points I'd eaten up were, in fact, misrepresentations or distortions. But... I had to read the text myself to get to that point - it took a while to digest.
Half the country will see "Democrats are the reason the nation is on fire right now" and believe it without an uncritical thought, and go back to facebook to repost memes about furry kids using litter boxes at school, or LBGTQ people trying to groom your kids to be child porn stars, and also uncritically believe that as well.
Half of the country reads below a high school level. You really think they will accurately be able to understand a legalese filled and often purposely confusing, 10 page document that usually has dense references to other legalese filled documents?
Refuse to play their bullshit game and do the right thing instead.
Repubicans do not play fair and they do not care about anything but their own power. You have two options: play their game, which means they win, or refuse to play their game and call them out on their bullshit, which means they might win, but if they do then it will be because the public has been shown the truth and just doesn't care.
Obama made the mistake of playing their game a lot in his first term: assuming that republicans actually give a shit about the country and pre-emptively offering reasonable compromise. The republicans, of course, refused to compromise at all and still claimed he was a socialist tyrant.
What I'm saying is, do not negotiate with terrorists.
But let's not pretend these are two different teams, all of congress is in the same business of screwing the little guy.
BTW same reason I believe the SWE "unions" people advocate here are going to be a laughing stock.
I wish the workers had gotten a better deal, but I'm damn happy the strike didn't happen, because the damage would have been enormous.
Every single employee who gains a little power to use in negotiations with their employer should be fought for, by all of us. Fucking solidarity.
One could imagine an alternate universe where the "end of the line" outcome of The Railway Labor Act was the government immediately nationalizing the railroad company in question due to it's failing to provide a crucial service to the national infrastructure. We can argue the effectiveness/realism of the outcome all day long, but as a thought experiment you cannot deny that the collective bargaining process would go entirely differently.
While that's true, why don't the employers and/or state meet the workers' demands to prevent this catastrophy? A strike is usually only done as a reaction, that is, when negotiations failed and demands aren't being met.
Whose fault is that? Are the rail workers being unreasonable with their demands?