# So why do RR balk at paid sick leave?



## rrman987 (Aug 29, 2021)

*John feel free to move this to another thread or round file this*

This was an interesting long read








Why America’s Railroads Refuse to Give Their Workers Paid Leave


Wall Street’s new robber barons can’t make the trains run on time.




nymag.com





Short bottom line answer from article: excerpt
"Why do these rail barons hate paid leave so much? Why would a company have no problem handing out 24 percent raises, $1,000 bonuses, and caps on health-care premiums but draw the line on providing a benefit as standard and ubiquitous throughout modern industry as paid sick days?
*The answer, in short, is “P.S.R.” — or precision-scheduled railroading.*
P.S.R. is an operational strategy that aims to minimize the ratio between railroads’ operating costs and their revenues through various cost-cutting and (ostensibly) efficiency-increasing measures. The basic idea is to transport more freight using fewer workers and railcars."

So if you get the flu, the RR wants you to tell them several weeks in advance before getting your flu/cold. Helps to be a psychic I guess.


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## MichaelE (Mar 7, 2018)

Crystal balls should be part of the hiring package.


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## JeffHurl (Apr 22, 2021)

I'd take a 24% pay increase over paid time off any day. 5 sick days equates to less than 2% of one's annual work days. I have never used all of my paid time off available, and I have never been able to carry unused time off forward from year to year. Giving up even 3 weeks of paid time off is only about 5.8% of the work days in a year, and you still have scheduled time off, correct?

Sign me up!!!


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## sjm9911 (Dec 20, 2012)

I have no clue what the benifit package is, or the time they have to call in for PTO. Lots of places went to a PTO type of leave, basicly it lumps all PTO into one category. I am sure they can take PTO as a sick day, but they probably have to cross the Ts and dot the Is to do it. This is to discourage people from taking off for nothing. But as I said, without seeing the bargaining agreement, or the contract. We are just guessing. The artical said they wanted defined sick days, and that its hard to take off if you dont feel well. I am sure there is more to it that isn't addressed. So, until you have that info the artical is basicly useless.


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## JeffHurl (Apr 22, 2021)

I agree, sjm9911.

For example... There is a big difference between being allowed to call off 5 times per year without pay as long as you're not otherwise punished for those absences, as opposed to a policy that says calling off is unpaid AND cause for termination.

Reading between the lines, it sounds like the "robber barons" are willing to increase base pay to make up for not being paid when you want/need time off. But that is probably WAY oversimplified.


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## Displaced EL guy (3 mo ago)

Surely, an interesting and important topic. How does it pertain to model railroads?


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## rrman987 (Aug 29, 2021)

JeffHurl said:


> I'd take a 24% pay increase over paid time off any day. 5 sick days equates to less than 2% of one's annual work days. I have never used all of my paid time off available, and I have never been able to carry unused time off forward from year to year. Giving up even 3 weeks of paid time off is only about 5.8% of the work days in a year, and you still have scheduled time off, correct?
> 
> Sign me up!!!


But are you assuming full emplyment as an engineer/conductor/ fireman (whatever), and you aren't laid off or forced to take a lesser job just to keep seniority and benifits?


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## GTW son (12 mo ago)

It's been like that in the trucking industry for years, just in time deliveries.
Most trucking company I know up here has a vacation embargo on right now because of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday into Christmas period.
Amazon and like cyber sales companies demanded all drivers be at work during these weeks.
I used all my sick days, actually kept them for these weeks just to thumb my nose at Amazon.


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## rrman987 (Aug 29, 2021)

Displaced EL guy said:


> Surely, an interesting and important topic. How does it pertain to model railroads?


Thats why I told GRJ moderator to shift this to say off topic lounge or round file this. 
I chose the North American forum as this strike directly affects all us Americans and Canadians. And by extension all of us from essential food to non-essential toy trains.


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## Steve on Cattail Creek (11 mo ago)

rrman987 said:


> Short bottom line answer from article: excerpt
> "Why do these rail barons hate paid leave so much? Why would a company have no problem handing out 24 percent raises, $1,000 bonuses, and caps on health-care premiums but draw the line on providing a benefit as standard and ubiquitous throughout modern industry as paid sick days?
> *The answer, in short, is “P.S.R.” — or precision-scheduled railroading.*
> P.S.R. is an operational strategy that aims to minimize the ratio between railroads’ operating costs and their revenues through various cost-cutting and (ostensibly) efficiency-increasing measures. The basic idea is to transport more freight using fewer workers and railcars."


