Experts have warned that Joe Biden‘s deal to give rail workers a pay increase to avoid major shutdowns on Friday could lead to more large settlements in the future.
The Biden administration reached a tentative deal on Thursday to raise rail employees’ salaries by 24 percent, but labor experts say the deal could serve as a measure of success for future strikers.
‘This is a very, very contentious time,’ Michael Lotito, co-chairman of the Workplace Policy Institute at Littler, told the Wall Street Journal. ‘I think that is going to embolden unions to ask for more.’
The prediction comes as Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) reported that the number of strikers in the US has tripled to 78,000 in the first-half of 2022 compared to the same period last year.
Michael Lotito (left), co-chairman of the Workplace Policy Institute at Littler, warned that Joe Biden’s deal to raise rail employees’ salaries by 24 percent to avoid a shutdown could be used as a measure of success by future strikers
In the first half of 2022, there have been 180 strikes involving 78,000 workers, about triple the amount in the same time last year
There have been 271 strikes so far this year, with a majority taking place in California, Washington and Pennsylvania. Pictured: A tracker of 2022’s labor disputes
According to the ILR, there were roughly 180 strikes in the first-half of 2022 compared to 102 in the same time last year, which saw only 26,500 workers join stoppages.
By the end of 2021, the US saw a total of 265 strikes, with about 62,000 workers involved.
So far this year, there have been a total of 271 strikes, with a majority taking place in California, Washington and Pennsylvania.
Experts have cited the pandemic as the primary cause of the rampant strikes.
Lotito told the WSJ that two years of COVID made the jobs of many harder and more dangerous, leaving many to feel that they don’t get the pay and respect they deserve from their employers.
Among these frustrated employees were those working in healthcare. This week saw more than 15,000 nurses in Minnesota strike for three days as they sought a wage increase of 30 percent over the next three years.
The nurses have returned to work without coming to a deal for new contracts, but it remains unclear if they will strike again under new demands.
Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said that now was the perfect time for workers to strike while facing less riskier consequences.
‘As long as the job market remains good and people can find jobs and inflation is high, there’s less risk for going out on strike,’ Wheaton told the WSJ.
In 2021, the US saw a total of 265 strikes, with about 62,000 workers involved
Even if union leaders reject Biden’s deal, a rail shutdown has been averted for several weeks
President Joe Biden said Thursday a tentative railway labor agreement has been reached, averting a potentially devastating strike before the pivotal midterm elections
On Thursday, Biden called his deal ‘a win for tens of thousands of rail workers who worked tirelessly through the pandemic to ensure that America’s families and communities got deliveries of what have kept us going during these difficult years.’
As negotiations between the rail companies and the unions came down to the wire, the White House and Biden’s Labor Secretary Martin J. Walsh had stepped in to help broker an agreement.
The tentative agreement must now be voted on by union members.
But even if they reject it, a rail shutdown has been averted for several weeks due to the standard language included in such a deal, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.
If the strike had gone ahead, it would have cost an estimated $2 billion a day in economic disruption by halting the flow of goods, and disrupting passenger rail service, which typically utilizes freight lines.
The tentative agreement was reached with multiple unions that represent about 60,000 employees of the nation’s private freight railroad companies, meaning the lump sum payment alone will cost the companies some $660 million.
The average annual salary for locomotive engineers is currently about $73,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Other vital rail workers covered by the deal include signalmen and various other jobs.