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After Gains at Big Three, U.A.W. Aims at Nonunion Plants

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A looming union election at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga could determine the trajectory of union organizing at more than a dozen auto factories.When Shawn Fain, the United Automobile Workers president, unveiled the deal that ended six weeks of strikes at Ford Motor in the fall, he framed it as part of a longer campaign. Next, he declared, would be the task of organizing nonunion plants across the country.“One of our biggest goals coming out of this historic contract victory is to organize like we’ve never organized before,” he said at the time. “When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won’t just be with the Big Three. It will be the Big Five or Big Six.”Four months later, the first test of that strategy has come into focus, and it features a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn.According to the union, more than half of over 4,000 eligible workers have signed cards indicating support for a union. Workers say they have done so because they want higher pay, more paid time off and more generous health benefits — and because the recent strikes at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis persuaded them that a union can help win these concessions.“The Big Three, they had their big campaign, and their big strike and vote, and new contracts — we paid attention to that very closely,” said Yolanda Peoples, who has worked at the Volkswagen plant for nearly 13 years.The Volkswagen plant announced an 11 percent pay increase shortly after the strikes at the Big Three. The raise brought the top hourly wage for production workers to $32.40, but the comparable wage for the Detroit automakers will exceed $40 by the end of the new contracts. (Volkswagen said the wage adjustment was part of a yearly review.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Our Family Can Have a Future’: Ford Workers on a New Union Contract

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    Before autoworkers went on strike in September, Dave and Bailey Hodge were struggling to juggle the demands of working at a Ford Motor plant in Michigan and raising their young family.Both were working 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, to earn enough to cover monthly bills, car payments and the mortgage on a home they had recently bought. They were also saving for the things they hoped life would eventually bring — vacations, college for their two children and retirement.They were holding their own financially, but their shifts left them little time away from the assembly line, where both worked from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.“You just sleep all the time you’re not at work,” Ms. Hodge, 25, said. Some days, she’d see her 8-year-old son off to school in the morning. She’d fall asleep with her 14-month-old daughter lying between her and Dave.“I’d wake up in the afternoon, get dinner for the kids and go back to the plant,” she said. “Life revolved around work.”“Dave paid the bills with the strike money, and if I needed anything, I used the money I got from tips,” Ms. Hodge said.During the strike, Ms. Hodge worked at a local beauty spa.But the couple said they expected all that to change now. Last month, Ford and the United Automobile Workers, the union that Mr. and Ms. Hodge are members of, struck a tentative agreement containing some of the biggest gains that autoworkers had won in a new contract in decades.If the agreement is ratified, Mr. Hodge, who has been at the plant longer than Ms. Hodge, will make almost $39 an hour, up from $32. Ms. Hodge’s hourly wage will increase to more than $35 from $20. By the end of the four-and-a-half-year contract, both will be making more than $40 an hour. The agreement also provides for more time off.Mr. Hodge, 36, said he had teared up when he heard the details. “I was super happy,” he said. “It makes me feel like our family can have a future now.”About 145,000 workers at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram, are voting on separate but similar contracts the U.A.W. negotiated with the companies. Many labor and auto experts said a large majority of workers would most likely have the same reaction to the agreements that Mr. Hodge had and would vote in favor of the deals.The Hodges were required to walk the picket line at the plant one day a week. The United Automobile Workers provided $500 a week for each striking worker.Mr. Hodge’s first day back after the strike. “I was super happy,” he said of the new contract. “It makes me feel like our family can have a future now.”Just over 80 percent of the union members at the plant the Hodges work at, in Wayne, Mich., have already voted in favor of the deal. Voting at Ford plants is expected to end on Nov. 17.The tentative agreement also means the Hodges are going back to work after being on strike for 41 days. Their plant, which is a 30-minute drive from downtown Detroit, was one of the first three auto factories to go on strike in September. It makes the Ford Bronco sport utility vehicle and the Ranger pickup truck.On the evening of Sept. 14, Ms. Hodge was on a break when a union representative came by telling workers to leave. She and Mr. Hodge knew a strike was possible and had set aside enough money to cover their expenses for two to three months, but they were still surprised they were called on to strike first.The Hodges were required to walk the picket line at the plant one day a week, leaving them lots of time for the family activities they had been missing. The U.A.W. provided $500 a week for each striking worker. The $1,000 a week the Hodges collected helped, but Ms. Hodge also went to work at a beauty spa.The Hodges’ son arriving home from school.“At first, you were happy to have some time off and have dinner as a family, put the kids to bed, but then it keeps going on, and you’re like, ‘Whoa, this doesn’t seem to be ending,’” Ms. Hodge said.“Dave paid the bills with the strike money, and if I needed anything, I used the money I got from tips,” Ms. Hodge said.But as the strike wore on, the Hodges found they had to keep close track of their grocery shopping and stopped eating out.“At first, you were happy to have some time off and have dinner as a family, put the kids to bed, but then it keeps going on, and you’re like, ‘Whoa, this doesn’t seem to be ending,’” Ms. Hodge said. “As it goes along, it gets scary.”On Oct. 25, Ms. Hodge began getting texts from friends at the plant that the U.A.W. and Ford had reached a tentative agreement. That evening, she and Mr. Hodge watched an announcement by the union’s president, Shawn Fain, on Facebook.By the end of the four-and-a-half-year contract, both will be making more than $40 an hour.As the strike wore on, the Hodges found that they had to keep close track of their grocery shopping and stopped eating out.For Mr. Hodge, the news of the union’s gains — including a 25 percent general wage increase, cost-of-living adjustments and increased retirement contributions — was hard to fathom given the slower progress workers had made in recent years.He had started at Ford in 2007 as a temporary worker and over five years climbed to the top temporary worker wage of $27 an hour. In 2012, when he became a permanent employee, he had to start at the entry-level wage of $15 an hour.“It took me a good 11 years to get to where I am now,” he said. “So this feels like I’m getting back what I would’ve had.”The Hodges plan to continue working 12-hour, seven-day schedules for a short while to rebuild their savings account, and to take care of expenses they had put off, like fixing the dented bumper and cracked windshield in Ms. Hodge’s Ford Explorer.But eventually, they want to cut back to working Monday through Friday, and perhaps one weekend a month.“It will be great just doing some overtime, not overtime all the time,” Ms. Hodge said. “And we’ll start doing things with the kids. Maybe take them to a hotel that has a swimming pool. That would be nice.”A 25 percent general wage increase was hard to fathom given the slower progress workers had made in recent years.“It will be great just doing some overtime, not overtime all the time,” Ms. Hodge said. More