Well, one mild counter I gleaned from the news reports is that, over the years, the unions have conceded the sick leave issue to the railroads in favor of getting better pay and benefits, so if true, the unions and workers might have to share some measure of blame for their current situation. This is not to say I think tossing sick leave off the train was (or is) a good idea, and I personally think some form of universal sick leave is a sound idea, apart from the rest of the benefits package.


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## Madman (Aug 22, 2020)

I hope that this doesn't cross the line into politics. If it crosses the line, please delete it Mr Adminstrator. I receive regular emails from Robert Reich. This is what he had to say about the railroads and labor.

"Yesterday, the House approved legislation to avert a nationwide rail strike by forcing railroad workers to abide by a tentative agreement that the Biden administration helped broker earlier this year. (The proposal failed to win the approval of the workers at all of the unions involved.)
The measure now goes to the Senate, where leaders in both parties say they will move quickly to avoid a disruption to the nation’s rail service. (The House also approved a separate measure to add seven days of compensated sick time, but it may lack enough bipartisan support to pass the Senate.)
Let me be clear. A strike and shutdown of the nation’s railroads would be terrible for the economy. It would worsen inflation. 
But legislation effectively prohibiting a strike would impose unfair working conditions on employees in one of the most profitable industries in America — further tilting the nation’s economic imbalance toward large corporations and Wall Street, and against working people.
*Here, a concentrated industry has gained record profits by understaffing — squeezing its workers to the breaking point. Prodded by Wall Street, the big rail companies have intentionally gutted their own spare capacity.*
Last year, adjusted operating margins for the five largest US railroads were 41 percent. Ten years ago, they were 29 percent. Two decades ago, they were 15 percent. Even compared with other transportation companies (which are doing extremely well)— trucking, parcel, air freight, maritime shipping, airlines – today’s railroad profits are humongous. 
Union Pacific, the largest publicly traded US railroad, paid its investors more than $41 billion in dividends and share buybacks over five years through 2021. In the first six months of 2022, it heaped an additional $5 billion on them. 
Why are railroads so profitable? Largely because they’re spending so little on labor."

​
"It’s called “precision scheduling” — a business model based on longer trains and fewer workers who have to be on-call almost any time.
This is why even as profit margins have swelled, the industry has rejected workers’ calls for sick leave, guaranteed time-off, and more predictable schedules. 
Many railway workers are subject to grueling schedules that make it impossible for them to make medical appointments or deal with family emergencies. Conductors and engineers can be on call for 14 consecutive days without a break and do not receive a single sick day, paid or unpaid.
Trains once staffed with five workers are now staffed by two. (The current CEO of BNSF has called for one-person crews.) Nearly all employees are on-call virtually around the clock, expected to report to work within 90 minutes for shifts that can last nearly 80 hours -- not even including the time they’re sitting at terminals far away from home.
A new attendance policy at BNSF Railway, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, requires workers to remain on-call for up to two weeks, able to be report for work at a moment’s notice. The policy, in place at other railroads, penalizes workers for taking time off — up to and including being fired. 
Longer trains reduce the amount of labor per load, also contributing to fatter profit margins. Trains can be up to three miles long. But again, this means more work and less predictable schedules. 
But workers have been fighting back. That’s why they’re threatening to strike. 
Nobody wants a strike. But striking is the one tool available to them to gain some leverage.
Yet now the Biden administration and Congress are siding with the railroads and against workers — arguing that the public interest demands it.
*But if the public interest demands it, why haven’t lawmakers intervened to require railroads to have more spare capacity before now? Why haven’t regulators demanded that railroads maintain a better ratio of labor per load, so railroad workers aren’t subject to these working conditions, and don’t have to strike? *
I’m sure Joe Biden understands this. He was one of six senators who opposed the legislation that ended a 1992 railroad strike. At that time, he argued forcefully against congressional interference in labor disputes.
Yet now, like other top Democrats, he is citing the threat of economic harm as a more important. 
Why is it that whenever lawmakers confront the social costs of corporate greed, they roll over? They allow the greed to prevail while penalizing workers and others who are most immediately harmed by it.
*It’s the same at the Fed. Even as corporations score record profits, The Fed continues to blame inflation on American workers – and continues to crank up interest rates to slow the economy and shaft workers.*
Yesterday, Fed Chief Jerome Powell said the biggest barrier to taming inflation is the shortage of workers, which is giving Americans greater clout to seek higher pay. “The labor market … shows only tentative signs of rebalancing, and wage growth remains well above levels that would be consistent with 2 percent inflation over time,” he said. “Despite some promising developments, we have a long way to go in restoring price stability.”
But wages aren’t the culprit. Wages haven’t even kept up with prices. Which is why the purchasing power of most workers has been declining. And why many workers – such as railroad workers -- are being subjected to the whims of corporations that couldn’t care less.
*In the age-old battle between labor and capital, labor is taking it on the chin. In some respects, the US economy is back to where it was in the late nineteenth century. *
After all, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 began with a work stoppage by railroad employees in West Virginia protesting a reduction in their wages. Railroad workers in other states soon joined them. Commerce in the East and Midwest was seriously disrupted. The economy was threatened. 
The strikes were ended within a few weeks, largely because the federal government sided with the railroads. President Rutherford B. Hayes called out federal troops to quell the strikes. 
Honestly, how far have we come since then?"


