Speaker 1: It could happen here. Rail Strike Edition. I'm Robert Evans, Garrison, Davis, Chris.
Speaker 1: How are we all? How are we all doing? How's this?
Speaker 1: We were talking about a rail strike today. We're praying,
Speaker 1: we're praying for it. It hasn't happened. If you're listening
Speaker 1: to this, you probably know the broad strokes of this,
Speaker 1: which is that the people who make the trains go,
Speaker 1: and by the way, trains are like a critical part
Speaker 1: of us all not starving to death or running out
Speaker 1: of insulin or whatever. The people who make those trains
Speaker 1: go have a pretty hard job and there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of them. And for a variety of reasons that
Speaker 1: boiled down to companies not wanting to spend money. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's impossible for that. They don't get sick days. Um.
Speaker 1: So there were a bunch of other ship things like
Speaker 1: things that were ship about the job, including pay, especially
Speaker 1: since rail company profits have been at like record levels,
Speaker 1: so they were threatening to strike. There were union negotiations.
Speaker 1: Some of the union leaders reached an agreement with the
Speaker 1: rail companies, but it wasn't it didn't include the sick days.
Speaker 1: So a lot of workers, potentially most of them are
Speaker 1: We're at least willing to strike. And then Biden came
Speaker 1: in and had Congress basically say do the same thing
Speaker 1: Reagan did to the air traffic controllers in the eighties,
Speaker 1: where it's like, no, if you strike, it's illegal because
Speaker 1: this is a too critical a service for the country. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's broadly the situation. Chris, you know this a lot
Speaker 1: better than I the most pro labor president, the most
Speaker 1: pro labor presor okay, this is I think this is
Speaker 1: actually like that's that's why I don't like, that's my knowledge,
Speaker 1: and I think that's close to a layman's knowledge. So
Speaker 1: I'm waiting for you to fill in the gap. All right,
Speaker 1: let's let's let's start with what Biden has actually done,
Speaker 1: because it's it's it's slightly different than what Reagan was
Speaker 1: doing there with the air traffic controllers. Um. Part of
Speaker 1: the reason everything is fucked up with the railroads is that,
Speaker 1: like railroads almost since their inception have had like an
Speaker 1: almost entirely different regulatory framework than like anything else. So
Speaker 1: you know, your normal strike is covered by the National
Speaker 1: Labor Relations Act. Right, you go through your National Labor
Speaker 1: Relations Board, you do your votes, blah blah, blah blah. Uh.
Speaker 1: If your railroad workers are not covered by that, they're
Speaker 1: covered something by something called the Railway Labor Act, which
Speaker 1: lets Congress just be like, no, fuck you, you have
Speaker 1: to take this contract. And the other thing it does,
Speaker 1: I mean, there is like a it is a oh
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that so well before, so well before,
Speaker 1: like you know, the modern era, and Reagan did his
Speaker 1: ship with the air traffic controllers. There was a it
Speaker 1: was written into the law that Congress could say like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're a to a rail strike. That's really interesting, I guess,
Speaker 1: and it goes back to the days when they were
Speaker 1: literally making them out of human bones. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: it's been so it's been amended over time and it's
Speaker 1: changed a bit. And there's some other stuff that happened
Speaker 1: in the nineties. After there's a there's a there was
Speaker 1: a failed rail strike in the nineties where Congress is
Speaker 1: also just like, no, fuck you, you have to take
Speaker 1: this contract. But yeah, the the important thing about this
Speaker 1: is that like, okay, so in order to even potentially strike,
Speaker 1: you have to go through so much bullshit. It's called
Speaker 1: self help in the law. Like the people have been
Speaker 1: trying to strike for two years, and everything that we're
Speaker 1: seeing now is the product of two years of bullshit
Speaker 1: of these like there's all of this nonsense you have
Speaker 1: to go through. There's these like cooling off mandatory cooling
Speaker 1: off periods. You can't like, uh, you know, you have
Speaker 1: to like wait before you do anything else, and you
Speaker 1: have to go to the next step, the next step,
Speaker 1: and the final step is Joe Biden had the choice
Speaker 1: to either let these rail workers strike and actually get
Speaker 1: the things that they fucking needed, or he could tell
Speaker 1: them to funk off and just eat a contract. And
