By Stas Margaronis
The lack of a paid sick leave provision in the tentative labor agreement between U.S. railroads and railroad unions may be causing some unions to reject the agreement, according to Greg Regan, President of the Transportation Trades Department (TTD) of the AFL-CIO.
Regan who spoke to the Propeller Club of Northern California on October 11th said:
“I think if there had been a recommendation for even 3 paid sick days, all of the railroad unions would have ratified by now.”
Regan oversees the Transportation Trades Department (TTD) daily operation and serves as the organization’s spokesperson and chief strategist. He collaborates with TTD’s affiliated unions to “fight for long-term investments in our transportation system, ensure jobs in this sector are safe and secure, and to protect and expand the rights working people have to a union voice.”
Why Rail Unions Oppose The Tentative Agreement With Railroads
On October 10th, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division (BMWED), an affiliate of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the third largest railroad union in the United States, rejected the tentative agreement with U.S. railroads reviving the possibility of a national rail strike.
In a statement issued on October 10th BMWED announced:
““The majority of the BMWED membership rejected the tentative national agreement and we recognize and understand that result,” President Tony D. Cardwell said. “I trust that railroad management understands that sentiment as well. Railroaders are discouraged and upset with working conditions and compensation and hold their employer in low regard. Railroaders do not feel valued. They resent the fact that management holds no regard for their quality of life, illustrated by their stubborn reluctance to provide a higher quantity of paid time off, especially for sickness. The result of this vote indicates that there is a lot of work to do to establish goodwill and improve the morale that has been broken by the railroads’ executives and Wall Street hedge fund managers.” [1]
Reflecting these views, Regan told the Propeller Club audience:
“Today, the issues that are on the table, related to sick leave and attendance would not have been on the table in 2015. The railroads put those issues on the table by the way they treated their workers. So, I don’t know how this is going to end. One railroad union has already rejected the proposed contract, and others may follow. Of course, under the Railway Labor Act, Congress can come and impose a contract and I know that Congress has legislation ready to go and they are not going to want work stoppage to harm the economy at a particularly delicate moment that we are at right now. “
Lay-offs and cutbacks by the Class 1 railroads have alienated workers:
“While the contact issues between the railroads and their unions are contentious, I don’t think you can separate the issues that the members are so upset … with the broader supply chain issues over the last couple of years that frankly have not been solved. The reality is … that the railroads have systematically undermined their workforce. They have shutdown railyards and mothballed equipment and basically do not have the capacity to play the role they once did in our supply chain. “
He argued that “… the issues of people being worked to the bone go back to the changes that we have seen since 2015. Since that time, we have seen the railroads make $156 billion in profit at the same time that they have laid off 45,000 employees which is about one third of their workforce. Today, railroads have about 40% of the share of long-haul transport. That figure should be reversed and they should have 80% of the long-haul share and we should not have such a reliance on long-haul truckage which creates more … greenhouse gas emissions. That is not going to happen until the railroads start investing in their workforce and in themselves. “
At the Propeller Club presentation, Carey Dall, a former Director of Organizing for the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division responded to Regan’s analysis:
“Some of the themes we are hearing from the workforce are the same ones that Greg has mentioned and has a lot to do with respect on the job. The job has become something that people want to flee if they get the opportunity. A huge issue is to be able to take a sick day… or having medical benefits for you and your family that don’t bankrupt you if someone gets really sick. These are the themes we are hearing from folks, not so much about the pay.”
