[rubecube]

I suppose this is just more "union propaganda."

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022...ilroading.html

Since last winter, railroad unions and the managers of America’s seven dominant freight-rail carriers have been struggling to come to an agreement on a new contract. The key points of contention in those talks have been scheduling in general and the provision of paid leave in particular. Unlike nearly 80 percent of U.S. laborers, railroad employees are not currently guaranteed a single paid sick day. Rather, if such workers wish to recuperate from an illness or make time to see a doctor about a nagging complaint, they need to use vacation time, which must be requested days in advance. In other words, if a worker wants to take time off to recover from the flu, they need to notify their employer of this days before actually catching the virus. Given that workers’ contracts do not include paid psychic benefits, this is a tall order.

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All of which invites the question: 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.

One way to do this is to make trains longer: A single 100-car train requires less track space than two 50-car ones since you need to maintain some distance between the latter. More critically, one very long train requires fewer crew members to run than two medium ones.

Another way to get more with less is to streamline scheduling so that trains are running at full capacity as often as possible.

All this has worked out poorly for rail workers writ large. Over the past six years, America’s major freight carriers have shed 30 percent of their employees. To compensate for this lost staffing, remaining workers must
tolerate irregular schedules and little time off since the railroads don’t have much spare labor capacity left.

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With a combined $27 billion in net income, the railroads can afford to give their workers paid leave and hire more staff to ensure the stability of their operations. Tolerating such slack might well improve customer service by rendering the railroads more resilient against disruptions.

But that would require the railroads’ owners to accept a cut in their passive income. They do not want to do that. And if all goes well on Capitol Hill in the next few days, they won’t have to.