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    Can the United Farm Workers of California Rise Again?

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    Veronica Mota marched under the sweltering sun, hoisting a cloth banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe above her head for miles.“Sí, se puede,” she chanted in unison with dozens of other farmworkers, who waved U.S. and Mexican flags as they walked along two-lane roads lined by dense orange groves in the Central Valley of California.The banner, flags and rallying cry — “Yes, we can” — echoed back more than half a century to when Cesar Chavez, a co-founder of the United Farm Workers union, led agricultural workers on a pilgrimage along a similar route to meet lawmakers in Sacramento.“We are a legacy of Cesar Chavez,” said Ms. Mota, 47, who, when blisters began to form on her feet during the 24-day trek in August, gathered strength by thinking of how the march in the 1960s led to groundbreaking farmworker reforms and propelled the U.F.W. to national prominence.“We can achieve what we want,” Ms. Mota said.What the farmworkers wanted last summer was for Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign into law a bill that they argued would make it easier and less intimidating for workers to vote in union elections — a key step, they believed, in rebuilding the size and influence of a now far less prolific U.F.W. But changing a rule is not the same as changing the game. The question now is whether the U.F.W. can show it has not irretrievably lost its organizing touch and can regain the ability to mobilize public opinion on its behalf as it did under Mr. Chavez.The union is a shadow of what it was decades ago. Membership hovers around 5,500 farmworkers, less than 2 percent of the state’s agricultural work force, compared with 60,000 in the 1970s. In the same period, the number of growers covered by U.F.W. contracts has fallen to 22 from about 150. The march last summer stood as a reckoning of sorts for a union desperate to regain its relevance.California’s fields provide about half of the produce grown in the United States for domestic consumption.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesFarmworkers at an orange grove outside Fresno.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesU.F.W. officials say they have secured contracts focusing on health coverage.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesLabor organizing has rebounded nationwide in the last few years, with unions winning elections at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island and at least 275 Starbucks stores, and among white-collar workers in the tech and media industries. But in California’s fields, which supply about half of the produce grown in the United States for the domestic market, such efforts have found little traction.It has been more than five years since the U.F.W. mounted an organizing drive and election petition in the state — at Premiere Raspberries in Watsonville. The U.F.W. unionization vote succeeded, but the company refused to negotiate a contract and in 2020 announced plans to shut down and lay off more than 300 workers.Ms. Mota, who has worked seasonal jobs around the state for two decades, has seen her wages drop by about $6,000 over the last several years. She is now earning around $15,000 a year. She said that on farms without union contracts, bosses sometimes make veiled threats about cutting hours, refuse to give workers breaks in 100-plus degree weather and turn a blind eye to dangerous conditions.“Where we do not have a union contract, there is no respect,” she said in Spanish on a recent morning from her ranch-style home in the farming town of Madera.But the bill backed by Ms. Mota, which Mr. Newsom signed into law after the marchers arrived in Sacramento, has fueled a cautious optimism. Backers say the ability to more freely organize will help them gain more influence.“There is new energy, new legislation and attention from the public in terms of workers’ rights,” said Christian Paiz, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, who has researched farm labor in the state. “We could be on the front lines of a renaissance.”The Shadow of Cesar ChavezFarmworkers have, for generations and by design, existed on the fringes of the American work force.The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 excluded farm and domestic workers from federal protections — a decision, rooted in racism, that ensured that the Black, Latino and Asian people whose work opportunities were largely limited to those two industries were not covered.But by the 1960s, momentum for change was building.Farm workers on their march from Delano to Sacramento in 1966.Jon Lewis/Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale UniversityMr. Chavez, who was a farm laborer picking avocados and peas before becoming a grass-roots organizer, teamed up with Dolores Huerta, a young workers’ rights activist from the Central Valley, and in 1962 they founded the National Farm Workers Association. It became the U.F.W.Labor Organizing and Union DrivesA New Inquiry?: A committee led by Senator Bernie Sanders will hold a vote to open an investigation into federal labor law violations by major corporations and subpoena Howard Schultz, the chief executive of Starbucks, as the first witness.Whitney Museum: After more than a year of bargaining, the cultural institution and its employees are moving forward with a deal that will significantly raise pay and improve job security.Mining