A lot of people forget or don’t know about how the Railroads have a very different system of laws about several of the things that basically everyone else has to deal with.
Starting with social security, railroad employees have a different social security system and other related law regarding retirement benefits.
Second there’s the labour laws, much of which is older and more Byzantine than “normal” labour laws because of the historical context behind the era when they were introduced, and having been introduced in such a way that they managed to isolate themselves from other kinds of workers. You can really see this in the complex series of steps necessary for a railroad union strike, compared to other workers it’s just crazy, but each step of that complicated process had at least some justification from greed and backhanding to genuine concerns regarding the crucial role the railroad has in the fabric of the nation.
That sort of “crucial role” or justification has been at the heart of how the railroads got to the present state. The railroads were at one point in the 19th century, arguably more powerful than the federal government, to the point where in some places you had to clarify that “The President” didn’t mean the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad if you wanted to refer to the President of the United States. This level of power is obviously long gone, but it represents the level of power they once had, power which has translated into over a century of “special cases” carved out for railways in law at all levels of society across the USA.
The railroad unions can’t just threaten to stop work like others can, because the government has a right of refusal on their ability to strike, which basically acts as a muzzle on widespread union action and allows the railroads to squeeze the shit out of employees… if you haven’t, look at what the unions were trying to strike for last year… and then think about if employees willing to put up with that, will be the sort of people to take a stand and blow the whistle on bad workplace practices… railroad unions just don’t have the same level of power as normal unions, they do have power, just not “tactical” power, the kind you use to fight the small things like individual safety breaches by having everyone in the workplace threaten to walk out.
Starting with social security, railroad employees have a different social security system and other related law regarding retirement benefits.
Second there’s the labour laws, much of which is older and more Byzantine than “normal” labour laws because of the historical context behind the era when they were introduced, and having been introduced in such a way that they managed to isolate themselves from other kinds of workers. You can really see this in the complex series of steps necessary for a railroad union strike, compared to other workers it’s just crazy, but each step of that complicated process had at least some justification from greed and backhanding to genuine concerns regarding the crucial role the railroad has in the fabric of the nation.
That sort of “crucial role” or justification has been at the heart of how the railroads got to the present state. The railroads were at one point in the 19th century, arguably more powerful than the federal government, to the point where in some places you had to clarify that “The President” didn’t mean the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad if you wanted to refer to the President of the United States. This level of power is obviously long gone, but it represents the level of power they once had, power which has translated into over a century of “special cases” carved out for railways in law at all levels of society across the USA.
The railroad unions can’t just threaten to stop work like others can, because the government has a right of refusal on their ability to strike, which basically acts as a muzzle on widespread union action and allows the railroads to squeeze the shit out of employees… if you haven’t, look at what the unions were trying to strike for last year… and then think about if employees willing to put up with that, will be the sort of people to take a stand and blow the whistle on bad workplace practices… railroad unions just don’t have the same level of power as normal unions, they do have power, just not “tactical” power, the kind you use to fight the small things like individual safety breaches by having everyone in the workplace threaten to walk out.