Biden signs bill preventing rail strike

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden signed legislation Friday to avert a rail strike one week before a deadline to reach an agreement between workers and railroads.

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Update 11:05 a.m. EST Dec. 2: Biden praised lawmakers for passing the bill, saying that a strike “without a doubt would have been an economic catastrophe at a very bad time in the calendar.”

“Our nation’s rail system is literally the backbone of our supply chain,” he said. “So much of what we rely on is delivered on a rail, from clean water to food and gas and every other good. A rail shutdown would have devastated our economy.”

He said the legislation was “a really good bill lacking only one thing,” acknowledging workers who pushed to have paid sick leave added to the tentative agreement.

“We’re going to get that one thing done before it’s over with,” he said.

Original reports: The president will deliver remarks beginning at 10:15 a.m. before signing the bill at the White House, officials said.

Earlier this week, the Senate and House voted to pass the legislation, which will bind workers and railroads to a tentative agreement reached in September. Eight of the 12 unions involved in strike negotiations earlier accepted the tentative agreement.

On Thursday, Biden praised lawmakers for taking “decisive action” to block the looming strike, which he said would have had “devastating economic consequences for workers, families, and communities across the country.”

“Working together, we have spared this country a Christmas catastrophe in our grocery stores, in our workplaces, and in our communities,” he said. “I know that many in Congress shared my reluctance to override the union ratification procedures. But in this case, the consequences of a shutdown were just too great for working families all across the country.”

The agreement will give railroad workers a 24% pay raise from 2020 to 2024 and put a cap on the cost of health care. However, some railway workers rejected the plan, citing a lack of paid sick leave.

The House on Wednesday passed a measure that would have given workers seven paid sick days, but a similar measure failed Thursday in the Senate. Tony Cardwell, president of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes, said in a statement that the decision left him “baffled, exasperated, and deeply saddened.” He accused members of Congress of choosing “to trample on the Workers, in their rush to cozy up to the corporations.”

The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes was one of the four unions to vote against accepting the tentative agreement.

“What’s frustrating is that the railroads know that their backstop is federal government intervening in a strike,” Cardwell told Politico. “The railroads would have come running to the bargaining table if they knew that we would have been able to go on strike. But they were reliant on the Congress stopping our strike, and therefore they bargained in bad faith.”

On Monday, Biden said he understood workers’ concerns over the lack of paid sick leave.

“No one should have to choose between their job and their health — or the health of their children,” he said, adding that he will continue to push for legislation to advance paid sick leave for working Americans. “But at this critical moment for our economy, in the holiday season, we cannot let our strongly held conviction for better outcomes for workers deny workers the benefits of the bargain they reached, and hurl this nation into a devastating rail freight shutdown.”

The deadline to avoid a strike was Dec. 9.

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