U.S. President's Attack on Railway Workers
Railway workers action in
Columbus, Ohio, December 13, 2022.
The more it goes, the more the Biden Administration reveals itself as a government of police powers which considers workers to be things, not human beings. Its denigration of the role of labour in upholding the interests of society is so anti-democratic it removes any shred of credibility from the U.S. claim of being a democracy. The government also shows it lacks legitimacy when it comes to upholding the public interest. The administration's desperation to serve narrow private interests is such that it is no longer concerned with even the pretense of democracy and legitimacy.
This is evident in President Biden's attack on railway workers, where he repeatedly intervened on behalf of discredited narrow private interests whose attacks on railway workers and endangerment of public safety are notorious. Biden's attack on the right to strike and collectively bargain went so far as to impose a contract that enshrines the untenable working conditions which the railway barons have already imposed and which the workers are fighting.
These untenable conditions not only endanger the lives of the railway workers, but also mean that conditions of the tracks are neglected, and trains are overloaded with dangerous freight and undermanned, putting the places where the trains pass in dire danger. This makes Biden's claim that his actions defend the "millions of other working people and families" ring particularly hollow, and everyone knows it. Workers in many sectors of the U.S. economy face working conditions which are dangerous to themselves, their families and their communities and such lame justifications are met with the contempt they deserve.
The
working conditions of the railway workers are one with the safety
conditions of families and communities where railway lines pass. Their
demands are just, and a minimum required to make the railways
sustainable and safe. They include eliminating long hours and other
inhumane scheduling
practices; ending harsh attendance policies preventing time off work,
with
workers fired for being sick or attending funerals; and increased
staffing across the board, such as the many trains that need five
workers now having only two.
Meanwhile the railway barons have organized themselves into an oligopoly to get their demands met along with those of the narrow private interests the railways serve such as energy, chemical and agri-business. These are the voices which praised Biden's anti-worker actions and those of Congress.
The news and commentary in the monopoly media hides all of this. It has mostly centred on the issue of sick days and distorted the workers' demands on that issue to boot. But the fight of railway workers goes far beyond sick days. Like health care workers and others, all essential to the well-being and functioning of society, railway workers know there is a direct relation between their working conditions and the safety of the public. Biden's actions and media coverage serve to eliminate recognition of this relation by equating the narrow private interests of the oligopolies with those of the country and its security and well-being.
The speed with which Biden intervened to impose a contract on the railway workers was such that it contained no provisions for any sick days, paid or unpaid. This then enables those who claim to support the workers to demand that at least seven sick days be included in the imposed contract. It all serves to trivialize what is at stake in the United States and all the so-called representative democracies where civil rights contained in anachronistic constitutions are being eliminated by the stroke of presidential decrees which violate every known pillar of what is called a democratic system, such as the rights to collective bargaining, strike, association, and speech.
That Congress so rapidly followed suit further confirmed for many working people that the existing government is not only dysfunctional and failing to meet the individual, collective and social needs of the people, it has completely abandoned even giving the appearance of doing so. It has lost any legitimacy to decide the affairs of society.
Spending trillions of dollars every year for war and weapons of war while social needs and human beings are ignored at home and abroad causes great harm to human beings, humanity, and the U.S. economy itself. Even minimum funding needed and available for sick days for railway workers, or safe working conditions more generally, or safe water for all, or an end to hunger and impoverishment, is not provided. The rulers have shown themselves unfit to govern. To remain in power, the use of police powers is necessary -- whether through executive order, illegitimate laws, or force.
The inhumanity and criminal nature of such governance is evident for all to see, as is the fact that this quality transfers from president to president no matter who is brought to power. In the past, one consideration of the narrow private interests which bring these presidents to power has been maintaining the pretense of serving public and private interests equally or fairly in some way -- but this has now been thrown to the four winds. It reveals that workers must speak for themselves in the court of public opinion and must avoid the pitfall of depending on the courts to rule in their favour by restoring their civil rights. in their favour by restoring their civil rights. The new feature which has emerged is that legislatures submit to the police powers of the executive and then whatever laws are passed are called a rules-based system which everyone must submit to in the name of national security, a prosperous economy and so on.
It is the working class which must define nation-building in the 21st century, not narrow private interests which have usurped the state power. The old raison d'état enshrined in outdated constitutions must be replaced with a new one. Not a new one decreed and imposed by the narrow private interests, but a new one which the workers define consistent with the demands of history to humanize the natural and social environment and resolve problems in a manner which favors them and humanity itself.
This article was published in
Volume 52 Number 59 - December
15, 2022
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmld2022/Articles/D520592.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca