Senator John Cornyn (R., Texas) today said, “I think it’s a bad idea for Congress to try to intervene and renegotiate these collective bargaining agreements between labor and management.”
He’s correct, and Republicans should follow his lead.
Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) has been advocating for railroads and unions to renegotiate the deal, saying that “the way to avoid a strike is a new deal that rank & file members will support.” He’s not correct about the nature of worker support.
Rubio has said that he “will not vote to impose a deal that doesn’t have the support of the rail workers.” But the majority of the total number of workers who voted, across all twelve rail unions, voted to approve the tentative agreement that was negotiated with the railroads in mid-September. That deal, with no modifications, was passed overwhelmingly on a bipartisan basis by the House.
The reason that deal has not been approved already is that membership of four of the twelve unions did not ratify it. Eight ratified it, but all twelve must ratify individually to avoid a nationwide strike. If even one union goes on strike, the other eleven wouldn’t cross a picket line.
The second resolution that House Democrats passed in a near-party-line vote is a sop to those holdout unions. It includes a sick-leave proposal similar to the one that independent recommendations already rejected as overly broad and too expensive.
In past rounds of bargaining, unions have regularly favored a larger general wage increase in lieu of a set number of sick days set at the national level. The presidential emergency board, which crafted the independent recommendations, took that into account when it rejected unions’ proposal for sick leave back in August, saying, “We have taken the changes in demands upon employees into account when we formulated our recommendations concerning the wage package.” That package included the largest wage increase in the history of national bargaining, 24 percent over five years, and $1,000 annual bonuses.
Unions have moved the goalposts countless times over three years of negotiations. Their tactics should not be rewarded at the last minute with a sweetheart deal pushed by House Democrats.
The Railway Labor Act allows Congress to force a labor contract only as a last resort and for the purpose of avoiding an economy-crippling strike. The law’s intention is not to allow Congress to act as a negotiator in the process.
Railroads, labor leadership, a majority of the total workers who cast ballots in ratification votes across all twelve unions, and now a large bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives, have all approved of the tentative agreement negotiated in mid-September that was approved of by the White House. Republicans in the Senate should support it as well, and they should reject progressives’ effort to use narrow Democratic congressional majorities to renegotiate the deal and reward the bad-faith tactics of a few holdout unions.
UPDATE: The language used to describe Rubio’s position was updated after the senator’s office pointed out that Rubio said he wants railroads and unions to renegotiate the deal, not Congress. Fair enough. He just wants Congress to adopt a position that would force a renegotiation, which would preclude support for the clean resolution that overwhelmingly passed the House today. I will leave it to readers to decide whether that distinction makes a difference.