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    Biden Weighs State of the Union Focus on His Unfinished Agenda

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    As the president prepares for his national address, his aides debate an emphasis on his still-unrealized plans for child care, prekindergarten and more.WASHINGTON — President Biden’s top economic aides have battled for weeks over a key decision for his State of the Union address on Tuesday: how much to talk about child care, prekindergarten, paid leave and other new spending proposals that the president failed to secure in the flurry of economic legislation he signed in his first two years in office.Some advisers have pushed for Mr. Biden to spend relatively little time on those efforts, even though he is set to again propose them in detail in the budget blueprint he will release in March. They want the president to continue championing the spending he did sign into law, like investments in infrastructure like roads and water pipes, and advanced manufacturing industries like semiconductors, while positioning him as a bipartisan bridge-builder on critical issues for the middle class.Other aides want Mr. Biden to spend significant time in the speech on an issue set that could form the core of his likely re-election pitch to key swing voters, particularly women. Polls by liberal groups suggest such a focus, on helping working families afford care for their children and aging parents, could prove a winning campaign message.The debate is one of many taking place inside the administration as Mr. Biden tries to determine which issues to focus on in a speech that carries extra importance this year. It will be Mr. Biden’s first address to the new Republican majority in the House, which has effectively slammed the brakes on his legislative agenda for the next two years. And it could be a preview for the themes Mr. Biden would stress on the 2024 campaign trail should he run for a second term.Administration officials caution that Mr. Biden has not finalized his strategy. A White House official said Friday that the president was preparing to tout his economic record and his full vision for the economy.The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands as the third year of his term begins.State of the Union: President Biden will deliver his second State of the Union speech on Feb. 7, at a time when he faces an aggressive House controlled by Republicans and a special counsel investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information.Chief of Staff: Mr. Biden named Jeffrey D. Zients, his former coronavirus response coordinator, as his next chief of staff. Mr. Zients replaces Ron Klain, who has run the White House since the president took office.Economic Aide Steps Down: Brian Deese, who played a pivotal role in negotiating economic legislation Mr. Biden signed in his first two years in office, is leaving his position as the president’s top economic adviser.Eyeing 2024: Mr. Biden has been assailing House Republicans over their tax and spending plans, including potential changes to Social Security and Medicare, as he ramps up for what is likely to be a run for re-election.Few of Mr. Biden’s advisers expect Congress to act in the next two years on paid leave, an enhanced tax credit for parents, expanded support for caregivers for disabled and older Americans or expanded access to affordable child care. All were centerpieces of the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan Mr. Biden announced in the first months of his administration. Mr. Biden proposes to offset those and other proposals with tax increases on high earners and corporations.Earlier this week, Mr. Biden hinted that he may be preparing to pour more attention on those so-called “care economy” proposals, which he and his economic team say would help alleviate problems that crimp family budgets and block would-be workers from looking for jobs.At a White House event celebrating the 30th anniversary of a law that mandated certain workers be allowed to take unpaid medical leave, Mr. Biden ticked through his administration’s efforts to invest in a variety of care programs in the last two years, while acknowledging failure to pass federally mandated paid leave and other larger programs.Mr. Biden said he remained committed to “passing a national program of paid leave and medical leave.”“And, by the way, American workers deserve paid sick days as well,” he said. “Paid sick days. Look, I’ve called on Congress to act, and I’ll continue fighting.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.For Mr. Biden, continuing to call for new spending initiatives aimed at lower- and middle-income workers would draw a clear contrast with the still-nascent field of Republicans seeking the White House in 2024. It would cheer some outside advocacy groups that have pushed him to renew his focus on programs that would particularly aid women and children.The State of the Union speech “presents the president with a rare opportunity to take a victory lap and, simultaneously, advance his agenda,” the advocacy group First Focus on Children said in a news release this week. “All to the benefit of children.”The efforts could also address what Mr. Biden’s advisers have identified as a lingering source of weakness in the recovery from the pandemic recession: high costs of caregiving, which are blocking Americans from looking for work. The nonprofit group ReadyNation estimates in a new report that child care challenges cost American families $78 billion a year and employers another $23 billion.“Among prime-age people not working in the United States, roughly half of them list care responsibilities as the main reason for not participating in the labor force,” Heather Boushey, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters this week. She noted that the jobs rebound has lagged in care industries like nursing homes and day care centers.“These remain economic challenges and addressing them could go a long ways towards supporting our nation’s labor supply,” she said.But focusing on that unfinished economic work could conflict with Mr. Biden’s repeated efforts this year to portray the economy as strong and position him as a president who reached across the aisle to secure big new investments that are lifting growth and job creation. On Friday, the president celebrated news that the economy created 517,000 jobs in January, in a brief speech that did not mention the challenges facing caregivers.Calling for vast new spending programs also risks further antagonizing House conservatives, who have made government spending their first large fight with the president. Republicans have threatened to allow the United States to fall into an economically catastrophic default on government debt by not raising the federal borrowing limit, unless Mr. Biden agrees to sharp cuts in existing spending.“Revenue into the government has never been higher,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, told reporters on Thursday, a day after he met with Mr. Biden at the White House to discuss fiscal issues and the debt limit. “It’s the highest revenue we’ve ever seen in. So it’s not a revenue problem. It’s a spending problem.”Catie Edmondson More

