I agree it’s a disaster. But I’m also not sure a disaster was avoidable…Just a matter of what form it took. Best outcome would have been a ratified agreement the workers support. Worst outcome probably would have been an economic disaster during a strike followed by a disgruntled workforce eventually reaching a lackluster agreement. Hopefully this ends without economic catastrophe and an agreement most workers favor (that includes paid sick), but the RLA negotiating environment is certainly not unmolested.

What happened to the railroad unions in this episode isn't great for the railroad unions. It may make them reconsider how they approach negotiations in the future. It's almost as if they wield too much leverage. But I wouldn't say it means very much for airline unions.

This dispute that Congress intervened in involved 12 railroad unions comprising 110,000 workers. Had they gone on strike, the entire national freight railroad system would have gone down. Towns would have not been able to treat their drinking water. Gas stations would have started running out of gas for your car. Coal-fired power plants would have begun running low on coal. And on and on and on. There is no real viable alternative to the national freight railroad system. Trucking is reportedly already maxed out. Air cargo can't handle the volume nor the types of cargo that travel by rail. Had the railroad unions struck, the economy, already snarled by supply chain issues, would have ground to a halt.

The airline unions do not negotiate the way the railroad unions negotiate. As everyone here knows, the pilots at one particular airline negotiate separately from the pilots at another airline. We do not negotiate in a massive inter-company block the way freight railroad unions do.

If the pilots strike at an individual airline, even one of the Big 4, it only takes that one airline down. In terms of the threat to interstate commerce posed by one single airline being forced to halt operations due to a strike compared to the threat of all American rail freight traffic coming to a standstill because of a strike (and also a good chunk of rail passenger traffic since the freight rail companies own much of the trackage the passenger rail trains operate on), there really is almost no comparison. A rail freight shut down is orders of magnitude more significant to the national economy than a single airline shut down.

Beyond that, in the run-up to a single airline shutting down due to a strike, and during a strike, passengers "book away" from that airline on other carriers. Airlines begin losing revenue well before a strike even starts as passengers begin reading news reports and hearing rumors of a possible strike at Airline X and booking away in droves from that airline. That dynamic becomes more and more intense as the possible strike date draws ever closer. That means airline management begins feeling a tremendous amount of pressure as soon as rumors of a strike start swirling. Lacking a "book away" alternative, railroad corporations do not begin losing a tremendous amount of revenue until the very end of the process. Their executives do not really feel the same kind of heat as airline managers do until the very last days of the RLA process. That puts much more pressure on airlines to capitulate to labor earlier in the game than what happens at railroads. Because of the much larger impact of a freight rail strike on commerce, railroad executives also are much more confident that Congress will intervene than are airline executives. Airline executive can have no certainty that Congress will bail them out of their predicament.

Once a strike starts, as has happened in the past, competing carriers begin adding capacity to idled routes in an attempt to strip market share from the struck carrier. In the 1998 NWA pilots' strike, for example, American began adding lift to abandoned NWA domestic routes and JAL did the same on some of NWA's international routes. This further mitigates the impact on interstate commerce of a single airline strike. In the case of a railroad strike, there really is no viable "book away" alternative. There are no competing rail lines or trucking operations or air cargo services with the ability and excess capacity to step in and fill the void of a freight railroad strike because they either cannot match the capabilities of rail freight and/or are already operating at full tilt. This also ups the odds that Congress will act. There is no alternative that can step in to fill the void and mitigate the impact of a freight rail strike.

Now, consider this: as of today, since the RLA was enacted in 1926, Congress has acted to intervene post-PEB in railroad union strikes 19 times. How many times has Congress acted to intervene in airline union strikes? Zero.

Is that merely coincidence? Do you think any of the above might help to explain why Congress has never intervened in an airline strike?

There are definitely lessons we can learn from this most recent railroad RLA dispute, but the idea that it "……ultimately makes our ability to strike look like a completely hollow threat," is not one of them. The biggest lesson I'm taking away from the last year of the railroad negotiations is that the NMB will release from mediation, in 4.5 months, a dispute with such enormous ramifications for the national economy. That's great news and a great precedent for us.

Congress does the right thing after they exhaust every other possible option, is a classic line. I don’t know how accurate it is.

Opposition votes to a bill that the “nay” voters know is certain to pass. Whether it’s just to be oppositional, or to score points is unknown, but I think we all actually know that this is what it really is.

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Just a completely serious Wingedbeast not being partisan again. :rolleyes:

This, only unironically.

What would the tally be if the Dems voted "Nay". I know I took math a long time ago, and it wasn't new math, but it appears the forcing of a contract on union workers would have failed 344-79. Remember when schools taught the 3 R's? Back in the day we spelled arithmetic with an R....rithmetic! No we just say the "calculus" has changed... makes it sound smarter and goes along with grade inflation:)

The real story is how many Rs voted to block the strike and then voted against adding sick time to the TA

the algorithms won’t allow some to receive real data anymore. Too many clicks for too many years and it’s rabbit hole only. Ha