Huge sections of the working class have suffered thanks to capitalist mismanagement of the COVID pandemic, but the policy changes have been particularly hard on the railway workers in the U.S. Empire. Freight railroads within the Empire move approximately 1.7 trillion ton-miles of freight each year. This accounts for approximately 28% of the total U.S. freight movement. The railroads are understaffed — many workers have died or fallen out of the workforce as a result of COVID. Others have simply burned out. The attendance rules of the freight rail companies are punishing. At the huge BNSF Railway, workers are given a pool of “attendance points” which are docked for taking days off. How do they get points back? Work for 14 days without interruption. What happens when they lose all 30 points? They’re disciplined.
BNSF Railway workers are required to remain on call continuously. If they’re called in, they have just over an hour to report to work. The system is under enormous strain, and all of it has been placed on the shoulders of the workers. For instance, although federal law prohibits railway workers from working more than 12 hours on-shift while operating a train, it usually takes longer than that for relief to come in.
BNSF workers are forbidden from talking to the press by their employment contracts, but several have come forward anonymously to speak out against this punishing system. To quote one anonymous worker:
“You don’t know when they’re calling and they can call you at any time… We’re still going through the pandemic, whether folks like to believe that or not, or abide by what’s going on or not, even though it’s lessened, you’re forcing folks to come to work sick because they’re scared to use points. You literally have them pick between ‘do you go to work sick and ill and not feeling well or do you save that time to be with your kids and your family?’”
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the operation of the U.S. freight railways has been fundamentally reorganized by the capitalist investors, using a system called Precision Scheduling Railroading or “PSR.” This is nothing more than Taylorism repackaged, the same craze for “scientific” management, the same drive for the absolute-maximum productivity of labor, that has driven Amazon to monitor every movement made by its packers, and every grocery store to adopt “just in time” inventory management.
PSR is another desperate attempt of the capitalist ruling class to achieve a more effective return-on-investment — to stop the unstoppable: the constant fall of the rate of profit.
What changes have been brought about by PSR? Trains are now 30% longer, some of them three miles from engine to final car. Even as the trains have grown in length, the freight rail industry as a whole has fired 30% of its workforce in the same period. Conductors and rail workers are thus required to walk miles from car to car, working on skeleton crews, responsible for ever-longer trains.
And how are the workers scheduled? Last-minute — or, “just-in-time,” to use the capitalist euphemism — no-warning crews are assembled to work trains that are too long, run too far, and give them no rest. This has changed the profit margins of the freight railroads from $15 of profit from $100 of capital in 2001 to $41 dollars of profit to $100 dollars of capital in 2022. The rate of profit has more than doubled in the freight rail industry over that time.
In 2001, the BNSF was publicly traded. In 2010, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway purchased it outright. It is now operated as a fully-owned subsidiary. BNSF is reaping even bigger rewards these days, because the Biden infrastructure bill gives $5.55 million in over 5 years in grants to private railways to improve their lines and to make other “necessary” capital investments — all while their operators make money hand over fist and suck it out of their companies. While profits continue to rise, over the past decade six of the largest freight rail operators have paid out stock buybacks and dividends of $146 billion, which is $30 billion more than the investors put in.
The growing anger of the workers at the brutal and inhumane treatment at the hands of the railroad bosses finally found its expression in the repeated “nay” votes of the union members at the insulting contracts proposed by the rail industry bosses. Negotiations began in 2019; for three grueling years, the negotiators have proposed contracts that would address overwork, exhaustion, and lack of sick days. For three grueling years, the railroad bosses have laughed at these modest demands.
The two-party federal government has finally found a topic on which it can rally. On Thursday, December 1, a unified front of nearly all Democrats, joined by most Republicans, marched in lock-step to deliver a crushing blow to the railway workers. The Congress has stamped out the hopes of the rail workers for an equitable solution in one fell stroke: the passage of the Congressional bill forbids the rail workers from striking. This plan did not spring out of the ground, or accidentally fall into the laps of the sitting Congresspeople. Two-faced “Union” Joe, the traitor-president, and his union-busting White House begged Congress to step in. Although “Union” Joe campaigned on his union bona fides he, like every U.S. president, only has one master: Capital.
Drawing upon the arcane and anti-democratic Railroad Labor Act of 1926 (itself the result of prior railroad strikes, some of which spread to become general strikes and insurrectionary, anti-government crises), the Congress has forced the rail workers back to work under the contract they rejected. No new sick days, no more negotiations, just more grinding work under impossible conditions. The undead president of the undead Democratic party now tours the country with the withered parchment of the unjust law clutched in his talons and trumpets, “We’ve gotten you what you deserve!” But what do the Democrats think the rail workers deserve? Nothing.
They asked for fourteen sick days. They did not receive fourteen sick days. They did not receive twelve sick days. They did not receive ten sick days. They did not even receive the seven sick days that Democrats hastily tacked on to the contract at the last minute. They did not receive five sick days. They did not receive one sick day. The rail workers have received exactly what they started with: no paid sick leave.
There is no party that represents the needs of the workers. The real politics of the bourgeois republic are done behind the scenes, not out on the Senate floor. The government betrays the workers every day, while it pretends to represent them. It is a show, a game, put on to confuse the masses and blind us to the true machinations of our rulers, the monopoly-capitalists. They make their deals behind closed doors, in their offices, bargaining for this bit of treasure or that bit of blood, and then put on their masks and greasepaint out before the audience, for the cameras.
The workers are no longer fooled, and the most politically active are already dispelling these illusions. In its press release, Railroad Workers United stated as follows:
RWU believes that railroad workers need to explore options other than the existing two political parties since neither appears to have our backs. RWU also believes that railroad workers need to consider doing away with the archaic and divided craft union system that hampers our unity and solidarity, and initiate the process of building a single and powerful railroad workers union that can win in future rounds of contract bargaining. According to RWU Organizer Ron Kaminkow, “We have been played for well over a century by politicians and union officials alike. The fiasco of recent months will show that perhaps the time has come for railroad workers to push for a unified and powerful labor organization of all crafts, together with a political party that will better serve the interest of not just railroad workers but all working-class people.”
We have had enough of the Democrats and Republicans both. The only thing they understand is force, and the time has come to support those ready to give them a taste of that medicine. If the union workers are prepared to launch a wildcat strike, in violation of the law, to protest their unjust contract and to demand better conditions, then we must stand with them! You’ll hear many complain that a wildcat strike is illegal. So, what? Tell them why it’s necessary. You’ll hear neighbors, co-workers, friends, and relatives grumble about how a rail strike is making things more expensive, even more than the inflation that runs rampant through the market.
Explain the truth to them: that the railroad bosses are their bosses, that the fight of the railway workers is their fight, that we are all together now standing before the jackboots of the police (who will force them back to work, if they strike), before the lash of the capitalists. They will listen, because they already know; they know the shout of the boss, the pain of wage theft or losing vacation time; they know the greed of the railroad boss in the greed of their own bosses.
The tide of class consciousness is rising. We must rise with it.