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    ‘Most Pro-Union President’ Runs Into Doubts in Labor Ranks

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    Many union leaders say the Biden White House has delivered on its promises. But its handling of a freight rail dispute has given rise to detractors.Joseph R. Biden Jr. vowed to be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.” And for the last two years, labor leaders have often lauded him for delivering on that promise.They cite appointees who are sympathetic to unions and a variety of pro-labor measures, like a pandemic relief bill that included tens of billions to shore up union pension funds.But in recent weeks, after Mr. Biden helped impose a contract on railroad workers that four unions had rejected, partly over its lack of paid sick days, many labor activists and scholars have begun to ask: How supportive is the president, really?To those reassessing Mr. Biden, the concern is that the president, by asking Congress to intervene and avert a strike, missed a rare opportunity to improve workers’ bargaining power in ways that could extend beyond the rail sector. They worry that the move essentially validated an employer strategy of waiting out workers in hopes that the pressure would fizzle.“Whether this group of workers has sick days or not on some level was not the issue,” said Kim Phillips-Fein, a historian at Columbia University who studies labor. “It was: What can people ask for and expect to win through collective action?”That Mr. Biden did not take a stronger stand, she added, “suggested a political blindness to what was really at stake.”At heart, the railroad episode has stirred a debate over what it means to be a pro-labor president.Defenders see Mr. Biden as unusually outspoken on behalf of workers’ rights. They cite his declaration during a unionization vote at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama that “there should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats” — an unusual if carefully worded gesture of presidential solidarity — and his dismay that Kellogg planned to permanently replace striking workers.“He has helped create a mood in the country as it relates to unions that has helped propel the extraordinary organizing going on,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which organized the unsuccessful drive at the Alabama warehouse and is challenging the result. Mr. Appelbaum added that Mr. Biden’s announcement during the campaign was “beyond what we’d hoped for.”The president’s backers also point to a raft of labor-friendly regulations and legislation. Mr. Biden issued an executive order requiring so-called project labor agreements on federal construction projects above $35 million — agreements with unions that set wages and work rules — and the major climate and health bill he signed created incentives for clean energy projects to pay wages similar to union rates.Celeste Drake, a senior White House labor adviser, said in a statement that Mr. Biden had made “lasting strides for workers and unions” and that many of his achievements were “passed on a razor’s edge of tight margins in Congress, often with Republican votes, where the president’s advocacy for unions as a means to rebuilding the middle class could have jeopardized everything.” (More than 70 percent of Americans approve of labor unions, according to a recent Gallup poll.)Liz Shuler, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., who was the labor federation’s second-ranking official during the Obama presidency, said Mr. Biden’s administration had been far more solicitous of labor than the previous Democratic president, whom labor leaders sometimes criticized for backing free trade deals and contentious changes in education policy.“For the decisions made in the Obama administration, labor was often an afterthought,” Ms. Shuler said. “It’s the polar opposite with Biden. We’re included at the table ahead of time, before decisions are made.”Even the railway labor situation, in which Mr. Biden urged Congress to enact a contract that included significant wage gains and improvements in health benefits, ended up more favorable to workers than it probably would have under another administration, union officials say.The alternative view of Mr. Biden, put forth by many labor historians and activists, is that while the president has in fact been more obliging to unions and maintained better relationships with union leaders than his recent Democratic predecessors, the difference is one of degree rather than kind.They say that like his predecessors, Mr. Biden effectively seeks to manage the long-term decline of labor in a relatively humane way — by making favorable appointments and enacting measures that help at the margins — but has yet to take the sorts of risks that would restore power to workers.Mr. Biden has “gestured in interesting ways in certain moments,” said Gabriel Winant, a labor historian at the University of Chicago. “But it doesn’t seem like he has the stomach to see the gestures through.”For those who subscribe to this view, the rail labor dispute was a telling encapsulation of Mr. Biden’s approach: an instance in which the administration worked closely with many leaders of the dozen unions representing rail workers but angered portions of the rank and file. Members of four unions voted down the deal that the administration had helped broker but were not allowed to strike for a better one.Administration officials say that while Mr. Biden strongly supports the right to strike, the potential costs to the economy, which the industry said could be more than $2 billion per day, were simply too high to allow rail workers to walk off the job. They point out that a strike could have also posed health and safety risks — for example, by halting shipments of chemicals that ensure clean drinking water.But to critics, these risks were in some sense the point: They provided workers with a rare moment of leverage. They say Mr. Biden could have simply refused to sign any legislation that didn’t include paid sick days, then made clear that rail carriers were to blame for any disruption if they refused.Administration officials say the potential costs to the economy were simply too high to allow rail workers to walk off the job.Dustin Chambers for The New York Times“Biden in this case revealed that I’m your friend, but I won’t risk anything for you,” said Joseph A. McCartin, a historian at Georgetown University who has written extensively about transportation labor disputes.And if taking a more forceful stand on behalf of rail workers was high risk, Mr. McCartin said, it was also high reward: Because transportation infrastructure touches almost every part of the country, labor relations in that sector tend to reverberate widely.