Speaker 1: that that that that's what's happened right now, is that
Speaker 1: Joe Biden has just and also again with the support
Speaker 1: of both Houses of Congress. And I also like explicitly
Speaker 1: want to mention here that a lot a lot of
Speaker 1: nominally socialist politicians, including like a lot of social Democrats
Speaker 1: have yet vote. Talk about that too, because that that's
Speaker 1: that's another part of it. That again, so my my
Speaker 1: surface and I guess I'm playing playing the podcast idiot
Speaker 1: in this one, which is not abnormal for me. But
Speaker 1: my like layman's understanding of what happened with this is that, uh,
Speaker 1: there was a bill up in Congress as to whether
Speaker 1: or not to endorse this, and uh, a bunch of
Speaker 1: progressives said that they wouldn't vote on it unless it
Speaker 1: included seven days of paid sick leave, including Sanders that
Speaker 1: got pushed off into a separate bill, And there was
Speaker 1: like some kind of sketchy wording about like, well we
Speaker 1: won't you know, like I I don't. I don't understand
Speaker 1: the congressional hijinks, but I know they just wound up
Speaker 1: voting for the the negotiate like what the union had
Speaker 1: negotiated without any sick leaf like it. Yeah, Like it
Speaker 1: seems like it kind of provided an opportunity for a
Speaker 1: bunch of progressives in the House to vote yes on
Speaker 1: the sick leave knowing that it wouldn't pass the Senate
Speaker 1: and knowing that the strip I would still get stopped.
Speaker 1: Right Like what am I? Um? I mean? It's basically
Speaker 1: that like the I'm not a congress nowhere. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean there there's a bunch of sort of hiji inks
Speaker 1: that were happening in Congress where there's different there's a
Speaker 1: sciety different version of the bill in the House, and
Speaker 1: they had this whole thing. But okay, the House, the
Speaker 1: House one for sick leaved did pass with support of
Speaker 1: every Yeah, and it's three three Republicans. But Okay, the
Speaker 1: thing I think I want to point out here and
Speaker 1: I want to move away from the sick leave thing
Speaker 1: because the sick that's the fact that these people don't
Speaker 1: have sick leave is important. This is also not like
Speaker 1: the main thing the strike was about, like things are,
Speaker 1: things are, things are so much worse like things are,
Speaker 1: things are so much like infinitely worse than people like
Speaker 1: at all understands. Like what the thing that the thing
Speaker 1: that's real strike is about, if you if you go
Speaker 1: like actually talk to the people who are doing it,
Speaker 1: is that these people are on call for nine of
Speaker 1: their lives, like and and when I say then of
Speaker 1: their lives, they're on call while they were asleep. They're
Speaker 1: on call constantly. Uh, they're there's there's no way to
Speaker 1: even there's no way to plan a consistant sly schedule
Speaker 1: because you can just be on call. And you know,
Speaker 1: and part part part of what's going on here. And
Speaker 1: if if you read the sort of detailed accounts, you
Speaker 1: will see a lot of people talking about this thing
Speaker 1: called precision scheduled railroading. Yeah, precision scheduled railroading was it
Speaker 1: was a great theory kind of that was implemented so
Speaker 1: atrociously badly. It's basically fucked like the entire economy. Um
Speaker 1: that the idea behind it was like you could you
Speaker 1: could schedule when like a freight railroad was going to
Speaker 1: go right, and this this would give you a bunch
Speaker 1: of efficiency bonuses. You could plan like you could schedule
Speaker 1: things around each other. Um, this just didn't happen. People
Speaker 1: implemented it, but what they implemented was just this nightmarror
Speaker 1: like amalgamation of we're going to reduce a bunch of
Speaker 1: staff and then we're going to make these trains that
Speaker 1: have like two hundred cars on them. And this has
Speaker 1: been a catastrophe. It's called monster trains. That there's there's
Speaker 1: Justin Rosniak, who's a podcast. See it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: a good solution to the problem of not enough guys
Speaker 1: to make trains work is make the trains huge. It's
Speaker 1: justnorable train crash. It's awful. Again, these are your twarter
Speaker 1: trains long right, So if if you don't get the
Speaker 1: wait you ship you should write, the train will fucking
Speaker 1: fall over. They keep doing this there's this has been
Speaker 1: happening for like several years now. Is there's just trains
Speaker 1: everywhere derailing. There's like no coverage of it. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, you know where I knew that from.
