All because they chose profits over humane working policies. What this fight is really about: the persistent difficulty some large corporations have in understanding that their workers are human beings, and not just one more piece of machinery.
The engineers and conductors who drive the nation's freight trains have had it. They're tired of unpredictable, inflexible work schedules. They're tired of being penalized for taking days off when they're sick or tending to a family emergency. They want a better quality of life.
Railroad workers bargaining for better pay and working conditions are at an impasse with their employers, causing the federal government to intervene to ward off a disruptive strike. But railworkers should be allowed to strike if and when they want to.
US labor law is designed to prevent railroad strikes like the kind that shook America in the past. But the constant cuts to staffing levels and erosion of conditions for rail workers could produce a national rail walkoff by September.
When is a lockout a strike? When corporate media says so. The corporate media will always defer to corporate interests because those are the interests that pay its bill. As a result, labour concerns are usually either downplayed or ignored.
Last week my travels across the continent and among railroad track workers found me between Phoenix and East L.A.
The government’s proposed railway reforms will force yet more traffic onto the country’s overcrowded roads, even as people in the provinces and regions lose mobility, convenience, and time.
Attacking railroad workers as "privileged," the French government seeks to break labor strength as Margaret Thatcher did in Britain when attacking miners. In response French unions and labor are responding with a rare degree of unity.
If we are serious about preventing future catastrophes of this nature, we must equip railroad workers with the necessary tools - including but not limited to those outlined below -- to enable them to perform the job safely. Railroad Workers United believes it is time we learn from these terrible tragedies and get serious about implementing the necessary measures to ensure safe railroad operations.
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