There is also a difference in response geographically so that people living in Appalachia may be having a different response to people living in California:
“A 24% pay increase doesn’t cut it if you are rising a family in California, or Denver, or Chicago, or the East Coast Corridor. …
It’s not looking good for ratification. The “No” vote was not pushed back upon after the Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) findings came out. Having said that, I think the Biden Administration nominated really fair people to be on the Presidential Emergency Board. … I do think the PEB failed to understand 110,000 railroad workers running around the country and not having sick days. “
Greg Regan (Photo: AFL-CIO)
Maritime Industry Changes
Reagan discussed changes he believes need to be made to invest in more U.S. flag ships operated by U.S. crews. However, the U.S. maritime industry has been allowed to decline with serious implications to the economy and national security:
“We have allowed our U.S. merchant marine to dwindle. We have essentially ceded the seas to our competitors overseas. During the recent supply chain crisis when our exporters could not find containers or services to ship their products abroad, it was because we did not have any capacity domestically to make up the difference and support our shippers. It harms us and our economy and our national security when we do not have our sealift capacity to support our economy. It harms us when we have natural disasters and we do not have the rapid response capacity to address those disasters. This applies to the recent hurricane disaster in Puerto Rico as well as our ability to respond to disasters overseas. This lack of capacity is then used by opponents of our maritime industry to argue that we should scrap our maritime industry all together and abolish the Jones Act.”
Targeting the Jones Act
Regan charged that special interests, have exploited natural disasters to demand the Jones Act be curtailed and abolished. The Jones Act, the Merchant Marine Act, 1920, provides that cargoes shipped by water between two U.S. ports must be transported on vessels built in the United States, sailed by U.S. crews and owned by U.S. citizens. The Jones Act has long been the target of foreign flag carriers who would like to take the work away from Americans.
Cato Institute Opposes Jones Act
The Jones Act is also opposed by the conservative Cato Institute. A statement by the Institute explains:
“Justified on national security grounds, the law was meant to ensure a strong maritime sector to bolster U.S. capabilities in times of war or national emergency. These envisioned benefits, however, have proved illusory while the Jones Act has imposed a very real and ongoing economic burden. Despite this, the law survives thanks to well‐connected supporters and ignorance of the Jones Act and its costs by the general public.
The Cato Institute aims to shake up this status quo by shining a spotlight on the Jones Act’s myriad negative impacts and exposing its alleged benefits as entirely hollow. By systematically laying bare the truth about this over 100-year-old failed law, the Cato Institute Project on Jones Act Reform is meant to raise public awareness and lay the groundwork for its repeal or reform.”[2]
The Cato Institute was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch.[3]
Koch is Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Koch Industries. Koch is an arch conservative billionaire who is a strong opponent of the federal government and its role regulating commerce.
Regan argued that: “Anytime there is a natural disaster, the opponents of the Jones Act swoop in and demand a blanket waiver of the Jones Act. And sometimes, year-long waivers. They want to get rid of the Jones Act and they don’t believe it should exist. “
And added:
“We need to look at ways to increase our investment in our maritime security. … this includes shipbuilding. Most of the shipbuilding, we have in this country is military at this point. For example, the first bulk freighter on the Great Lakes in 45 years was just christened a couple of months ago. Shipping these bulk commodities such as grain to Canada are integral to our economy. We should be actively investing in these trades.”
Undermining Amtrak
Regan said a similar decline in U.S. maritime and Jones Act shipping has been engineered by opponents of federal spending who oppose investment in passenger rail transport and Amtrak.
The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada:
“Founded in 1971 as a quasi-public corporation to operate many U.S. passenger rail routes, Amtrak receives a combination of state and federal subsidies but is managed as a for-profit organization. The United States federal government, through the Secretary of Transportation, owns all the company’s issued and outstanding preferred stock.”[4]
Regan argued that there are problems with Amtrak’s service but they are the natural outgrowth of resistance by Congress to making the substantial investment necessary to modernize and operate a first-class national passenger rail service:
“We have seen in the case of Amtrak that when we starved the system of funding, fewer people wanted to use this system and so the opponents who starved the system of funding said “See? It doesn’t work, we should get rid of it”. And then the opponents ask why we don’t have the same quality of passenger rail as they do in Europe?
Military Sealift
Nicholas Marrone, Vice President of the Seafarers International Union’s West Coast Region agreed with Regan: “I think there needs to be a national plan to address the transportation sector and the national security that it provides. There are always going to be people that are going to take advantage of the situation (to advocate for Jones Act waivers and its abolition).”
