Senate votes to impose rail contract

Bill goes to Biden; bid for sick leave fails

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (left) and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh speak to reporters Thursday on Capitol Hill, where they met with Democratic senators before the rail pact was approved.
(The New York Times/Haiyun Jiang)
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (left) and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh speak to reporters Thursday on Capitol Hill, where they met with Democratic senators before the rail pact was approved. (The New York Times/Haiyun Jiang)

The Senate on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to impose a labor agreement between rail companies and union workers who have been locked in a stubborn stalemate, moving with uncommon speed to avert a potential Christmas season rail strike poised to jeopardize shipping across the country.

Passage of the measure, 80-15, cleared the bill for President Joe Biden to sign. Biden just days ago made a personal appeal for Congress to impose a labor agreement his administration helped negotiate earlier this year, but which had failed to resolve the dispute.

Biden was expected to sign the measure quickly, racing to stave off any economic fallout that could come from a work stoppage in the coming days.

"I negotiated a contract no one else could negotiate," he said at a news briefing Thursday. "What was negotiated was so much better than anything they ever had."

It was the first time since the 1990s that Congress has used its power under the Constitution's commerce clause, which allows it to regulate interstate commerce, to intervene in a national rail labor dispute.

The action came a day after the House overwhelmingly approved the measure, which forces the companies and union workers to abide by the tentative agreement reached in September. It would include a 24% increase in wages over five years, more schedule flexibility and one additional paid day off. Several rail unions had rejected it because it lacked paid leave time.

Senate Democrats, under pressure from progressives to insist on the additional compensated time off for workers, tried and failed to push through a House-passed measure to add seven days of paid medical leave to the agreement. It was defeated Thursday, 52-43, failing to secure the necessary 60 votes needed to pass.

And Republicans failed to win adoption of their proposal to extend the Dec. 9 negotiation deadline by 60 days, to provide a cooling-off period and avoid congressional intervention in the dispute. It failed on a vote of 70-25.

Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., joined colleagues in supporting the resolution preventing a possible strike. He opposed the bill providing union workers with seven paid sick days.

"It's unfortunate Congress needed to resolve this dispute, but this action is necessary to prevent our country and our supply chain from being crippled as a result of a threatened rail strike," Boozman said in a statement.

Tom Cotton, R-Ark., voted against both resolutions. He told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a statement that Congress "shouldn't cram down a labor agreement on workers who just rejected that very agreement, nor should Washington politicians presume to dictate new terms of an agreement on either workers or the railroads."

Cotton and Alaska Republican Dan Sullivan introduced the substitute proposal to delay the strike. Boozman opposed the substitution.

"The best course of action under the circumstances was a 60-day cooling-off period to allow both parties more time to reach an agreement that works for them," Cotton said.

HOUSE VOTE

The Senate's votes come after the House of Representatives' passage of resolutions Wednesday ending the strike and allowing seven paid sick days. Arkansas Republicans Rick Crawford, French Hill and Steve Womack voted to end the strike, while Rep. Bruce Westerman voted against the bill. All four congressmen opposed adding paid sick days.

Ultimately, a broad bipartisan group set aside reservations about inserting Congress into the labor dispute and backed the agreement that the Biden administration negotiated. The vote was 80-15, with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., voting "present."

The moment was a remarkable outcome for Biden, who had vowed to be the most pro-union president in the nation's history and had championed the negotiations that led to the tentative agreement. He did so under the Railway Labor Act, a 1926 law that allows the president to intervene in rail labor disputes that threaten to cut off essential commerce or transportation service.

But while the resulting deal provided higher pay and more schedule flexibility, multiple unions voted against its ratification in recent weeks because it failed to include paid sick leave, and would force workers to take unpaid time off to attend medical appointments. Many employees argued it did not go far enough to address the toll of their difficult and unpredictable schedules.

With a railway strike possible in the coming days, Biden turned to Congress to intervene. He stressed his reluctance to override the will of union workers seeking basic workplace rights, but said it was necessary to address the threat of economic calamity that could be caused by a disruption to the nation's rail system and an inability to swiftly transport goods and services across the country.

On Capitol Hill, Democrats also said they would have preferred to avoid stepping into the middle of a railroad labor dispute, something Congress has done 18 times in the past century. They groused about being called upon to embrace a deal that went against what workers were demanding.

Pressing to overcome those concerns, Biden dispatched Marty Walsh, the labor secretary, and Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, to the Capitol on Thursday to meet with Democratic senators during a private lunch before the votes.

"The consequences of inaction would be severe," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the majority leader. He ticked through a list of what he described as the "serious problems that would occur if there's a rail shutdown."

Republicans, too, objected to the position in which they had been placed, questioning why Biden had not allowed for a few more days to resolve the dispute before involving Congress.

To quell the concerns in both parties and speed the measure through the Senate, leaders agreed to first consider the GOP proposal for a cooling-off period and the House-passed proposal to add the paid leave.

UNION CONCERNS

For many of the more than 100,000 freight rail workers whose unions have been negotiating a new labor contract since 2020, Biden's intervention amounted to putting a thumb on the scale in favor of the industry.

They say the rail carriers have enormous market power to set wages and working conditions, power that is enhanced by a federal law that greatly restricts the workers' right to strike compared with most private-sector employees.

They also complain that after waiting patiently through multiple procedural steps, including a presidential emergency board, they had a narrow window to improve their contract through a labor stoppage and that Biden has effectively closed that window.

"They should let the guys work it out for themselves," said Rhonda Ewing, a signal maintainer in Chicago. "We know it's holiday time, which is why it's the perfect time to raise our voices. If Biden gets involved, he takes away our leverage," Ewing said before the House and Senate votes.

Information for this article was contributed by Emily Cochrane and Noam Scheiber of The New York Times; Alex Thomas of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; and Kevin Freking and Josh Funk of The Associated Press.

Upcoming Events