Strike: Hundreds of coal miners in Alabama have been told by their union that they can start returning to work before a contract deal has been reached, bringing an end to one of the longest mining strikes in U.S. history.Gag Rules: The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that it is generally illegal for companies to offer severance agreements that require confidentiality and nondisparagement.Three years later, it was a key force behind the Delano grape workers’ strike, in which thousands of Mexican and Filipino farmworkers walked off their jobs, demanding raises from $1.25 to $1.40 an hour, as well as elections that could pave the way for unionization.As the striking farmworkers made their way along the 335-mile trek in 1966, which started in Delano, the group grew steadily, and other unions began to pledge their support.In the Bay Area, longshoremen had refused to load shipments of grapes that hadn’t been picked by unionized workers and, before long, a statewide pressure campaign had become a national one.Weeks after the march began, a lawyer for Schenley Industries, a large Central Valley grape grower that was a target of the boycott, contacted Mr. Chavez, and the company soon agreed to negotiate a contract. It officially recognized the U.F.W., making it the first major corporation to acknowledge a farm union.The grape workers’ strike stretched into the summer of 1970, when widespread consumer boycotts forced major growers to sign on to collective bargaining agreements between the union and several thousand workers.In the years that followed, Mr. Chavez forged a relationship with Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, and helped champion the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, which established the right to collective bargaining for farmworkers and created a board to enforce the act and arbitrate labor fights between workers and growers. It was the first law in the country guaranteeing protections to farm workers.Cesar Chavez, center, leader of the National Farm Workers Association, outside a farm in 1966, with supporters bearing signs proclaiming “Strike.” The association was a predecessor of the United Farm Workers.Paul Fusco/Magnum PhotosBut the union’s gains soon began to erode. Mr. Brown’s Republican successor, George Deukmejian, and his appointees made changes to the farm labor board in the 1980s and cut funding, arguing that the adjustments were necessary to correct an “easily perceived bias” in favor of farm workers and the U.F.W. and against growers. And even when the union has won elections, it has often faced legal challenges from growers that can drag on for years.The law that Mr. Newsom signed last year, Assembly Bill 2183, was the union’s biggest legislative victory in years. It paved the way for farmworkers to vote in union elections without in-person election sites. For years, U.F.W. officials argued that dwindling membership numbers stemmed from fears about voting in person at sites often held on properties owned by the growers.The bill faced opposition from growers, who contended that the measure would allow union organizers to unfairly influence the process. Mr. Newsom initially voiced reticence, but signed the measure into law after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Biden publicly pushed him to do so.“In the state with the largest population of farmworkers, the least we owe them is an easier path to make a free and fair choice to organize a union,” Mr. Biden said at the time.Supporters of the measure highlight how the demographics of farmworkers have changed over the years. In the 1970s, under Mr. Chavez, many farmworkers were U.S. citizens, but migration from Mexico and Central America in the decades that followed created a work force composed primarily of undocumented workers. Because they lack immigration papers, supporters say, they are especially vulnerable. (Undocumented workers can be covered by labor agreements.)In signing the measure, Mr. Newsom and the U.F.W. agreed to support follow-up compromise legislation that would guard farmworker confidentiality during elections and place limits on card-check voting, a method in which employees sign cards in favor of unionizing.‘We Are Ignored’Last summer, as she marched past vineyards and groves of mandarin oranges, Ms. Mota thought of the harvest cycle that has defined much of her life.She reflected on the dormant season, in December and January, when she prunes pistachio and almond trees, and the rainy months, when it’s sometimes hard to find work. But then comes the prosperous citrus and grape harvests, through the spring and the fall, which always make her think of the families who will eventually toast with wine squeezed from the fruit she plucked from the vine.“I love for my hands to harvest a fruit and then seeing those fruits and vegetables in the restaurant,” Ms. Mota said.U.F.W. supporters marched last year to urge Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign a bill that would make it easier for workers to vote in union elections.Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle, via Associated PressShe thought, too, about the invisibility and dangers of her work — the tiny teeth marks etched into her leather boot by a snake bite, the molehill where she badly sprained her ankle, the co-worker airlifted to San Francisco with injuries.