Senators Help Donors Derail Paid Sick Days
The Senate voted against paid sick days for rail workers. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink)
The rejected proposal to provide rail workers sick leave would have cost railroad barons just four days worth of their recent profits, according to financial records.
by Matthew Cunningham-Cook & Rebecca Burns
The U.S. Senate voted Thursday to deny 125,000 rail workers a handful of paid sick days that would have cost the equivalent of just four days of recent profits made by senators’ railroad industry donors, according to financial records reviewed by The Lever.
The cost of paid sick days for this year — roughly $321 million — would be less than half the amount that a single railroad tycoon, Warren Buffett, funneled to his family foundations last week.
Buffett’s railroad firm BNSF scored a huge win when 43 senators blocked paid sick leave for exhausted railroad workers, and passed legislation preventing workers from striking. The Senate vote followed the Biden White House effectively pouring cold water on efforts to tie paid sick leave to the bill shutting down the rail strike, declaring in a press briefing that the president “does not support any bill or amendment that will delay a bill that’s getting to his desk by Saturday.”
Rail workers were asking for the same amount of paid sick days that Biden in 2020 promised he would grant to all workers in America if he was elected president. Biden has not committed to signing an executive order requiring railroads and other government contractors to provide paid sick days.
$7 Billion Of Profit In 90 Days
While opposing a plan that would have required them to spend $321 million to give workers seven paid sick days, the main railroad companies raked in more than $7 billion in profits and paid out over $1.8 billion in dividends, in a year where they and their lobbying groups have spent more than $13 million lobbying Congress — after railroad CEOs pocketed more than $200 million in compensation.
The railroad industry delivered more than $3.3 million in campaign contributions to Congress in the 2021-2022 cycle, according to data collected by Opensecrets.org.
The railroad workers — constrained by an outdated labor law, the Railway Labor Act, which severely limits their right to strike — have been outgunned this time by powerful corporate titans bearing little difference from the railroads’ robber baron founders.
In August, a federal report prepared by the Biden administration stated that the railroads contend that their enormous profits do not reflect “any contributions by labor.” The railroads, meanwhile, have waged a full-court press to have Congress implement an agreement negotiated by the Biden administration that only includes one day of paid sick leave, after refusing to agree to any paid sick days in three years of talks with unions.
Buffett’s BNSF, a wholly-owned subsidiary of his nearly $700 billion conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, raked in $1.4 billion in the last quarter. For the nine months ending on September 30, the company’s profits exploded to $4.5 billion — a $172 million increase from the prior year’s haul. Buffett himself is worth an estimated $110 billion, according to Bloomberg. The press regularly fawns over the so-called “Oracle of Omaha” for his supposed frugality, even though he travels in a $6.7 million private jet.