“Everybody sees it, everybody watches, everybody’s affected,” he said. An open letter to Mr. Biden last month, signed by Mr. McCartin and more than 400 other scholars, said federal interventions in transportation labor disputes “can set the tone for entire eras.”The letter cited the government’s move to grant rail workers an eight-hour workday to avoid a strike during World War I, which paved the way for similar gains by other workers in the 1930s. By contrast, the letter said, President Ronald Reagan’s firing of striking air traffic controllers in the early 1980s helped undermine the leverage of workers across the economy for decades.The contention among critics is that by effectively depriving rail workers of the right to strike, Mr. Biden has made it more difficult for other workers to use that tool — and, ultimately, to reverse the movement’s long-term decline.Strikes with strong backing from union membership “are the only way to win standard-setting contracts, and winning standard-setting contracts is the only way to rebuild the labor movement,” said Jane McAlevey, a scholar and longtime organizer. Her coming book, “Rules to Win By: Power and Participation in Union Negotiations,” documents the importance of aggressive labor actions in improving pay and working conditions.Workers and organizers at the forefront of recent union campaigns at companies like Starbucks and Amazon said they worried that Mr. Biden’s intervention in the rail labor dispute sent employers a message that the federal government would not punish them for anti-union behavior.“Everyone understands the significance of the president getting involved,” said Christian Smalls, the president of the Amazon Labor Union, which won an election to represent workers at a Staten Island warehouse in April. “To claim you’re the most pro-union president in history and do something like this contradicts everything.” (Amazon has challenged the union’s victory.)In some respects, it may have been unrealistic for labor activists to expect that Mr. Biden, who has carried himself as a middle-of-the-road Democrat for much of his career, would depart from the basic model of labor relations that has long prevailed in his party.But during the presidential campaign, Mr. Biden and some of his senior advisers discussed ways in which they hoped to break with longstanding economic orthodoxy in Washington, with its emphasis on free markets and a small role for government.Those who support more populist-minded policies say Mr. Biden has delivered in certain ways: enacting subsidies for domestic manufacturing and restrictions on trade with China and appointing regulators who have frequently gone to court to block large mergers.“There obviously has been progress made,” said Oren Cass, a former Republican policy aide and the founder of American Compass, which seeks to make conservatism more supportive of workers.Yet when it comes to labor, some say Mr. Biden has been less willing to rethink the reigning economic model.“If Biden had intervened in a way that was more favorable and sympathetic to the rail workers, that would have been a sign of him really breaking with that model, and the model itself no longer seeming to fit the current moment,” said Ms. Phillips-Fein, the Columbia historian. “That it didn’t happen suggests the limits of his political imagination.” More

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    Railroad Workers Point to Punishing Schedules as Cause of Strike

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    Employees say the inflexibility of scheduling upended their personal lives. The companies say they maintained service while using fewer resources.To defuse a labor dispute that brought the nation to the brink of a potentially catastrophic railroad strike, negotiators had to resolve a key issue: schedules that workers say were punishing, upending their personal lives and driving colleagues from the industry.Workers, industry analysts and customers say the practices emanate from a business model that focuses relentlessly on holding down expenses, including labor costs. They say this leaves rail networks with little capacity to work around a disruption, whether it be a personal issue for an employee or a natural disaster like a hurricane — or, for that matter, a pandemic.Negotiations in which the Biden administration took an active role produced a tentative contract deal announced early Thursday. The agreement included a significant pay increase for the workers, whose base wages typically start around $50,000 and top out around $100,000, excluding overtime and benefits. But scheduling was the sticking point.Unions complained that to manage a shortfall of employees, the carriers effectively forced their members to remain on call for days and sometimes weeks at a time, partly through the use of strict attendance policies that could lead to disciplinary action or even firing. They said the policies pushed workers to the limits of their physical and mental health.“Every facet of your life is dictated by this job,” said Gabe Christenson, who until this year worked as a conductor for a large freight rail carrier. “There’s no way to get away from it.” Carriers said employees could take time off through paid vacation, income replacement for sick workers or removal of themselves from the list of available workers.“Railroads provide multiple ways for employees to take time to care for themselves and their families,” the Association of American Railroads, an industry group, said in a statement earlier this week.By Sunday, leaders of 10 of the 12 unions in the talks had agreed to contract terms. But two unions representing conductors and engineers — about half the 115,000 freight rail workers involved in the dispute — held out for a concession on scheduling, like the ability to see a doctor or attend to a personal matter without risking disciplinary action.President Biden in the Oval Office on Thursday with representatives of the railroads and the unions as well as Labor Department officials.Doug Mills/The New York Times“It would not harm their operations to treat employees like humans and let them take care of medical issues,” Dennis Pierce, president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, one of the two unions, said in an interview on Monday. “It’s the primary outstanding issue, one we won’t budge on — the request that they stop firing people who get sick.”After the tentative deal was announced, the two unions said it included “contract language exempting time off for certain medical events from carrier attendance policies.” The agreement will require ratification by union members, a process that could take a few weeks.In some respects, the freight rail industry is similar to other swaths of the economy, such as retail and food service, where employers have imposed increasingly lean staffing in recent decades.Rick Paterson, a longtime industry analyst with the investment bank Loop Capital, said the staffing trend for railroads became more pronounced in the early 2000s when, after years of consolidation, carriers and their investors began to recognize that they had pricing power.As a result, the dominant business model in the industry shifted from one in which the carriers sought larger volumes of traffic to one in which they sought to increase profits by raising prices and lowering expenses like labor costs.