Speaker 1: Chris Garrison will tell you when I get when I
Speaker 1: get drunk or something late at night. My favorite thing
Speaker 1: to watch his videos of trains hitting stuff and train
Speaker 1: crashes are amazing to watch. It's incredible to think of
Speaker 1: all the human ingenuity it took to make that big,
Speaker 1: big boom. There's thousands of videos on YouTube of cargo
Speaker 1: getting stuck on train tracks and train happening through there yea,
Speaker 1: and boxes being pull verized in the air they rised.
Speaker 1: It's so cool. So the downside is that one day
Speaker 1: we're gonna have one of these trains that is run
Speaker 1: by a person who has had three hours of sleep
Speaker 1: in the last forty eight hours, and it's gonna be
Speaker 1: caring like fucking I don't know, it's gonna be carrying
Speaker 1: like sodium nitrate on it or some ship and it's
Speaker 1: just going to explode and it is going to kill
Speaker 1: enormous every place. That just actually happened in Canada like
Speaker 1: a decade ago. But yeah, like these trains are too big.
Speaker 1: They're so big they don't fit in the fucking rail yards.
Speaker 1: Like they're so big that most the training infrastructure doesn't
Speaker 1: work for them. They are so everything is okay. They're
Speaker 1: they're really really really badly planned, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: this is supposed to be precision scheduled railroading. Like they're
Speaker 1: unbelievably badly planned. You have people just like being forced
Speaker 1: to just like sit there for twelve hours in a train,
Speaker 1: like waiting for the rest of like the other like
Speaker 1: ninety five cars that are supposed to be on this
Speaker 1: train to show up. You know. The situation just like
Speaker 1: it is utterly nightmares and everything about this, Right, if
Speaker 1: you're an engineer, right, and you're in one of these
Speaker 1: trains and you're in there for twelve fucking hours in
Speaker 1: this train, you legally can't have your phone because you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a safety thing, right, And in
Speaker 1: some sense this makes sense. It's like a safety measure.
Speaker 1: You can't have your phone because you know, you can't
Speaker 1: be distracted what you're talking about. You're just sucking sitting
Speaker 1: on the tracks for like twelve hours, and you know
Speaker 1: this this this stuff is, you know, and the fact
Speaker 1: that the fact that people are on call constantly, the
Speaker 1: fact that the entire rail network is just physically falling apart.
Speaker 1: Because the other thing about these trains, right, they make
Speaker 1: a enormous amount of money, None of them ever fucking
Speaker 1: show up on time. It's a disgaster. It's a catastrophe,
Speaker 1: like like like genuinely like part of the reason why
Speaker 1: we're having all these supply issues is that no train
Speaker 1: has fucking showed up on time in like four years.
Speaker 1: And it's there's a new contract. It's okay that the
Speaker 1: new contracts signed in says that workers can have up
Speaker 1: to three unpaid days off for medical appointments. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: that's something. It's a three unpaid tabs stays off for
Speaker 1: pre made medical appointments. Yeah, no, none of forever. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it gets like like these people are on call
Speaker 1: for of their lives. You can't even like like you
Speaker 1: can't schedule when you're going to sleep because you might
Speaker 1: be on call and on call might be you have
Speaker 1: to fucking like drive like several hours to a place
Speaker 1: so you can get on a train, and the train
Speaker 1: cannot leave, and the train eventually leaves like six hours
Speaker 1: later and you fucking drive and then you're just like
Speaker 1: dropped off somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and then unpaid,
Speaker 1: you have to go back to like where you live.
Speaker 1: It is like, like, Okay, the thing, the thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to like get out of this is like the
Speaker 1: railroading system in general, that the system of freight railroading
Speaker 1: that we have in the US is in the midst
Speaker 1: of collapsing. Like it it is falling apart, It is
Speaker 1: not working, it is is becoming increasingly dangerous. It is
Speaker 1: I mean utterly inhumane for the people working on it.
Speaker 1: And and you know, none of the fucking even this
Speaker 1: even the sick Bowl contract, like didn't do anything for it. Right,
Speaker 1: The only way this actually could have been resolved is
Speaker 1: if Joe Biden and in a fifth Democrats and if
Speaker 1: Congress hadn't been fucking hours and had let these people
Speaker 1: strike because these kinds of concessions like and you know,
Speaker 1: I also like I don't want to let the fucking
Speaker 1: unions off the hook here too, because they know all
Speaker 1: of this. But again, most of the sort of like
Speaker 1: senior union people are very tight with a very tight
Speaker 1: with Democratic Party. This is part of why all of
Speaker 1: this ship was postponed until after the elections because they
Speaker 1: didn't you know, they didn't want to deal with the ship.
