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Originally Posted by nfotiu
Jumping into this fray again I guess.
Will the progressive contingent at least admit that a railroad strike would hurt a lot of people rich and poor? If you don't believe that, then I guess I can see why a strike is ok, but I think it is pretty established that it would.
Is your preference to allow a strike that could drag on for a while, or do you have a different solution in mind? I've only seen extend the cooling off period as a possible solution? They've already been through a few deadlines, what would kicking the can down the road do except bring this to a head at a later time?
I've worked at places throughout my life with no sick time, with unlimited sick days, with a defined number of sick days, and where they ditched sick days and added a week to vacation and called it PTO. Personally, I preferred the last option. Everywhere I worked with discrete sick days always had problems with some people abusing them also with managers wrongly assuming or accusing people of abusing them. Where I work now, doesn't sound much different than the railroad workers. I get fairly generous PTO, but know that I have to save some of those in case of sickness or other expected illness. And we have short term disability that kicks in if we're out for more than I think 4 days. It seems disingenuous for the union to accept that vacation and sick days were rolled into PTO, and then claim they have to take vacation days if they're sick.
If it is as the mediation board said, that they should be entitled to use 10 of their pto days as single days off without notice, is that unacceptable? Or is going back to discrete sick days the only acceptable answer? If they take a week back off of PTO to give them sick days is that going to make everyone happy? I'd imagine a lot of workers wouldn't want that.
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Obviously, any strike has negative consequences for the bargaining unit members, the employer, and all sorts of other affected people. In some cases, those negative consequences may be severe.
Is that a good enough reason to both (a) not recognize the right to collective bargaining as part of a constitutionally-protected right to freedom of association? and (b) to permit government infringe on that right without demonstrating a serious and proportionate justification for doing so?
Personally, I don't think so.