Biden-Harris Admin Calls On Railroad Giants To Give Workers Benefit That It Tanked Years Ago

President Joe Biden’s administration is calling on three major freight railroads to provide guaranteed paid sick leave to their workers, despite the fact that it shot down the benefits in order to avert a railroad strike in 2022.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su wrote a letter to rail giants CSX, Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Wednesday, encouraging the companies to “engage and reach agreements” with their respective unions to guarantee paid sick leave for all workers, which is the same policy that the Biden administration in 2022 blocked in their enforcement of a labor deal that stopped strikes over the benefit, according to NPR. The deal included raises and bonuses for rail workers, but some union members felt betrayed that the self-described “pro-labor” Biden did not deliver on paid sick leave at the time.

“Every worker deserves paid sick leave – and that is certainly true for the railroaders operating freight trains running through America’s communities,” Buttigieg said in the letter according to a Department of Transportation (DOT) press release. “When we got here, only about 5% of Class I union freight railroad workers had paid sick leave, but the Biden-Harris administration has pushed hard to support rail labor’s work to fix that – and now 90% of these workers have paid sick leave. We’re proud of that progress, but we will not stop fighting until the remaining 10,000 railroaders can count on this basic benefit.”

The rail strike would have cost the economy more than $1 billion in just the first week, according to CNN in 2022. Just before the strike was set to start, Congress imposed