I am here supporting a Wild Cat Strike; I will gladly take my union-provided vacation days to hold up a sign supporting our brothers and sisters in the rail industry. But as we all sit in our comfortable armchairs trying to tell rail workers what to do, it's time we talk about what is stopping them.
Yes, they could go out on a Wild Cat Strike, which is a contract violation. While we all think, “hey if they are all fired, the rail companies are closed down completely, so they can't do that.”
Rail workers would not just have their jobs on the line. In many cases, they would be walking away from pensions and retirement. Often in the land of Pensions, you will hear union members talk about Golden Handcuffs. After years of hard work and earning into the pension, leaving means walking away from a significant chunk of that pension, which creates the opposite effect of a golden parachute.
The 1926 Railway act combined with a worker-hostile congress (the Democrats chose to separate the days off from the contract knowing the Senate would kill one and keep the other. Add to that The most labor-unfriendly president in the history of unions, who created a labor-unfriendly commission from the get-go to work on the contract, has removed the ability of Rail workers to collectively bargain. The penalties for these workers to walk away aren't just the loss of a job, but for many, the loss of a retirement they paid into. How would you like to be in a position where if you quit your job, your employer gets to take custody of your 401K?
Rail workers are fucked, and we all benefit from their shafting. I wish I knew what we could do directly to help them.