“We are ignored,” she said.Still, she didn’t feel that way during the march, where in many towns people greeted them with snacks, Gatorade and full meals. While the group was in Stockton, an inland port city, Ms. Huerta, now 92, stood before the crowd wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with the words, “Sí se puede.”“You all have made me so proud,” she told them.Ms. Huerta, who helped negotiate the first farmworker contract with Schenley, left U.F.W. leadership more than two decades ago to pursue other causes. But in an interview, she said the need for unionization remained as high as it was when she helped start the union.“Farmworkers wanted the support and still want the support,” said Ms. Huerta, who attributed the dearth of contracts to a refusal by growers to bargain in good faith.Despite setbacks in recent decades, U.F.W. officials say they have continued to secure contracts that focus on health care benefits, wage increases and cultivating a respectful culture between farmworkers and employees. At Monterey Mushrooms, which has operated under a contract since the 1980s, U.F.W. officials say the average annual income for a mushroom picker is $45,000 and includes vacation time and a pension. (The statewide average for farmworkers is between $20,000 and $25,000 a year, according to the U.S. Labor Department.)“With a union contract, workers are educated about their rights and empowered to defend them,” said Teresa Romero, the union’s president.Issues might vary from farm to farm, Ms. Romero said. “In one workplace it may be low wages, in another it may be unsafe conditions, in still another it may be the workplace culture — having to pay bribes or endure sexual harassment to get work or having a particular supervisor who is racist or cruel,” she said. “We understand the immense risks that workers are taking when speaking up on the job; it takes courage for workers to form their union.”Dolores Huerta, a founder of the U.F.W., at a rally in the 1970s.Cathy Murphy/Getty ImagesMs. Romero said she was confident that the new state law — along with a streamlined federal process to protect workers involved in labor disputes surrounding immigration threats from employers — would translate into more bargaining power and more contracts.A Question of StrategySome labor watchers are skeptical of the union’s ability to reinvigorate itself.Miriam Pawel, an author who has written extensively about the union and Mr. Chavez, said the U.F.W.’s decline reflected a shortfall in organizing efforts in the communities where farmworkers live.“It’s evolved more into an advocacy organization and walked away from the more difficult work of organizing,” Ms. Pawel said. Referring to the 1975 labor relations act, she added, “They have the most favorable labor law in the country and have barely taken advantage.”Ms. Pawel cited a 2016 state law mandating that agricultural employers pay overtime if people worked more than eight hours in a day. The union lobbied for the measure, but growers warned that they couldn’t afford to pay overtime and would adjust schedules to avoid doing so. The new overtime rule has been phased in over the years, and some farmworkers have voiced anger about losing hours.“If the union were stronger in the fields, and at organizing, it could have won elections and demanded better overtime provisions in contracts,” Ms. Pawel said.Ms. Romero pushed back against such criticism, arguing that, until Mr. Newsom signed A.B. 2183 in September, many farmworkers had justified fears that, if they sought unionization, their bosses would fire them or even try to get them deported.Indeed, a report by the University of California, Merced, Community and Labor Center found that 36 percent of farmworkers said they would not file a report against their employer for failing to comply with workplace safety rules and that 64 percent cited fear of employer retaliation or job loss.And since the bill’s passage, the Farm Employers Labor Service, a trade group that staunchly opposed the law, has placed advertisements on Spanish-language radio stations, warning about what it means to be in a union. In one ad, a man shouts: “Signing a union petition can lead to the union stealing 3 percent of your salary! Do not let them!”Those messages deeply concern Ms. Romero.“Filing for an election when workers are not protected from genuine risks of retaliation will only lead already poor people into further hardship,” she said. “This is the implicit threat that the growers’ power depends on.”‘They Just Want to Work’Joe Del Bosque at his melon farm in Firebaugh, Calif. He has never had a union contract and plans to keep it that way.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesMany California growers say they can be better bosses without unions.On a recent afternoon off Interstate 5 in the small city of Firebaugh, Joe Del Bosque stared out at bare fields on the melon farm he has owned since 1985. A thick fog hung over the area, and the ground was puddled from rain water. It was the quiet season on the farm, where he employs more than 100 farmworkers annually.Mr. Del Bosque said that when he was a boy, his parents, legal U.S. residents, traveled from a town near the California-Mexico border to the Central Valley to pick melons every summer. As a farm owner, he has never had a union contract, and aims to keep it that way.He provides his employees with good conditions and fair wages, he said, without their having to pay union dues. “From my experience, workers who are moving around from season to season do not want the extra hands involved,” he said of the union. “They just want to work.”He said he had little trouble finding field hands, including migrants who move from farm to farm with each season. And he noted that in the Salinas Valley — closer to the coast, where housing is more expensive — many growers rely on H-2A visas, which let them bring workers, often from Mexico, for just a few months of the year.That impermanence, he said, works against the U.F.W. “If the workers are here only a few months a year and then leave the state, how are you going to organize?” he said.Mr. Del Bosque said that he respected the U.F.W.’s history and the groundwork of Mr. Chavez and Ms. Huerta, but that he opposed A.B. 2183. The law, he contends, will allow the U.F.W. to unfairly sway farmworkers at their kitchen tables and behind closed doors.