Worse than a Crime, It is a Mistake

Marty Walsh has been arguably the most pro-union labor secretary since Robert Reich in the Clinton administration, but his recent statement that Congress should block a strike against the railroads if they do not approve the weak-tea deal that Walsh and Biden pushed on the unions.

I get that there was a lot of arm twisting involved in the deal, and that it managed to push any potential strike beyond the mid-term elections, but it's clear that significant swaths of the rank and file have no interest in literally killing themselves for the stock options of the executives and the political fortune of the Biden administration:

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh says he hopes negotiators between railroads and some rail unions can reach new labor deals and avert a possible strike. But he said without a deal he expects Congress will step in and impose contracts on the unhappy rank-and-file union members.

The statement is a blow to the unions’ leverage as they seek to win a contract that their membership will accept.

Two rail unions reached tentative labor deals with the railroads in September, ahead of a strike deadline, only to have their membership vote against ratifying them.

“My goal is to get those two unions back at the table with companies and get this thing done,” Walsh told CNN Friday. He said a negotiated agreement would be “the best thing we can do is avoid any type of rail strike or slowdown.”

Walsh was involved in a 20-hour bargaining session that reached tentative labor deals just hours before a September 16 strike deadline. He said failing new negotiated agreements, Congress would have to impose a contract on the unions, as a way to keep union members on the job.

If “for some reason [one of the unions] doesn’t get to an agreement with the companies then … Congress will have to take action to avert a strike in our country,” he said.

First, it is a stupid thing to say 2 days before the mid-terms it demoralizes and outrages an important ally.

Second, it is a betrayal of everything that the Democratic Party is supposed the stand for.