Speaker 1: They've been trying to force people to sign these contract too,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's a ship show. It is a
Speaker 1: just absolute catastrophe on on every every level. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's almost as if the rail system probably shouldn't be
Speaker 1: run by private interests. Yeah, because there's going to be
Speaker 1: now a hundred hundred fifteen rail workers who are forced
Speaker 1: to work under these still not great conditions. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: managers and the owners of the railroads get to go
Speaker 1: back to just making tons of money. Yeah, and again
Speaker 1: record profits. None of this is happening, Not that that
Speaker 1: would make it okay, but none of this is happening
Speaker 1: in an environment well, well, you know, we're running at
Speaker 1: a loss and we we have no money and no
Speaker 1: ability to like like they have. They're making hundreds of
Speaker 1: billions of dollars profits like this is this is like
Speaker 1: one of the most profitable times to run a railroad
Speaker 1: in US. You can incentivize more people to be railroad
Speaker 1: road workers if the job isn't a fucking nightmare. For example,
Speaker 1: what if instead of not being able to have their phones.
Speaker 1: We gave each of them a DVD player in a
Speaker 1: screen with a DVD of step Brothers, and they could
Speaker 1: watch step Brothers as much as they want while piloting
Speaker 1: a train. I think that would actually get I think
Speaker 1: that would cause mass, mass layoff set at a rail yard.
Speaker 1: That's that's how we get the strike. We include this
Speaker 1: in the next provision for destruction. I was I was
Speaker 1: stealthying in my accelerationist beliefs here. This is the fastest
Speaker 1: way it can transit infrastruction. We've got like two years
Speaker 1: before this holding fucking implodes anyways, because part part of
Speaker 1: what's keeping people in the railroading system is that so
Speaker 1: railroading also has its own pension system that's like disconnected
Speaker 1: from the regular pension system him and you have to
Speaker 1: you have to work there for ten years in order
Speaker 1: to collect your pension. This is why like enormous numbers
Speaker 1: of people just haven't left right. People have been leaving right,
Speaker 1: But there's a there's a huge number of people who
Speaker 1: were hiring these giant expansion in two thousand four, and
Speaker 1: you know, like we're two years out from that contract
Speaker 1: from all these people being able to collect their pensions
Speaker 1: and fucking leaving. Yeah, that's just like it's like, this
Speaker 1: is the only chance I have to ever not work
Speaker 1: myself to death, so I have to tough it out.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, but these those those people are those
Speaker 1: people are going to leave. And you know, this is
Speaker 1: this is the sort of like this is the sort
Speaker 1: of hammer that capitalism has built over its own head,
Speaker 1: which is that like, yeah, congratulations, you you successfully flexibilized
Speaker 1: and casualized your entire workforce. That means that if people
Speaker 1: like don't want to do your shitty job, they can
Speaker 1: leave and find another job. And at some point, like
Speaker 1: there are there is a ship that in this economy
Speaker 1: that like actually does need to be done. But these
Speaker 1: people have been sort of like so blinded by just
Speaker 1: like you know, they're so so blinded by lying goes up.
Speaker 1: They're so blinded by short term profit that they really
Speaker 1: don't understand that at some point there's just not gonna
Speaker 1: be fucking workers to run the railroad. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: And a lot of this situation is built off of
Speaker 1: and instead of being compared to Reagan's stuff for their
Speaker 1: traffic controllers, it's actually more similar to what Carter did
Speaker 1: with some with some airline workers. Um. Then also with
Speaker 1: the with the the nineteen eight kind of a railroad
Speaker 1: Deregulation act Um which which caused would would you, which
Speaker 1: gave a lot more power to companies to run the railroads.