“That’s the intimidation factor,” Mr. Del Bosque said.A New Spirit of ActivismAsuncion Ponce began harvesting grapes in the late 1980s. He says bosses on unionized farms “don’t mess with you.”Mark Abramson for The New York TimesWhile the impact of the law remains unclear, it has buoyed the spirits of some farmworkers.Asuncion Ponce started harvesting grapes along the rolling green hills of the Central Valley in the late 1980s. Through the decades, Mr. Ponce has worked on several farms with U.F.W. contracts. Bosses on those farms, he said, seemed aware that if they harassed or mistreated workers, the union would step in.“They don’t mess with you any more,” he said, “because they think there could be problems.”Even so, he has seen his financial security decline. He averaged $20,000 a year in the 1990s and 2000s, he said, but these days he brings in around $10,000 a year picking grapes and pruning pistachio trees. His eight-hour shifts are no longer supplemented by overtime, as growers have cut hours — partly as a result of the overtime bill U.F.W. leaders supported.Occasionally, Mr. Ponce said, he relied on third-party contractors, who growers sometimes employ, to find him available work. But he said he was optimistic that with the new legislation he would land a full-time job on a union farm.On a recent evening, the 66-year-old sipped coffee and decompressed after a shift at a farm outside of Fresno. His feet ached and his flannel shirt was stained with fertilizer, but he is happy that his job lets him spend all day outdoors — a passion born in his hometown in the Mexican state of Puebla, where he harvested corn and anise.He smiled softly under his white mustache as he spoke about the legacy of Mr. Chavez, which inspired him to join for several legs of the pilgrimage last summer.“I marched for many reasons,” he said in Spanish. “So we are not as harassed and mistreated as we are now in the fields, so benefits and better treatment come our way.”For Ms. Mota, joining the march helped awaken a new spirit of activism.Over the years, she said, she felt afraid to talk about unionizing at work, but now she tells any colleagues who will listen about the advantages she sees: the ability to negotiate a better salary, benefits and a respect for seniority.Her viewpoint was shaped in her early years as a farmworker. “Throughout the years I have realized that we are marginalized,” she said. “They don’t value us.”Once, she said, she watched as a farmer grabbed a knife used to harvest cantaloupe and put it to the cheek of another worker. He glared into the farmworker’s eyes, she said, and called the workers his slaves.“You feel humiliated,” she said, fighting back tears.She is convinced that having a strong union is the only answer. “We deserve a dignified life in this country,” she said.“Throughout the years I have realized that we are marginalized,” Veronica Mota said.Mark Abramson for The New York Times More

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    U.K. Rail Strike May Scuttle Post-Holiday Plans to Return to Work

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    Public sympathy for striking nurses and other health workers is particularly strong, posing a challenge for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has promised to confront trade unions.The winter holiday season across most of Britain ends on Tuesday, but the return to work for millions of Britons comes on the same day as yet another train strike, promising a commute as unpredictable as the country’s increasingly erratic rail network.Britain begins the new year just as it ended the old one, in the middle of a wave of labor unrest that has involved as many as 1.5 million workers so far, concentrated in the public sector and formerly state-owned businesses. Nurses in England, Northern Ireland and Wales walked out twice last month; ambulance crews have staged their largest work stoppage in decades; and border agents, postal staff and garbage collectors have taken similar action in a “winter of discontent.”With wages lagging galloping inflation, many, including nurses, plan to stop work again this month, leading some British news outlets to raise fears of a de facto general strike that could bring the country to a grinding halt.Yet while months of disruption have eroded some sympathy for rail workers, with the public roughly split over train strikes, support for health workers, whose tireless efforts during the coronavirus pandemic were widely lauded as heroic, remains buoyant.“January will be the test: Will the British public shift?” said Steven Fielding, an emeritus professor of political history at the University of Nottingham. He added that while further rail strikes might prompt a long-predicted backlash against the unions, “It’s remarkable how much it hasn’t happened.”Sympathy for strikes by nurses and ambulance workers has been stoked by a sense than Britain’s National Health Service is overwhelmed.