“They realized that if growing pricing is good for margins, then keeping costs low is even better,” said Mr. Paterson, who has referred to this thinking as “the cult of the operating ratio,” after the ratio of operating expenses to revenue.A freight train yard near the Port of Los Angeles on Thursday. A strike by freight rail workers would have been economically damaging.Alex Welsh for The New York TimesThe side effect, however, was to gradually eliminate any cushion in staffing levels.Unlike many workers, the conductors and engineers who operate trains don’t get weekends or other consistent days off.Instead, said Mr. Pierce, the president of the locomotive engineers union, workers go to the bottom of a list of available crews when they return home from a trip that can last days. The fewer the workers, the shorter the list, and the less time it takes for them to be summoned into action again.“It can go on indefinitely, till they interrupt the cycle by taking paid time off, which the companies routinely reject,” Mr. Pierce said.Major U.S. freight rail carriers began to accelerate the staffing cuts in recent years as they switched to a system known as precision scheduled railroading, or P.S.R., which focuses on scaling back excess equipment and employees and streamlining the shipping process. The industry has said P.S.R. enables carriers to run more efficiently and provide more reliable service, while also improving profits. Freight rail customers and employees say it has resulted in deteriorating working conditions and customer service and little resilience in dealing with unforeseen circumstances, like weather emergencies. The Surface Transportation Board, a federal regulatory agency, estimates that the carriers have 30 percent fewer employees today than six years ago.Reducing labor to match this operating model may have been sound in principle, said Mr. Paterson, the industry analyst. But he said the carriers appeared to have cut back too much to allow them to handle potential disruptions, of which the pandemic was an epic example.“When you do P.S.R., you can drop your head count by 30 percent, but why don’t you drop it 28 percent and build in a crew reserve?” he asked. “That didn’t happen.”With little margin for error, carriers found themselves with too few workers to operate their rail networks once business began to recover in the second half of 2020, putting more and more stress on their workers, and making it even harder for them to take time off.Freight rail workers on train tracks in Atlanta on Thursday.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesWhen Mr. Christenson, the longtime conductor, who is also a co-chair of the industrywide group Railroad Workers United, began feeling run-down last year, he was reluctant to see a doctor. Under his company’s attendance policy, taking an unplanned day off could lead to disciplinary action, and “I worried about triggering an investigation,” he said.So he waited until he could get an appointment on a scheduled day off a few months later, at which point he got bad news: He had an infection that might have been easily resolved with medication but now required surgery.“They had to cut infected tissue out in my leg,” Mr. Christenson said.Railroad workers and their families, many of whom asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, said similar attendance policies, which are partly intended to manage the industry’s labor shortfall, had resulted in workers’ missing important life events.This year, for example, BNSF Railway introduced a new point system for some employees, according to a February memo obtained by The New York Times. Under the policy, workers were awarded 30 points to start with and would lose points — from two to 10 — for scheduling a day off for a variety of reasons, including a family emergency, sickness or fatigue. They lose even more points for being unavailable at the last minute.When workers run out of points, they face escalating penalties, starting with a 10-day suspension, followed by a 20-day suspension and ending with possible firing. Workers can earn back points by being available for two weeks straight. BNSF said on Thursday that the policy was “designed to improve the consistency of crews being available for their shifts” and to give employees more “predictability and transparency” regarding their schedules. It said that the program was achieving those goals but that revisions had been made to give employees more flexibility. One railroad worker said the fast turnaround time between shifts had forced him to skip doctor’s appointments to address his symptoms of long Covid. Railroad workers’ family members said they rarely celebrated birthdays or holidays together even before the pandemic.Workers say that while they have paid vacation and days allotted for personal leave, the constraints that employers impose — like requiring vacation to be taken in limited windows that are far oversubscribed, or simply rejecting a proposed personal day — severely limit their options as a practical matter.Shippers have grown frustrated, too.Rail cars full of grain sat at production facilities in the Midwest for weeks at a time earlier this year, far longer than typical, said Max Fisher, the chief economist and treasurer for the National Grain and Feed Association.Chemical manufacturers, which rely on freight rail to move their products, have grown increasingly frustrated with the carriers since December, according to three surveys by the American Chemistry Council, an industry association. The latest, conducted in July, found that 46 percent of the companies felt that rail service was getting worse, while only 7 percent said it was improving.“Freight rail has been a constant thorn in our side and been a significant challenge for our members for quite some time,” said Chris Jahn, the organization’s chief executive.While the labor agreement announced on Thursday may avert a strike, it is unlikely to resolve the deeper issues that have put unions and rail carriers on a collision course. Even if carriers wanted to turn back the clock on efforts to increase efficiency, they would have shareholders to answer to.After Bill Ackman, the activist investor, won a proxy battle over the freight carrier Canadian Pacific a decade ago, the company hired Hunter Harrison, who pioneered P.S.R., as its chief executive. Mr. Harrison imposed the system there and then at CSX after joining that company in 2017, prompting investors to pressure other carriers to follow suit to eke out similar efficiencies.“Lurking in the background is the constant threat of shareholder activism if any of the railroads’ operating ratios become outliers on the high side,” Mr. Paterson said in testimony to the Surface Transportation Board this spring. More

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    Chipotle Agrees to Pay Over $20 Million to Settle New York City Workplace Case