Speaker 1: And that's that is what kind of shifted shifted things
Speaker 1: to our to our current, our current problem because they
Speaker 1: were they gave permission for these rail companies to close
Speaker 1: down lines that were less profitable and to set their
Speaker 1: own um freight rates. And yeah, it's it's not being
Speaker 1: controlled by the inter State Commerce Commission. Instead it's being
Speaker 1: controlled by execuity. That that thing's weird, right because like,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, like the wave of corporates, all
Speaker 1: dation that happened after that is like a disaster, and
Speaker 1: the fact that there's basically like four real like reil
Speaker 1: companies now is a disaster. On the other hand, like
Speaker 1: it is also true that the Interstate Commerce Board was
Speaker 1: like dogshited his jaws. It also sucked. Yes, absolutely it sucked,
Speaker 1: and for a short period of time it actually did
Speaker 1: improve things. But now it's it's it's it's powers coalescing
Speaker 1: again into the very types of monopolies that caused the
Speaker 1: that caused railroad regulation to be necessary back in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Like in the first place, um power is
Speaker 1: being consolidated again, and it's it's this vicious, vicious cycle
Speaker 1: that are that fundamentally puts short term profits above of
Speaker 1: the conditions of workers. Yeah, I think, like, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: so there have been a lot of people talking about,
Speaker 1: like what the potential solutions to this are in a
Speaker 1: sort of macro sense, because like, okay, even even with
Speaker 1: a better contract, right, like, something actually has to be
Speaker 1: done in order to force the railroads to not fucking
Speaker 1: suck and to like actually properly scheduled their goddamn trains
Speaker 1: and not work everyone to death. And you know, I
Speaker 1: want to put that it is worth noting like we
Speaker 1: actually did like have national nationalized railroad company for a while,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of a ship show like it. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is something that's also important. Think about this, Like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like there's a lot of different
Speaker 1: kinds of nationalization, right Like there there there was a
Speaker 1: huge difference between a firm that's like like you know,
Speaker 1: like we we we we sort of technically nationalized a
Speaker 1: bunch of the like car companies after two thousand eight, right,
Speaker 1: we bailed them out, but you know, like we like
Speaker 1: when in that stuff, we didn't really like take it.
Speaker 1: We did we owned, we owned like a bunch of
Speaker 1: their stock. We didn't like take a control employees, and
Speaker 1: like we we got like Nick Tonight like proto neoliberal
Speaker 1: nationalization of the railroads last time, and it kind of
Speaker 1: atributed so the problems we have now. There was also
Speaker 1: a period where Conrail's union was trying to like buy
Speaker 1: like the railroad, so we all we almost we almost
Speaker 1: got a railroad system that was run by its by
Speaker 1: it was owned by its own union, and then the
Speaker 1: company just like refused to sell it to them because
Speaker 1: they were like waiting to hold on, we can't have
Speaker 1: a worker run railroad. But one thing, one thing I
Speaker 1: am interested in is I I don't actually know this.
Speaker 1: What would what would the how would how would an
Speaker 1: illegal strike actually work? Like, what's what's the what is
Speaker 1: the differences between people striking illegally? Now, Like there's some
Speaker 1: some discussion of that, who knows that's actually actually happened,
Speaker 1: But what is the main kind of difference between that
Speaker 1: and um, the non illegal stow Okay, so the big
Speaker 1: thing is Okay, So the thing about the National Labor
Speaker 1: Relations Act, right, which is the thing that covers normal strikes,
Speaker 1: was that like and this is also true to sem
Speaker 1: I sent under the rover, but like, okay, so if
Speaker 1: you're doing a legal strike, you have legal protections right
Speaker 1: like they're they're there are things corporations can't do to you. Um,
Speaker 1: like yeah, there there there, there's there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: stuff that can't Like, I don't like it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a lot harder to just sort of fire people. The
Speaker 1: other thing is that also, like especially something like this,
Speaker 1: there's a like you you if you do if you
Speaker 1: do a wildcat strike like this and you do you
Speaker 1: specifically a strike that is like that is specifically illegal
Speaker 1: under this act, like you can all get fired. Um
Speaker 1: I'm I think that I think they could technically arrest you.
Speaker 1: Like it's it's I don't know that that part of
Speaker 1: it's not exactly clear to me, But yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean there there's sort of like I feel like
Speaker 1: if if if they arrest you just for not going
Speaker 1: to your job, I feel like that is a I
Speaker 1: mean that that has happened to people like I know
Speaker 1: people have been yes, like in the long history of
Speaker 1: labor struggles, people have been straight up killed. Um, but
Speaker 1: at least in twenty two I think it would be
Speaker 1: a bad look. Yeah, I mean I think, Okay, so
Speaker 1: I think where we're headed, and I think what they
Speaker 1: ought to do is just force get all of like
Speaker 1: the worst criminals and I mean the murderers, the terrorists,
Speaker 1: all of those guys, and you make them run the trains.
Speaker 1: Whoever blew up all of those power transformers in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: You make them run the trains, and it'll be fine.
