The stories of America's rail workers are often told anonymously — no need to further antagonize their bosses, who set their schedules and who can, and do, make their lives miserable — and yet the details are painfully familiar to millions in a U.S. labor force in which the term "essential worker" isn't really an honorific.
That's why one rail worker didn't give his name when he told The New York Times how he had to cancel an important medical scan when his employer called him back to work on his week off. Or why Justin Schaaf, a conductor on the BNSF line, lost a tooth recently — months after he chose to attend his son's seventh birthday instead of keeping a dental appointment on a prized day off.
It's those kinds of everyday horror stories from the American workplace that unionized rail workers hoped to write an ending to this fall as they fought to negotiate a new labor contract with the nation's profit-drenched rail systems. Seeking paid sick days was a simple humane demand — one that was crushed last week when a labor deal lacking them, crafted by the Biden administration and endorsed by a bipartisan coalition in Congress, was imposed on 12 key rail unions.
