After months of negotiations and within days of a rail worker strike, President Biden signed a bill making a rail strike illegal. In September, a tentative agreement was reached between the Biden administration and all but four of the railroad unions. The four unions were holding out for guaranteed paid sick leave and vowed to strike if an agreement couldn’t be reached by December 9, 2022.
On Friday, President Biden said “Our nation’s rail system is literally the backbone of our supply chain. So much of what we rely on is delivered on rail, from clean water to food and gas and every other good. A rail shutdown would have devastated our economy. Without freight rail, many of our industries would have literally shut down. The bill I’m about to sign ends a difficult rail dispute and helps our nation avoid what, without a doubt, would have been an economic catastrophe at a very bad time in the calendar. I know this was a tough vote for members of both parties. It was a tough vote for me. But it was the right thing to do at the moment to save jobs, to protect millions of working families from harm and disruption and to keep the supply chain stable around the holidays.
President Biden went on to say “Look, I know this bill doesn’t have paid sick leave that these workers, frankly every worker in America, deserves, but that fight isn’t over. I didn’t commit we were going to stop, that just because we couldn’t get it into this bill that we were going to stop fighting for it. I supported paid sick leave for a long time and I’m going to continue that fight until we succeed.”
Biden signs bill averting rail worker strike despite lack of paid sick days