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    New York City said Tuesday that it had reached a settlement potentially worth more than $20 million with the fast-food chain Chipotle Mexican Grill over violations of worker protection laws, the largest settlement of its kind in the city’s history.The action, affecting about 13,000 workers, sends a message “that we won’t stand by when workers’ rights are violated,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement.The city said the settlement covered violations of scheduling and sick leave laws from late November 2017 to late April of this year. Under the settlement, hourly employees of Chipotle in New York City will receive $50 for each week that they worked during that period. Employees who left the company before April 30 will have to file a claim to receive their compensation.The Fair Workweek Law enacted by the city in 2017 requires fast-food employers to provide workers with their schedules at least two weeks in advance or pay a bonus for the shifts.The employers must also give workers at least 11 hours off between shifts on consecutive days or get written consent and pay them an extra $100. And the employers must offer workers more shifts before hiring additional employees, to make it easier for them to earn a sustainable income.Under a separate city law, large employers like Chipotle must provide up to 56 hours of paid sick leave per year.The city accused Chipotle of violating all these policies.“We’re pleased to be able to resolve these issues,” Scott Boatwright, the company’s chief restaurant officer, said in a statement. Mr. Boatwright added that the company had carried out a number of changes to ensure compliance with the law, such as new time-keeping technology, and that Chipotle looked forward to “continuing to promote the goals of predictable scheduling and access to work hours for those who want them.”The city filed an initial legal complaint in the case, involving a handful of Chipotle stores, in September 2019, then expanded the case last year to include locations across the city. At the time, the city said the company owed workers over $150 million for the scheduling violations alone. Advocates for the workers said civil penalties could far exceed that amount.In addition to as much as $20 million in compensation, Chipotle will pay $1 million in civil penalties. A city spokeswoman said the settlement was the fastest way to win relief for workers.The city said in its statement that it had closed more than 220 investigations and obtained nearly $3.4 million in fines and restitution under the scheduling law, and that it had closed more than 2,300 investigations and obtained nearly $17 million in fines and restitution under the sick leave law. Neither figure includes the settlement announced Tuesday.The city spokeswoman said the city had filed more than 135 formal complaints under the two laws, and that many employers settle before the city can file a case.Chipotle faces pressure over its labor practice on other fronts. Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, which helped prompt the investigation at Chipotle by filing initial complaints in the case, is seeking to unionize Chipotle workers in the city.Chipotle employees at stores in Maine and Michigan have filed petitions for union elections. The Maine store has been closed, a move that the employees assert was retaliation for the organizing effort. Chipotle has said the closing was a result of staffing issues and had “nothing to do with union activity.” More

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    Why Paid Family Leave’s Demise This Time Could Fuel It Later

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    In failing to secure a benefit with bipartisan appeal, President Biden joins a long line of frustrated politicians. But some Republicans say it could be resurrected on its own.WASHINGTON — In late 2019, with bipartisan backing, including from the iconoclastic Senate Democrat Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, President Donald J. Trump’s daughter Ivanka hosted a summit at the White House to promote her vision for paid family and medical leave.As with many domestic initiatives of the Trump years, the effort went nowhere, thanks in part to the former president’s lack of interest in legislating. But it also stalled in part because of opposition from Democrats like Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who saw the plan not as a true federal benefit but as a “payday loan” off future Social Security benefits.Ms. Gillibrand believed she could do much better.Last week was the Democrats’ turn to fail. A 12-week paid family and medical leave program, costing $500 billion over 10 years, was supposed to be a centerpiece of President Biden’s social safety net legislation. But it fell out of his compromise framework, a victim of centrists who objected to its ambition and cost.The demise of the effort, even amid bipartisan interest, in part reflected the polarization surrounding Democrats’ marquee domestic legislation, which Republicans are opposing en masse.Some business groups and G.O.P. proponents of a paid leave program believe that if it had been broken out and negotiated with Republicans, the way a $1 trillion infrastructure package was at Mr. Biden’s urging, it could have survived, and some think it still could resurrected as a bipartisan initiative.They said the problem lay with the Democrats’ decision to put paid family leave in the expansive social policy and climate bill — a multitrillion-dollar package financed by large tax increases on businesses and the wealthy — which they knew that Republicans and mainstream business groups would never support.“In any area that is substantive, when members sit down to actually walk through whether or not we can build good legislation, there are possibilities,” Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said. “We’re not being encouraged to work together to solve problems. What we’re being encouraged to do is line up with the team so that we can have the political messaging point.”At least for now, though, the United States is almost certain to remain one of only six countries with no national paid leave.“Fundamentally, to provide paid leave, you have to value women and value their work,” Ms. Gillibrand lamented, “and valuing women and their work is a hard thing for the United States.”The last-minute removal of the paid leave program underscored longstanding questions about how it can be that while 186 other countries have such a program, the United States does not.A rally for paid leave near the White House. The United States is one of only six countries that do not provide some sort of national paid leave.Valerie Plesch for The New York TimesMs. Gillibrand was highly skeptical that a bipartisan deal to address the issue was possible. She said she had been developing paid family and medical leave legislation for nearly a decade, had sought out numerous Republican and business partners, and had always found the parties too ideologically divided.But the issue driving interest in both parties — bringing more women into the work force and keeping them there — has only grown more acute since the coronavirus pandemic hit.White House officials say 95 percent of the lowest-wage workers lack any paid leave, and they are predominantly women and people of color. Some five million women lost their jobs during the pandemic, and many of them, struggling with access to child care and bedeviled by intermittent school closures and periodic Covid-19 outbreaks, have opted not to return.Mr. Trump campaigned on the issue and included six weeks of federally paid leave in his budgets, which were ignored by Republican leaders. Congressional Republicans had their own ideas. Legislation introduced in 2019 by Senators Sinema and Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, and Representatives Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, and Colin Allred, Democrat of Texas, would offer new parents $5,000 during the first year of their baby’s life, which they would repay over the decade through cuts to their child tax credit.The Republican senators Marco Rubio of Florida, Mitt Romney of Utah, Joni Ernst of Iowa and Mike Lee of Utah similarly proposed offering workers parental leave benefits that would have to be repaid — with interest — through cuts in their Social Security retirement benefits.Senator Deb Fischer, Republican of Nebraska, championed and secured more modest legislation — tucked into the Republican tax cuts of 2017 — that gave small businesses a tax credit to fund family leave. She argued against broader versions, since many companies already offer employees paid leave.