Speaker 1: Nothing bad will happen as a result of this. It
Speaker 1: will work out perfectly well. The the the alternative plan
Speaker 1: and the thing that maybe these rail companies are just
Speaker 1: holding out for because maybe they're just making conditions be
Speaker 1: not great and underpaying and not giving sick days, is
Speaker 1: because they're waiting for trains just to become autonomous. They're
Speaker 1: already planning to severely cut down the crews that are
Speaker 1: on the trains. There's already trains in Australia that are
Speaker 1: a totally autonomously run that carry mining materials over for
Speaker 1: hundreds of miles, and that is the future that these
Speaker 1: that these companies want, because then they don't they need
Speaker 1: to pay for employees to actually run the train. Frustrating
Speaker 1: because like in an actual if we were anything that
Speaker 1: approached a society that like dealt with things ethically and humanely,
Speaker 1: uh and equitably, then this would be good, like because
Speaker 1: it seems like working on train sucks and it would
Speaker 1: be great if we could automate most of that work. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then people less people would have to work in
Speaker 1: order to keep society running. But that's people don't have
Speaker 1: to work. We were just going to run through these
Speaker 1: people's bodies by like as we get up to autonomy automization,
Speaker 1: and then we will throw them away. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: there will and then because they'll do it badly, there's
Speaker 1: going to be a disastrous train crash caused by the
Speaker 1: fact that they got all of the people off of
Speaker 1: a train and hauling nitro glystener or whatever, and it's
Speaker 1: going to destroy I don't know, duluth Um, which you know,
Speaker 1: not the worst city to lose, but I I sorry,
Speaker 1: duluth y'all are fucked well, Okay, it's it's worth one.
Speaker 1: Like this stuff, like the automation stuff is already happening
Speaker 1: right like that we have, right, we have like this
Speaker 1: well and I mean it's like a very real sense
Speaker 1: that there's this sort of nightmare. One of the other
Speaker 1: sort of nightmare things that's going on right now is
Speaker 1: that there are these like like I don't know, like
Speaker 1: driver assistance programs basically that are being run on trains. Now.
Speaker 1: Where that are that are? You know, they're supposed to
Speaker 1: be like making decisions like for and with the drivers,
Speaker 1: but ay, they suck ass um be there. They're they're design.
Speaker 1: They're designed to basically maximize design to maximize profitability, right,
Speaker 1: And the way you maximize profitability is by running trains
Speaker 1: really really slowly. And you know that's contributing to the
Speaker 1: fact that every train is fucking late now and the
Speaker 1: phrases it doesn't work. And the third problem is that
Speaker 1: these is that these things keep fucking running trains off
Speaker 1: Like this is another reason why trains keep sucking crashing
Speaker 1: is that they suck. They keep they keep running trains
Speaker 1: off the tracks and like you know, and like that
Speaker 1: there's there's there's like there's there's a lot of ship here,
Speaker 1: right because it's like if you if you override the system,
Speaker 1: like you can, you can get disciplined for for for
Speaker 1: overriding the system, but then you have this sort of
Speaker 1: like you have this thing where it's like, okay, so
Speaker 1: do I do I get disciplined for overriding system and
Speaker 1: not making the train crash or do I just make
Speaker 1: the fucking train crash and doing the trolley problem? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's literally yeah, just a lot like like you love
Speaker 1: that this is just gonna inevitably gonna result in an
Speaker 1: exact recreation of the trolley traffle. It's already like this
Speaker 1: is already happening to people, and it's just like like
Speaker 1: it's none of the none of the stuff works automatics
Speaker 1: into this orphanage. I can divert it instead of this
Speaker 1: old folk. So it's like it's literally happening, like it's
Speaker 1: just like none of this stuff, Like Okay. The thing
Speaker 1: that's like frustrating about this, right is okay, if any
Speaker 1: of the people at the sort of like at the
Speaker 1: level of where they're planning these trains could even sort
Speaker 1: of do their job right that this isn't even a
Speaker 1: thing that's like an inevitable contradiction between capital and labor,
Speaker 1: Like this is just if any of these people could
Speaker 1: actually fucking schedule the railroads, which is the thing they're
Speaker 1: supposed to be trending to do. If they could actually
Speaker 1: schedule when the train was supposed to go and when
Speaker 1: it was supposed to leave, you wouldn't have these problems
Speaker 1: because then all of the people who worked there would
Speaker 1: also be told when the fucking train was leaving and
Speaker 1: they could schedule around it. But no, they can't fucking
Speaker 1: do it because they're too fucking lazy, they're too fucking stupid,
Speaker 1: and they don't want to spend the money to actually
Speaker 1: make any of these systems fucking work. And so the
Speaker 1: consequence is just this bullshit. And then also because again
Speaker 1: and this is everything like that, like capital is also
Speaker 1: really falling down in the job here, because like the
Speaker 1: rest of capital needs to get their ship together and
Speaker 1: force the railroad to do something, because like, it's your
Speaker 1: asses on the line too if this railroad then collapses.