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## OilValleyRy (Oct 3, 2021)

I’d be interested to hear what @DJsTrains thinks/summarizes on the PTO sticking point.


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## sjm9911 (Dec 20, 2012)

Madman said:


> I hope that this doesn't cross the line into politics. If it crosses the line, please delete it Mr Adminstrator. I receive regular emails from Robert Reich. This is what he had to say about the railroads and labor.
> 
> "Yesterday, the House approved legislation to avert a nationwide rail strike by forcing railroad workers to abide by a tentative agreement that the Biden administration helped broker earlier this year. (The proposal failed to win the approval of the workers at all of the unions involved.)
> The measure now goes to the Senate, where leaders in both parties say they will move quickly to avoid a disruption to the nation’s rail service. (The House also approved a separate measure to add seven days of compensated sick time, but it may lack enough bipartisan support to pass the Senate.)
> ...


Tbh , didnt read it all, its the same press release as the first artical, same key words and talking points. And to repeat, is worthless without the details. Its nice people want to get into labor managment. But without knowing the whole collective bargaining agreement its kinda worthless.


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## J.Albert1949 (Feb 3, 2018)

Why no sick leave?
Because the carriers don't want to give "an inch".
Not even a single day's worth.
For them, it's a matter of principle.
They don't even want employees having the right to take UNPAID "sick days" off.

But... more to it.
With "Precision Scheduled Railroading" the companies have cut the work force to the bone to lower labor costs.
That means they either want you out on the job, or "marked up" and waiting for your next job.
Give an employee the contractual right to "mark off", and that employee isn't under your control any more.

Finally... the entire issue of "sick days" isn't the real problem here.
I'm guessing it's pretty much a creation of the union bosses AND the media.

The real issue is "the right to mark off" for personal time at home.
Quite simply, the carriers don't want you to have it.
ANY of it, at all.

The companies want you "ready for work", ALL the time.
Of course, there is paid vacation time, that's been in the contract for years, they can't do much about that (although they can limit WHEN you take vacation time).

I reckon that after, say, 6-7 days of continuous work/markup, the T&E employee ought to have the demand right for a 48-hour mark-off. Essentially, two "relief days" after 6-7 on the road.

The companies will NEVER voluntarily agree to this.
It's something that has to be codified into federal law, the "Hours of Service" law in particular.

THAT'S what Congress should have mandated, not the "sick days".


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## bigdodgetrain (Jun 12, 2015)

maybe this member can answer
DJsTrains | Model Train Forum


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## Jscullans (Jul 8, 2019)

He may not want to comment on it though. Yes he is an engineer but that being said I personally wouldn’t want to be making comments when this is such a hot subject in the rail community right now. Based on what I’ve heard from a few railroaders (none were transportation) they were going to probably take it all the way through BUT that’s 2 peoples opinion on something that’s on a massive scale


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## prrfan (Dec 19, 2014)

That’s kinda putting someone on the spot…


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## bigdodgetrain (Jun 12, 2015)

they can answer or not
it is not meant to put anyone "on the spot".


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## prrfan (Dec 19, 2014)

Irregardless of intention, that’s exactly what you’re doing.


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## sjm9911 (Dec 20, 2012)

Ok, so if it was me, and I was in thier union, I would want sick days to use and call in also. But its easier to say it then to get it done, so many moving parts that its hard to get done. Each senerio poses its unique chalanges.


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## J.Albert1949 (Feb 3, 2018)

Reread reply 14 above...


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## sjm9911 (Dec 20, 2012)

J.Albert1949 said:


> Reread reply 14 above...


Why? Did it change?


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## Steve on Cattail Creek (11 mo ago)

This article in the NY Times seems a reasonably balanced presentation of the issues, IMHO.


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