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesThat is not for want of effort by Britain’s conservative tabloids. One newspaper nicknamed Mick Lynch, the combative leader of a rail union, “The Grinch,” accusing him of wrecking Christmas, spoiling office parties and hampering family reunions. In the city of Bristol, one pub canceled a rail workers’ Christmas party in retaliation for strikes thought to have hurt the hospitality trade.But in general, support for the strikers has stayed strong, according to a YouGov opinion poll last month, which showed 66 percent of respondents supported striking nurses and 28 percent opposed them, 58 favoring firefighters with 33 against, and 43 percent in favor of rail workers with 49 opposed. Another poll, by Savanta ComRes, found the same percentage in support of further rail strikes, but only 36 percent opposed.Even many Britons who support the governing Conservative Party say they believe that health workers have a case, a reflection both of the popularity of the country’s National Health Service and concerns about its ability to cope with huge pressures. And, underscoring a growing sense of malaise, another poll recorded a majority agreeing with the statement that “nothing in Britain works anymore.”That may pose a challenge for Britain’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, who insists that agreeing to raises could embed inflation, which he sees as the real enemy of working people. Instead, he promises new, and as yet unspecified, laws to restrict labor unrest, while critics of trade unions argue rail workers are risking their futures as commuters stay away from a network already suffering from the growth of working from home.“It’s difficult for everybody because inflation is where it is, and the best way to help them and everyone else in the country is for us to get a grip and reduce inflation as quickly as possible,” Mr. Sunak told a parliamentary committee in December, when asked about the plight of striking workers.Nurses striking in London last month. A poll last month found 66 percent of respondents in favor of the strike, with 28 percent opposed.Maja Smiejkowska/ReutersNews reports suggest that an agreement to end the rolling series of rail strikes could be close, but despite holding the purse strings over the employers of rail staff, the government has resisted direct involvement in negotiations.The wave of strikes comes amid Britain’s cost-of-living crisis and follows years of constrained public spending, and unions say they are responding to a decade of neglect of vital services.“I think the fact that this comes after 10 to 12 years of austerity has affected the public mood and is maybe what’s helping the unions and their members not to lose public support,” said Peter Kellner, a polling expert. “The evidence so far is that public opinion hasn’t materially shifted. I don’t see any particular reason why it should, especially with the health service,” he added.At King’s Cross Station in London last week, there were certainly signs of annoyance among commuters at the disrupted services.“Most of the time my train is canceled or delayed,” said Daisy Smith, an airline worker from London who was waiting to travel to York, about two hours north of the capital. “It is ridiculous that they are on strike.”King’s Cross Station in London last week. Britons have long found their train service unreliable.Hollie Adams/Getty ImagesBut Ms. Smith said she sympathized with the strikers, believed they deserved a pay rise and was frustrated by the standoff. “The government needs to do something about it,” she said, adding that the dispute had been allowed to fester for months.Andrew Allonby, a public-sector worker who was traveling home to Newcastle, in northeast England, said he, too, supported the strikers.“I know there is no money around, but there has got to be a line,” he said, referring to reports that some health workers were relying on donated groceries. “Nurses having to go to food banks is ridiculous.”Public sympathy is being driven by a widespread feeling that the health system is understaffed and overwhelmed. One senior doctor made headlines by warning that as many as 500 patients a week could be dying because of long delays in emergency rooms across the country. And on Monday the vice president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said many emergency departments were in a state of crisis.Pay levels for nurses are recommended by an independent body whose suggestion of a 4.3 percent increase, issued before much of last year’s inflation was evident, had been accepted by the government.That is well short of the 19 percent demanded by nurses, but ministers have refused to budge, pointing to a 3 percent annual raise for nurses in 2021, when the pay of many others was frozen for the year.Britain’s health secretary, Steve Barclay, raised hackles last month by saying that striking ambulance unions had made a “conscious choice to inflict harm on patients” — a statement described by Sharon Graham, general secretary of the union Unite, as a “blatant lie.”Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has promised new laws to restrict labor unrest.Kin Cheung/Associated PressMark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, told the broadcaster Sky News, “We have had 10 years where our pay has not kept pace with inflation.” He added that 40,000 government staff members used food banks and that 45,000 of them were so poor they had to claim welfare payments.Dawn Poole, a striking border force officer at London’s Heathrow International Airport and representative of the union, said that rising food and energy costs, combined with a hike in mortgage interest rates, had been the final straw for already-struggling staff.