SUE EDELMAN ON TALK OUT OF SCHOOL ON THE RADIO AT 1:00 PM; BIDEN-PELOSI SAY NO TO PAID SICK DAYS FOR RAILROAD WORKERS

Anybody who has followed this blog for a while knows we often cite NY Post reporter Sue Edelman's articles exposing all kinds of muck in the NYC schools. She will be on Leonie Haimson and Daniel Alicea's radio program, Talk out of School, today at 1:00 p.m. WBAI is at 99.5 FM, and on your computer. 

You can listen to the archived podcast here.

Much has been written condemning the Joe Biden Congress settlement of the Railroad workers' dispute because although they received wage increases, they were only able to get one paid sick day out of the settlement and not the seven they wanted. Nancy Pelosi put the paid sick days in a separate bill she knew the Senate would not pass because of Republican opposition to give Democrats cover

Ryan Grim covered this in the Intercept. This is his December 1 piece added to a lengthy article.

Update: December 1, 2022
On Thursday, the Senate voted 52-43 in favor of a measure that would have ensured rail workers were granted seven days of sick leave in a tentative agreement brokered and enforced on the workers and their employers by President Joe Biden. But the measure needed 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. Democrat Joe Manchin voted no on the sick days, while a handful of Republicans — Sens. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, Mike Braun, John Kennedy, and Lindsey Graham — voted in favor. 

The rejection of the measure means that Biden’s version of the tentative agreement, which passed the Senate 80-15 shortly afterward, will be imposed on workers after Biden signs the bill, averting a looming strike. The new agreement, which represents a marginal improvement on the tentative agreement rejected by workers in late October, ensures only one new paid day off for workers. The companies had furiously opposed even a single additional day off, as it runs in conflict with their strategy to keep staffing as minimal as humanly possible. 

Over the past three years, railroad executives have taken over $200 million in compensation as workers attempted to force their hand for sick pay during a bargaining process that has stretched on for years. 

The Senate showdown came after progressives in the House successfully demanded a vote on the sick days to accompany approval of the tentative agreement. The strategy was criticized by some on the left, who saw it as selling out workers, arguing instead that the contract should have been amended and sent to the Senate as one piece of legislation.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., defended the strategy, saying that unions in her district and nationwide supported the effort to pass additional sick leave in lieu of a viable option to actually sink the proposed tentative agreement. The options available to the unions and to progressives in Congress were extremely limited by the time Biden moved to force the agreement on the workers. The Railway Labor Act allows Congress to enforce collective bargaining agreements in order to avert railway strikes. 

“Tanking wasn’t an option bc of GOP votes,” she wrote on Twitter, “we moved to keep sick leave alive.”

A railway union source said that the next phase of the fight would be a demand that Biden include rail workers in a coming executive order that would mandate 56 hours of paid sick leave for federal contractors. The bipartisan support in the House and Senate for the sick days, even though it fell short of 60, could boost the argument for including such workers in the order.