“If you have two or three employees, you cannot afford to do paid family leave because you can’t afford to hire somebody to take their place, which is why I think the tax credit that we have in law now is really beneficial,” Ms. Fischer said.According to the White House, fewer than a third of small businesses with 100 or more employees offer paid leave. Only 14 percent with fewer than 50 employees do. Ms. Fischer conceded that few small businesses have taken advantage of her credit, but she blamed the Treasury Department, under Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, for dragging its feet on issuing detailed regulations and promoting it.To Democrats, those proposals are not true leave. They are either loans off other needed benefits or too limited to make a difference. Ms. Gillibrand said that optimally, a stable, generous family and medical leave plan would be an “earned benefit” like Social Security and Medicare: Workers would pay into the system and claim the benefit when they needed it, regardless of where they worked or how much they earned.But, she said, taxing workers has become politically difficult. Her 2013 bill envisioned family and medical leave insurance, financed by a small contribution from employers with each paycheck.This year, the Biden administration and Democratic leaders opted to fund paid leave out of general revenues, bolstered by tax increases on the wealthy and corporations. They said the program was part of a broader “human infrastructure” effort to help children and young parents, which included child care support, a child tax credit and universal prekindergarten — and therefore didn’t need a dedicated funding source.Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, opposed a plan for 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, saying he worried that without a stable revenue source, it would be a drain on the Social Security system.Al Drago for The New York TimesThe House proposal would have guaranteed 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave annually to all workers, in private or government employment, gig work like Uber and Lyft, or self-employment. The benefit would have replaced 85 percent of wages or earnings for the lowest-paid workers, scaling back from there.That generosity was why the plan ran into a roadblock in the Senate. Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, saw an expensive new benefit without a stable revenue source that he worried would end up draining an already stressed Social Security system.Ms. Gillibrand and Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, have pleaded, cajoled and bargained with him. They said a paid leave plan would actually bolster Social Security’s finances by helping women get back to work, where they would pay Social Security taxes, and helping young families have more children, which would bolster the work force of the future. Democrats offered to scale back a 12-week leave plan to four weeks, then to limit it to leave for new babies, not medical emergencies.Mr. Manchin promised to consider the offers, but few are optimistic. Ms. Gillibrand sees societal issues at work. While it is true that virtually every country in the world has a paid leave program, that is somewhat misleading, she said.Most of those countries can afford to offer paid leave because they do not actually expect women to work once they begin having children. Long leave plans help couples get started having children, but most countries then do not help with child care because they assume women will stay home.The U.S. work force relies on women. Mr. Biden’s compromise framework does include generous subsidies for child care starting at birth and for universal prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds. It now lacks the first step: helping parents through pregnancy and childbirth.“What we’re trying to achieve here is the ability of women to work effectively and to be most productive at work,” Ms. Gillibrand said.Advocates say lawmakers should not give up yet. Marc Freedman, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s vice president for employment policy, said the business group had been meeting with congressional offices before the pandemic, pressing for a national paid leave plan to replace the patchwork of state and local government plans popping up.The government would create a minimum benefit that businesses would be allowed to exceed for recruitment and retention, financed by a payroll tax paid by employees. Such a plan would help smaller businesses compete for labor with larger corporations, while offloading some of the burden on companies that already offer leave plans.“We very much want to restart those conversations,” he said.Some Republicans, especially Republican women, say they are ready to join those talks.“It’s an issue we need to address as a nation and look at and get creative with,” said Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, who helped secure paid leave for federal workers.But as with the infrastructure deal struck over the summer, Democrats would not be likely to get all they want. Ms. Capito, for instance, said the plan that Mr. Manchin killed was too generous, with leave beyond care for new babies and sick family members.Ms. Gillibrand said she had already begun outreach. She talked to Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, about an interim step of helping small states pool with larger ones to create regional leave programs. She signaled flexibility on funding the kind of insurance mechanism that Mr. Freedman said the Chamber of Commerce favored.But none of those ideas would happen as quickly as the broad program that Mr. Manchin is opposing, she said.“There is work I can do over the next six months to a year, sure, but will take time,” Ms. Gillibrand concluded. “And it won’t be simple.” More

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    Biden's Paid Leave Plan at Risk as Lawmakers Seek Cuts

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    An initial proposal to offer workers 12 weeks of paid leave could be whittled down as Democrats try to trim their $3.5 trillion social policy bill.WASHINGTON — Christina Hayes, 34, stopped going to the doctor for treatment of her lupus when she was pregnant and working at a cable company in Michigan in 2013. She had used up her vacation days, and without paid sick leave, she worried about paying her rent and electricity bill if she took more time off.But after her blood pressure spiked, her doctors induced labor two months early, fearing that she might have a seizure. She and her baby ended up being fine, but Ms. Hayes, now an airline gate agent in Inkster, Mich., said that having paid leave would have allowed her to prioritize her health over her paycheck.