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Comment by fnimick | Hacker News Reader

It's a bit more nuanced than that, not that you'll find that anywhere in comments sections on the internet.

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.

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I fail to see the nuance.

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.

Yes, the strike is supposed to hurt the company.

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.

I understand why there is a law in place to make it illegal to strike.

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.

> aesthetic party alignment one

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?

I'll suggest that Democrats are equally culpable. Because if the Republicans couldn't have prevented it, the Democrats would have. These clowns all take turns pretending to care. People are getting sick of it.

This is the laziest heuristic I've seen in a long time.

Sure.

California homelessness crisis.

Well, would have made sense for the rail companies to hurry to the bargaining table quickly then, wouldn't it?

Neither the companies nor the workers have any incentive to care about the effects of the strike on the broader nation. That's exactly why there's a law in place that allows the government to intervene and set terms for both sides.

When it is clear that the interests of the workers and the interests of the company aren't being decided evenly, it is time to repeal those laws. Until Democrats start unilaterally proposing new legislation to repeal those laws they have to share the blame. They contributed to this mess.

An alternative used in people transport is that they just stop charging people or checking tickets. It doesn't disrupt transport, just cash flow to the employers / shareholders.

Maybe if people actually saw how much of their life would stop working if rail workers went on strike, maybe they would more support keeping things working well, with reasonable work life balances and less stress.

>I fail to see the nuance.

Then Reddit is that way. ---->

So if people disagree with another person they go to Reddit?

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.

Yes and no. The existence of The Railway Labor Act puts railroad labour at a massive disadvantage in bargaining agreements. The multi-year process to even get to a strike allows the railroad companies to "starve out" the strike effort. And then knowing that the government would never allow the strike to occur allows them to negotiate in bad faith the entire time.

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.

If you think that separating the two wasn't an intentional move to allow for one to pass but not the other, I've got a bridge to sell you. Congress combines unrelated items all the time, if they had to vote to prevent the strike, the compliance with some of their demands should have been rolled into the same vote if they cared about it being passed.

Okay, say you're Joe Biden, or some prominent Democrat in office.

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?

Not sign it.

You start by having the balls to say no. Then you hold a till-they-drop press conference explaining exactly why you're saying no and who is actually to blame for what is about to happen.

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.

> If the American people still decide to blame you and elect one of the saboteurs instead, well, they get what they deserve.

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.

That's been the case since long before 2010, and democrats still manage to win elections, so I don't think your theory holds outside of certain areas of the country that likely have other systemic reasons for republicans being elected.

Besides which, I can't say we aren't getting what we deserve.

It really shouldn't be THAT hard to hold press conferences and/or put out media releases that actually contain the text of the legislation and the specific areas of objection.

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.

Yeah but the problem is that half of the country explicitly DOESN'T get their information from anyone but Fox news, or worse like newsmax, or more specifically, Tucker Carlson and friends who officially claim their shows, on the "Fox News" channel, can not be considered reality by anyone "reasonable" so they aren't legally liable for the horseshit they spew.

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?

...and they'll still believe that even if the country isn't on fire because Fox News will make up a fire and tell them it is because of the left anyway. Fox News indoctrinating people isn't a variable that Biden's actions actually changes in any meaningful way.

Refuse to play their bullshit game and do the right thing instead.

Are you seriously suggesting that an economic depression would have no effect on the country's politics?

I'm saying that even if it does, electing the people who caused it gives the people what they want and deserve.

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.

Well first off if I was Biden I'd probably mutter something about how playing with trains in the pool with Corn Pop and the ice cream.

But let's not pretend these are two different teams, all of congress is in the same business of screwing the little guy.

"They used to come up and rub my leg hair. The kids loved to rub my legs."

The point of strikes is to cause economic disruption. Congress preventing them from exercising that power means there's no way for them to get their demands met. The Republicans wouldn't have been able to block it if the rail workers were allowed to express their power.

Congress does not REALLY prevent it from happening. The strikers themselves prevent it from happening.

Hmm? They will start stressing union bosses, and give out harsh fines and penalties if they continue to strike after congress steps in

Yeah but if the current framework does not support, the next step is pretty obvious. Check how unions truly fought back in the day.

BTW same reason I believe the SWE "unions" people advocate here are going to be a laughing stock.

Let me know when you volunteer to lose your job, run out of food, and have no drinking water because the freight has stopped running. That's reality for the vast majority of Americans.

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.

I mean, better that in the short term than the long term of luck being the determining factor in having a few hundreds of thousands of tons of poison being dumped into my city or not.

I'd rather have to suffer an extended period of hardship than the status quo of "Your corporate overlords own your soul and any attempt to claw back what little power you can to try and balance this stupidity will be made a literal fucking crime"

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.

Sure, I'd volunteer. What, you're too weak to do so? I guarantee that there many who are in a worse position than you who would gladly flight. And for those who can't, it is your responsibility to.

> deliberately tanking the economy would have been good for nobody.

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?

How do you prevent a strike in a way that doesn't force people to work?

That's exactly what it is. I didn't intend to sugar coat it.

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.

At some point people just quit and go work for McDonalds. Unless you literally force them at gunpoint to work the rails, you eventually have no rail workers.

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.

This is also why Republicans fight so hard against safety nets, nationalized healthcare, unions, worker rights, etc. The more desperate and struggling people there are, the more workers for these horrific, anti-work life balance jobs there are. The Fed purposely pushes for an economy with a set minimum of jobless people, purposely encouraging desperate out of work people who will take anything to put food on their plate.

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.

The consequence of an illegal strike is that the workers in question may lose their jobs. This happened to a rather large number of air traffic controllers in 1981 and the union in question was decertified. They didn't just lose their jobs, most were barred from federal service (i.e. working for the federal government) for life.

> 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

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 think you seriously underestimate the amount of the economy (and life-critical goods) that flows through rail.

People can survive a few days. It will sure help them understand the problem when they feel it.

They can feel it now with the toxic chemicals in the atmosphere and in their water.

If pausing our rail network for a few days results in such serious consequences, then we should probably be treating these workers as essential, with significant training, requirements for them to have adequate time off, and basically any other benefit we can. Their jobs should be so well compensated, with such cushiness, that they are never stressed on normal days, have the opportunity to pay ample attention and time to anything that needs to be paid attention to, and everyone in the country should be trying to get one of these jobs. If railroads are that essential to the country, they should be nationalized completely, and the workers treated like rockstars.

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