Baldwin Calls on Biden To Require Rail Sick Days

Sen. Tammy Baldwin is one of 15 senators and more than 50 U.S. representatives asking President Joe Biden to use an executive order to require paid sick days for railroad workers.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sent a letter to Biden on Friday urging him to take the action a week after Congress passed and the president signed legislation ratifying a contract for railroad workers, averting a strike that threatened to shut down rail traffic nationwide. Baldwin (D-Wis.) joined the letter, along with Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Madison), who was one of 52 House members to sign.

The absence of paid sick days in the contract was among the reasons four unions rejected the agreement before Congress imposed it. A contract amendment that would have guaranteed rail workers seven paid sick days a year passed the House but stalled in the Senate despite the backing of a majority of senators because it didn’t clear the threshold of 60 votes required to move it forward.

“In the first three quarters of this year, the rail industry has made over $21 billion in profits while providing their CEOs with huge compensation packages,” the letter states. “Meanwhile, in the year 2022, workers in the rail industry receive zero paid sick days. What this means is that if a rail worker comes down with COVID, the flu, or some other illness and calls in sick, that worker will not only receive no pay, but will be penalized and, in some cases, fired.”

The letter says that granting paid sick days to the 115,000 railroad workers covered by the contract would cost the railroad industry collectively $321 million — “less than two percent of their annual profits.”

The letter says a 2015 executive order signed by President Barack Obama that established paid sick leave for federal contractors could be expanded to include railroad employees, who were excluded from that order on the basis of federal contracts with freight carriers.

Alternatively, the U.S. labor secretary could institute a paid sick leave policy under the Occupational Safety and Health Act’s power to set occupational health and safety standards for employers involved in interstate commerce, according to the letter. “We can think of few things that threaten the safety and health of workers more than being required to come into work sick and exhausted and we can think of few industries more quintessential to interstate commerce than freight rail,” it states.

The letter also suggests that the Department of Transportation could institute the requirement as part of the department’s “duty to promote safety in all areas of railroad operations.”

Baldwin joins call for Biden to require rail sick days by executive order was originally published by the Wisconsin Examiner.