- 15 Sep 2022 00:55
#15247006
The discourse unfortunately seems to be moving toward "a strike would be politically damaging for the Democrats" which implies that the rail strikers are unreasonable. Rail contracts are completely unjust - workers get no PTO and must be on call, unpaid, for weeks at a time. If someone told you you couldn't be more than 30 minutes from your office at any time of day or night, just in case, for weeks and weeks you'd expect compensation.
JIT Manufacturing and these idiot managers with MBAs that learned about it are too blame. They try to run things with as bare a staff and as bare reserves as possible, with zero margin for error, having completely mislearned the lessons of Toyota and other Japanese corporations. Hire a few extra guys and pay the guys on call or stop demanding them be constantly available.
Hopefully Congress steps in and forces the freight companies here to comply.
New York Times wrote:ust as the global supply chain flashes signs of returning to normal, a new crisis now threatens to disrupt the transport of a vast range of goods, from agricultural crops to lumber to coal.
If tens of thousands of rail workers follow through on threats to strike as soon as Friday in pursuit of better working conditions, that would unleash potentially monumental havoc on the system used to move products from place to place.
In a sign of how hard it could be to avoid a strike, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 19 said Wednesday that 4,900 of its members had rejected a tentative contract that the union had negotiated with the railroads. The Machinists union, one of a dozen at the center of complex talks among the railroads, workers and federal officials, said its members would not stop working before Sept. 29 to give negotiators time to reach a better deal with the companies.
A strike could exacerbate the congestion that has plagued American ports. It would bring fresh pressure to bear on trucking companies — the most obvious alternatives for moving freight — as they complain that they cannot find enough drivers. It would stymie the movement of goods just as politicians and the markets wrestle with soaring prices for consumer products.
“Rail’s a big deal. It’s how a lot of stuff moves,” said Phil Levy, chief economist at Flexport, a San Francisco company that manages transportation logistics for multinational companies. “There’s not a lot of slack in the trucking system.”
Rail moves roughly two-fifths of long-distance American freight and one-third of exports, making the stakes enormous. What’s more, rail is a central component of a complex global supply chain that depends on the coordinated movements of cargo ships, trains and trucks.
If any one of those elements suffers trouble, the rest quickly feel the effects.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/busi ... chain.html
The discourse unfortunately seems to be moving toward "a strike would be politically damaging for the Democrats" which implies that the rail strikers are unreasonable. Rail contracts are completely unjust - workers get no PTO and must be on call, unpaid, for weeks at a time. If someone told you you couldn't be more than 30 minutes from your office at any time of day or night, just in case, for weeks and weeks you'd expect compensation.
JIT Manufacturing and these idiot managers with MBAs that learned about it are too blame. They try to run things with as bare a staff and as bare reserves as possible, with zero margin for error, having completely mislearned the lessons of Toyota and other Japanese corporations. Hire a few extra guys and pay the guys on call or stop demanding them be constantly available.
Hopefully Congress steps in and forces the freight companies here to comply.
- By Deutschmania
- By Tainari88
- By wat0n