“We have had people selling houses to downsize or struggling to pay the rent,” she said. Mr. Sunak’s tough stance is a gamble. If the strikes collapse, that could build his reputation as a leader able to stand firm and administer tough measures to stabilize the economy. It could also bolster his leadership within a fractious Conservative Party, where standing up to trade unions is associated with former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who came to power in 1979 after labor unrest also known as the winter of discontent and faced down striking miners.Mrs. Thatcher, however, prepared for her standoff with the miners, ensuring that coal stocks were high and confronting them at a time when unions were widely seen as too powerful.Inflation in Britain has been running at an annual rate of over 10 percent.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockBy contrast, today’s unions appear to be more in sync with the popular mood, analysts say, because Britons know that well before the strikes, their railways were unreliable and their health service was creaking under acute pressure.“The argument that ‘We’re on strike to save the National Health Service,’ which is what the nurses have been saying, resonates with what people know from their own experience,” said Professor Fielding.Mr. Kellner, the polling expert, said he believed that the government should separate the nurses and ambulance crews from other strikers.“As long as the health workers are on strike, the other unions have some degree of cover,” he said. “If in a month’s time we are where we are now, with nothing settled, I think the government will be in a really bad position.”In the meantime, rail travelers must decide whether to even try to head to the office this week. As one rail operator warned: “Until Jan. 8, only travel by train if absolutely necessary.” 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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    Leaders in Congress Say They Will Act to Prevent Rail Strike

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    Democratic and Republican leaders prepared to intercede as President Biden warned the prospect of a December strike put the U.S. economy “at risk.”After a meeting with President Biden, Democratic and Republican leaders pledged to pass legislation that would avert a planned nationwide rail strike in December.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWASHINGTON — Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress vowed on Tuesday to pass legislation averting a nationwide rail strike, saying they agreed with President Biden that a work stoppage during the holidays next month would disrupt shipping and deal a devastating blow to the nation’s economy.The rare bipartisan promise to act came as some of the nation’s largest business groups warned of dire consequences from a rail shutdown. Mr. Biden, who had promised to be the most pro-union president in the country’s history, said the federal government must short-circuit collective bargaining in this case for the good of the country as a whole.“It’s not an easy call, but I think we have to do it,” he told the top four lawmakers from both parties during a meeting at the White House on Tuesday morning, as the Dec. 9 strike deadline loomed. “The economy is at risk.”Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House would vote Wednesday on a tentative agreement that Mr. Biden’s administration had helped negotiate between rail companies and the unions earlier this year. The agreement raised wages but lacked provisions for paid medical or family leave.Late Tuesday, facing substantial frustration among progressives who demanded that the offer include paid leave, Ms. Pelosi said she would also bring up a separate proposal to add seven days of paid sick leave to the agreement. It is unclear whether Republicans in the Senate would agree to such an addition, but the plan to hold a vote illustrated the degree of discontent among pro-union liberals about the agreement Mr. Biden had struck.“They demand the basic dignity of paid sick days. I stand with them,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, said on Twitter. “If Congress intervenes, it should be to have workers’ backs and secure their demands in legislation.”Senate leaders said they would work to pass legislation to avert the strike quickly after it passes the House, as expected. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, told reporters that “we’re going to need to pass a bill,” suggesting that Republicans did not intend to try to block such a move. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, said, “I think it will pass.”If it does, it will be bittersweet for Mr. Biden, who has built a decades-long political career by stressing his support for unions in their battles against management. Aides said the president had been reluctant to override the will of union workers, but ultimately changed his mind when three of his cabinet secretaries told him that negotiations had broken down and a strike seemed inevitable.Officials said Mr. Biden concluded that the effects of a strike, including hundreds of thousands of lost jobs, would be too damaging. Frozen train lines would snap supply chains for commodities like lumber, coal and chemicals, and delay deliveries of automobiles and other consumer goods, driving up prices even further.The American Trucking Associations, an industry group, recently estimated that relying on trucks to work around a rail stoppage would require more than 450,000 additional vehicles — a practical impossibility given the shortage of equipment and drivers.Understand the Railroad Labor TalksCard 1 of 5Averting a shutdown. More

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    Starbucks Showdown in Boston Points to New Phase of Union Campaign

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    The company moved to contain the labor push after it took off nationally. Now, with strikes and other tactics, organizers seek to regain momentum.For much of the summer, employees reliably turned up at a Starbucks near Boston University. But instead of going inside to serve coffee, they sat outside in lawn chairs — as part of a strike over what they said was retaliation for unionizing.When passers-by inquired how long the strike would last, workers responded, “As long as it has to.” Ultimately, they shut the store for more than two months, until satisfied that Starbucks would not impose new scheduling requirements in union stores that they said would force some of them to quit. Starbucks said it had told union stores for weeks that there would be no such change and denied retaliating against union supporters.The walkout was one of dozens at unionized Starbucks locations in recent months, meant partly to re-energize a labor organizing effort whose momentum has stalled since the spring and has so far yielded no contract.When workers at three Buffalo-area locations filed for union elections in August 2021, it appeared to catch the company off guard. The campaign spread rapidly, unionizing roughly 250 stores.But election filings dropped from about 70 in March to under 10 in August, ushering in a second phase of the campaign: an uneasy stalemate in which organizers struggled to sign up new stores even as the company was hard-pressed to reverse their gains.“In the context of the size of the organization as a whole, it’s a drop in the bucket,” said David Pryzbylski, a partner at the management-side firm Barnes & Thornburg, alluding to the company’s 9,000 corporate-owned locations. But he added: “Anyone who thinks it’s going back anywhere close to zero is foolish. It’s safe to assume they’ll have at least hundreds of cafes unionized going forward.”That has led to a third phase of the campaign, in which the union, Workers United, has stepped up efforts to win concessions from the company through collective bargaining, which is scheduled for the coming weeks.Some of the concessions sought by the union, like a commitment by the company to stay neutral in future elections, could make it easier for workers to unionize. Others, like paid leave tied to a pandemic, which the company has discontinued, could encourage more workers to join the union by showing it can deliver concrete benefits.But to win such concessions and greatly expand the union’s reach, labor experts say, supporters will almost certainly have to increase pressure on the company, through strikes or other means. And that has heightened the importance of a number of cities — in addition to Boston and Buffalo, places like Eugene, Ore.; Albany, N.Y.; and Ann Arbor, Mich. — where there are several unionized stores, dozens of workers willing to coordinate their actions and a community that is largely sympathetic.“Massing forces in a particular geographic region and attempting to spread the conflagration there has the potential to work,” said Peter Olney, a former organizing director of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. “I would focus on those metro areas.”One architect of the union’s strategy in Boston is a recent law school graduate named Kylah Clay, who works as a barista at a unionized store.On a blistering afternoon in August, Ms. Clay, wearing a tank top and green army pants, sat outside the Boston University store holding a stack of checks that workers came to collect, courtesy of the union’s Starbucks strike fund.In between, she recalled how she and a colleague had recently ambushed their district manager at another store after he had become slow to respond to their calls and text messages. “We went up to the district manager and started making our demands,” Ms. Clay said. As Ms. Clay tells it, she knew almost nothing about unions before last year, when company officials began pouring into Buffalo after the campaign had gone public. Among them was Howard Schultz, who was between tours as chief executive. “When Buffalo filed, Howard should have kept his mouth shut,” she said. “I would have never gotten involved.”Employees at her store, where she had first worked during law school, and another Boston-area store filed for union elections in December and won their votes in April. Since then, more than 15 stores in New England have also unionized, most of them with her help. Nationwide, the union has won about 250 out of just over 300 votes.But adding to the total has become more difficult. “Stores that are easy to organize, that had people in them who were natural leaders, who were excited about it — those have filed already,” said Brick Zurek, a former Starbucks employee in Chicago who helped organize workers there.Adjustments in the way that Starbucks treats workers have also appeared to play a role. During the early phase of the union