“I would have been able to schedule doctor’s appointments better,” she said. “I might not have gone into premature labor.”Paid leave, a cornerstone of President Biden’s economic agenda, is one of the many proposals at risk of being scaled back or left out of an expansive social safety net bill that Democrats are trying to push through Congress. Mr. Biden’s initial $3.5 trillion plan called for providing up to 12 weeks of paid leave for new parents, caretakers for seriously ill family members and people suffering from a serious medical condition. Democrats proposed compensating workers for at least two-thirds of their earnings and funding the program with higher taxes on wealthy people and corporations.But as Democrats try to shave hundreds of billions off the overall policy package to appease moderate holdouts, paid leave could wind up shrinking to just a few weeks. That is alarming supporters of paid leave, who view this as the best chance to secure a crucial safety net for workers, particularly women.Researchers and economists say a federal paid leave program could provide a jolt to the labor market, lifting women’s participation in the labor force and increasing the likelihood that mothers return to work after having children. Research also has shown that paid leave policies would be particularly beneficial for people of color and low-wage workers, who are among those least likely to get such a benefit from their jobs.Only 23 percent of private-sector workers have paid family leave through their employers, and 42 percent have access to personal medical leave through an employer-provided short-term disability insurance policy, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.Under the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, workers at companies with at least 50 employees can take 12 weeks of unpaid leave. The United States is the only rich country without a federal paid leave mandate for new parents or for medical emergencies.Paid leave advocates say they have received assurances from the White House and congressional leadership that Democrats are continuing to push for the proposed program.“We’re a critical voting bloc,” said Molly Day, the executive director of Paid Leave for the United States. “Women are not going to forget the decisions that were made now when we go to the ballot box.”Negotiators have discussed ways to bring down the cost of the program, such as reducing the number of weeks offered or the maximum benefit an individual could receive each month, according to people familiar with the talks. Lawmakers have also discussed trimming the number of weeks initially offered, then phasing in a 12-week benefit over a decade.Many top Democrats say they remain committed to the original paid leave plan and have urged their colleagues in Congress and the Biden administration to keep the program intact.Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat of Connecticut, said she was worried about how the program might be pared back, particularly if the benefit is phased in.“I am concerned at how long it will take us to get to that 12 weeks,” Ms. DeLauro said. “It shouldn’t take 10 years to do that.”Some Democrats say passing a federal paid leave program has become more crucial amid a global pandemic that has exposed the need for workers to have access to medical and sick leave without worrying about how they will pay their bills. The social policy legislation is being fast-tracked through the Senate using a process known as reconciliation.“If we really want to achieve paid leave in the next decade, now is the only moment, through reconciliation,” Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York said. “If you want to get everyone working who wants to be working, paid leave has to be part of the strategy.”Research on California, the first state to offer paid family leave, has mostly shown that paid leave has a positive effect on women’s wages and participation in the labor force. Nine states and the District of Columbia have passed paid leave programs.Christopher J. Ruhm, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Virginia, found that under California’s paid leave law, new mothers who had worked during their pregnancy were estimated to be 17 percent more likely to have returned to work within a year of their child’s birth. During the second year of their child’s life, mothers’ time spent at work increased.“The evidence is pretty strong that we’d see favorable effects,” Mr. Ruhm said. “It’s not going to lead to a huge increase in employment or labor force participation of women, but it would be a modest one.”Maya Rossin-Slater, an associate professor of health policy at Stanford University, said research found that policies offering up to one year of paid leave can increase labor participation among women after childbirth. Under California’s program, the biggest gain in leave-taking is seen for Black mothers, who became more likely to take maternity leave, according to Ms. Rossin-Slater’s research.“Implementation of paid family leave can reduce inequities,” Ms. Rossin-Slater said.Pepper Nappo, 33, a mother in Derry, N.H., said she was left alone to take care of her newborn son the day she was discharged from the hospital in 2016. She had required stitches after childbirth.As a barber, she did not have paid parental leave, and her husband could not afford to take more than a week off from his job at a landscaping company. The family downgraded their car and limited what they bought at the grocery store but still struggled to keep up with the bills.“If I had paid leave, we wouldn’t have been behind,” Ms. Nappo said.Public support for paid family and medical leave is strong, but Americans tend to differ over specific policies. A recent CBS News/YouGov poll found that 73 percent of U.S. adults surveyed supported federal funding for paid family and medical leave.Conservatives have signaled an openness to paid leave in recent years, although they have been more vocal about supporting leave for parents than for other types of caregivers or those suffering from illness. Many have also expressed concerns for small businesses. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Senator Mitt Romney of Utah reintroduced a proposal last month that would allow new parents to use a portion of their Social Security to fund their own leave after the birth or adoption of a child.While larger businesses have grown open to a paid leave program, some small business groups have pushed back against a federal mandate.Holly S. Wade, the executive director of the research center at the National Federation of Independent Business, said the group was concerned that a paid leave program would burden small employers since it would require more administrative reporting.“While covering the cost of some of these mandates could potentially be helpful, in the way that an owner sees it, it just comes with a lot of paperwork, a lot of confusion and a lot of challenges,” Ms. Wade said.Supporters of paid leave say they are still pushing for 12 weeks to be available immediately, but have conceded that they would accept a permanent program that would phase in the full amount over time. Dawn Huckelbridge, director of Paid Leave for All, spoke at a rally in Washington, D.C., where she urged lawmakers to keep paid leave in the bill.Valerie Plesch for The New York Times“We are very cleareyed that there are going to be cuts,” said Dawn Huckelbridge, the director of Paid Leave for All. “We think there can be a meaningful program accomplished at less than 12.”Ms. Huckelbridge and other paid leave supporters rallied near the White House last week, urging lawmakers and the Biden administration to keep the benefit in the bill.“There have been troubling signs,” Ms. Huckelbridge said, referring to reports about demands by Senator Joe Manchin III, a West Virginia Democrat, to reduce the bill’s size and scope. More