Show Us On the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You

U.S. rail labor deal hammered out over sandwiches and baked ziti https://t.co/jPKic5Gdoz pic.twitter.com/q9grfgQimE

— Reuters (@Reuters) September 16, 2022

Another Biden admin guy who’s putting in the work:

U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh kept railroads and unions at the bargaining table for 20 hours, fueled by sandwiches and baked ziti, to clinch a make-or-break labor deal early Thursday.

With President Joe Biden insistent and the U.S. economy in the balance, there was no room for failure and no time for a traditional style of negotiations with rounds of document exchanges, he said in an interview.

“I wanted to get this deal done,” said Walsh, a former Boston mayor who canceled a trip to Ireland and speech to Irish legislators to broker the talks.

After more than two years of negotiations, railroads and unions faced a 12:01 a.m. Friday deadline to reach a contract and avoid a rail shutdown. That would cost the U.S. economy $2 billion daily by stranding critical goods, closing factories and paralyzing industries and travelers…

“I did not celebrate until I had initials on the document,” Walsh said. He called White House National Economic Council director Brian Deese to give him the good news early Thursday morning.

Walsh said it was a good contract for both workers and employers. He urged both sides to begin the next contract talks earlier to avoid a repeat of the last-minute negotiations.

Biden met with government officials, railroad and union leaders at the White House after the deal was announced and paid tribute to Walsh “for his tireless round the clock work.”

"Heavens to Betsy," exclaimed one railroad baron as his monocle dropped. "Days off for medical care without being subject to discipline?!" https://t.co/6SI0NkBels

— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) September 15, 2022

@JStein_WaPo reports that Biden was personally animated about the lack of leave for railroad workers, and brought up that he did not understand why they could not be granted more flexible schedules.

Here's our story:https://t.co/TDOyAFkE9i

— Lauren Kaori Gurley (@LaurenKGurley) September 15, 2022

Been thinking a lot about the parallels with Reagan breaking the air traffic controllers strike in 1981 and how differently Biden has handled a defining labor negotiation some 40 years later

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) September 15, 2022

The streak continues. https://t.co/lQDXWzDC8x

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) September 15, 2022

So, in the same week that things seem to be turning around dramatically in Ukraine, a potential railroad strike in this country was threatening to cut the legs out from under the still-staggering supply chains and damage the general economy going into the extended holiday season. And you could see it coming: The Republicans would use a railroad strike to blunt the apparent momentum that the Democrats had derived from the Supreme Court’s radical destruction of reproductive rights. The elite political media, dedicated as always to its role as national racetrack touts, would play along. Republicans would force the president to choose: appear as a tool of the unions and, thus, play the scapegoat in an economic car crash; or lose a lot of his most valuable political capital, namely his close relationship with organized labor. It looked like a nifty trap for a party hamstrung by its cracker-factory roster of candidates.

Except that the president easily extended his winning streak from the summer toward the fall…

The union still has to ratify the deal, but it also includes a mandatory cooling-off period if the union votes the agreement down, so a strike would not automatically ensue if the deal is rejected. However, after the events of the past seven years, avoiding a catastrophe ranks as an unalloyed triumph.

The streak continues.

Previously:

The railroad companies are moving towards a LOCKOUT.

There is not a single worker on strike on the US rails right now.

There *are* CEOs shutting down rail lines and withholding goods to shock Congress into forcing a deal on 100,000 workers. https://t.co/HDyEueQvLe

— Jonah Furman (@JonahFurman) September 14, 2022

Some useful reading on the causes of the railroad strike, including Wall Street squeezing so much in profits out that it broke the industry and the miserable rise of "precision scheduled railroading."https://t.co/gmiHhhH3wOhttps://t.co/ntUc0Jczglhttps://t.co/793YtsSL6Q

— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) September 14, 2022

Wow sounds like being in a union is pretty great, thanks Ben

— Adam Serwer ?? (@AdamSerwer) September 15, 2022