campaign, the company generally did not fire workers involved in organizing. But this year, Starbucks began to do so more regularly — like when it fired seven workers in Memphis who were recently reinstated by a federal judge.The National Labor Relations Board issued multiple complaints against Starbucks for firing union supporters, and the agency’s judges have ruled against the company in a few cases so far.Reggie Borges, a Starbucks spokesman, denied that the company had unlawfully forced out workers, saying any increase in disciplinary action against union supporters reflected an increase in violations.In May, the company announced wage increases and new benefits, like faster sick leave accrual, that would apply only to employees of nonunion stores or those not in the process of organizing.Kylah Clay, a recent law school graduate, works at a unionized Starbucks in Boston, and she leads a committee that has helped other stores in New England organize.Tony Luong for The New York TimesJulie Langevin, a worker involved in organizing a Starbucks store near Boston that voted against the union, said several longtime employees in her store relied on Starbucks for health care and had become alarmed that unionized workers might miss out on benefits.“They were extremely concerned that they would actually lose health insurance,” Ms. Langevin said.The labor board has issued a complaint against the company for withholding new benefits and wage increases from unionized employees. Starbucks has said it is forbidden by federal law from adding certain benefits unilaterally in unionized stores.Workers United is an established union with more than 70,000 members across the United States and Canada, but has often relied on Starbucks workers to organize their own stores and plan their own labor actions.Ms. Clay leads a committee that helps New England stores organize, sending out union “starter kits” that include Starbucks Workers United T-shirts and union cards with envelopes addressed to the labor relations board. “I have one closet with 300 shirts in it,” she said in August.She also leads the region’s collective action committee, which came about after workers at a Boston-area store staged a daylong strike over a leaky roof in late May. (Starbucks said the leak had been repaired within a business day.)Six weeks later, as the committee was contemplating a series of daylong walkouts in response to the company’s withholding of new benefits from union stores, workers at the store near Boston University decided to strike. Spencer Costigan and Nora Rossi, two union leaders at the store, which is at 874 Commonwealth Avenue, said workers were fed up with what they described as retaliation for unionizing and the company’s refusal to bargain.“They texted me out of the blue and said, ‘I think we’re ready to do it,’” Ms. Clay said. “Not as many stores were interested at the time. But then they saw 874 and were like, ‘Ah, OK.’” Workers eventually waged strikes that closed five stores for one week; the strike at 874 Commonwealth sprawled across nine weeks.The actions seemed to build support for their cause. The Boston City Council passed a resolution backing the strikers, and politicians, activists, students and other union members joined the picket line at all hours of the day and night.Ms. Clay also leads the region’s collective action committee.Tony Luong for The New York TimesWorkers at the Boston University store called off the strike in late September, a few days after Starbucks posted an announcement to baristas saying stores that had unionized by early July would not be subject to a requirement that workers be available to work at least 18 hours a week. (The requirement would take effect at nonunion stores.)Ms. Rossi said that, before the workers went on strike in mid-July, their manager had pressured some union supporters to increase their availability under the new rule or leave their jobs. Other unionized workers in Massachusetts made similar complaints on a messaging app as recently as early September.Mr. Borges, the Starbucks spokesman, said the rule had never applied to union stores, citing communications to managers in July and a tweet by the Starbucks union the same month. He emphasized that the company had not negotiated with the striking workers or offered them concessions.A few days after the strike ended, Starbucks began sending letters to worker representatives at unionized stores proposing a window for bargaining in October. The union’s president, Lynne Fox, had sought to bargain on a regional or national scale as the union prepared proposals with input from thousands of workers, but the union has accepted the store-by-store approach preferred by the company. Starbucks has nonetheless continued to portray the union as resistant to store-level bargaining.The outcome of the negotiations could reverberate beyond Starbucks. In an email that Geico sent to employees in August, after some workers there began union organizing, the company emphasized that Starbucks had recently offered wage and benefit increases only to nonunion stores. Other large employers are surely watching closely as well.Ms. Clay, for one, believes the stakes are high enough that she has altered her career plans, declining a job in the local public defender’s office so she can stay at Starbucks and push for a contract.“There was some grieving to it — I spent the last five years trying to do that job,” she said. “But you have to go where the wind takes you.” 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