Regan responded by noting that “the labor movement has not always seen the U.S. military to be one of their allies but when it comes to U.S. sealift capacity, the military has made the strongest argument in terms that shipping being transported by U.S. crews on U.S.-flagged ships. The Maritime Security Program is a great example. The U.S. military always sends letters to Congress, supporting this. “
The reason is that “the U.S. military derives massive savings from a U.S. fleet delivering military supplies.”
Regan said he thought the next U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD) funding authorization, needs to give the federal agency a stronger role in the transportation system to help support a stronger maritime industry.
Sexual Assaults
A female U.S. Merchant Marine Academy Midshipmen, Midshipmen X, anonymously reported that she was raped during the ‘Sea Year’ training program on a U.S. flagged ship. The program and the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at King’s Point New York, were the subject of repeated warnings about the need for better controls and safety.
On October 12th 2021, Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, requested a response from then Maritime Administrator Lucinda Lessley regarding incidents posted on the Maritime Legal Aid website (maritimelegalaid.com) related to sexual harassment: ”I write to express my grave concern over the allegations of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment made by midshipmen at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (“USMMA”) and the response by you and others at the Department of Transportation (“DOT”). Through the Maritime Legal Aid & Advocacy (“MLAA”) … victims’ stories of shipboard sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape have bravely shared their personal stories in blog posts on the group’s website … The despicable accounts put forth by brave young women and men just starting promising careers in the maritime industry are frightening and unacceptable. Many of these allegations involve a repeated pattern of crimes and intimidations committed by people in positions of power and responsibility on merchant ships, and include alleged poor oversight or policy failures of USMMA officials and Coast Guard investigators.” The disclosure by ‘Midshipmen X’ prompted other women to come forward and reveal that they had also been raped at sea or at their maritime schools.[5]
Reagan was asked about the continued problem of sexual assaults at U.S. maritime schools and on U.S. flag vessels:
“… there have been issues of sexual assaults on U.S.-flagged vessels involving cadets from our maritime schools that need to be addressed as cultural issues that not only impact the maritime industry, but in all industries. However, there were a lot of sexual assaults in the Peace Corps and they took a systemic approach to the problem and it is no longer an issue. This has also happened in the U.S. military. So, I do think that starting in the maritime academies we need to make sure that every single person feels welcome and safe regardless of sex or race. If we are going to build our maritime industry, we are going to need a lot more mariners. There is going to be a need to recruit a diverse workforce. This is why we need strong leaders such as the instructors at the academies.”
New U.S. Ships
Dennis Deisinger, a maritime and logistics management consultant, told Regan that he was encouraged by recent new U.S. built ships being delivered to U.S. carriers: “Both Matson and Pasha have built new ships in the last couple of years. So, there is a little bit of commercial shipbuilding going on. I’m finding that there is a lot of new building going on in tugs and barges. … A lot of the ships that we build are like Lego components that come in from Korea … The Maritime Administration has tried to support these marine highway projects and none of them seems to have worked. “
Marine Highway
Regan supports the Marine Highway concept. He says the idea of short sea shipping or the Marine Highway could alleviate congestion at major ports such as Los Angeles and Long Beach. There, containers could be offloaded from ocean carriers and loaded onto U.S. crewed coastal container ships built in the United States. These ships could transport the containers from the Southern California ports to Seattle or Tacoma or to Oakland thus relieving truck congestion on major highways:
“This could demonstrate the ability to reduce congestion and to move goods. And this would create greater demand for those ports beyond LA and Long Beach … The Metal Trades Department at the AFL-CIO has been laser focused on this and new U.S. shipbuilding. “
FOOTNOTES
[1] https://www.bmwe.org/secondary.aspx?id=700
[2] https://www.cato.org/project-jones-act-reform
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak
[5] https://rbtus.com/how-cal-maritime-other-maritime-schools-address-harassement/