Speaker 1: But because of because of the sort of immediate amount
Speaker 1: of money that that that these these shitty rail companies
Speaker 1: that pumped into Congress, they were able to buy people off,
Speaker 1: and the rest of capital was just like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: don't care. That's like three years out, we don't have
Speaker 1: to care about this ship. It's like guys like Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders is fighting to save capitalism, right, these people are
Speaker 1: trying to save you from yourselves and you know you
Speaker 1: won't won't even let's that's their entire job though, like
Speaker 1: of course, it's like, yeah, what what what is happening here?
Speaker 1: Is that like is liberalism is running an accelerationist program
Speaker 1: to like cause the American American infrastructure to fall apart,
Speaker 1: and social democracy is attempting to save capital from itself,
Speaker 1: and capital was like literally, fuck you eat ship. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's I've i've I'm reading right now in interview
Speaker 1: with the railroad Workers United member and they're they're talking
Speaker 1: about how like there's this plan to increase, uh increase
Speaker 1: their pay over the next five years, and they're like,
Speaker 1: he says that lots of the railroad workers that he's
Speaker 1: talked to as a part of the union is saying,
Speaker 1: like people are willing to work for less money and
Speaker 1: take a job at like an Amazon factory or like
Speaker 1: a trucking job because at least those offer slightly more
Speaker 1: consistent hours, and like, yeah, like it's it's at least
Speaker 1: when you're not working. You're not working, yeah, And I
Speaker 1: just wanted to mention that because because we were bringing
Speaker 1: up like how these people are getting not very good pay,
Speaker 1: which is which is true, but for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: it isn't even just to pay question, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: just overall working conditions. And like when you're thinking about
Speaker 1: moving to an Amazon factory instead because they have better
Speaker 1: working conditions, like oh god, yeah, it's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: they've they've managed to create like one of the worst
Speaker 1: systems that is imposed on like any worker in the country.
Speaker 1: Like it is. It is genuinely stunning. And right now
Speaker 1: again they're they're getting bailed out that people are by
Speaker 1: the fact that people are stuck in because they want
Speaker 1: their pensions. But like, but as soon as as people
Speaker 1: are done and we start moving to more autonomous things,
Speaker 1: then it's not it's not going to be worth it.
Speaker 1: I know, media companies have spent decades trying to convince
Speaker 1: kids to work for trains, with Thomas the train chuggington
Speaker 1: for for decades and decades, You've tried to send train
Speaker 1: propaganda to these kids, and I don't think I don't
Speaker 1: think they're gonna buy it. Yeah, did you guys know
Speaker 1: that in Thomas the Tank Engine, canonically World War two
Speaker 1: happened and canonically all of the diesel engine signed sided
Speaker 1: with the Nazis. Well, that doesn't rest today and that
Speaker 1: is official Thomas the Tank in Jin Laura, I wonder
Speaker 1: how many other zoomers will um symbolize with me on this.
Speaker 1: I recently found out that Thomas the Train wasn't just
Speaker 1: the uncanny train segments that used to have live action
Speaker 1: actors in like little inter cut scenes, because it was
Speaker 1: fucked up because by the time Thomas the Train was
Speaker 1: airing on television when I was a kid, all of
Speaker 1: those were re edited. They had they had, they had
Speaker 1: no live action segments at all. It was all the
Speaker 1: weird stop motion animation, which is still very uncanny, with
Speaker 1: like the faces. But I had no idea until like
Speaker 1: a year ago that there was live action actors in
Speaker 1: the original additions of Thomas the Train. Completely oblivious. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad, I'm glad we could have this important union discussion.
Speaker 1: I am too. I'm gonna I'm gonna admit to you
Speaker 1: all right now. There was a moment earlier where Chris
Speaker 1: You kept saying that that the owners of the railroads
Speaker 1: were blinded, And I very nearly went into a bit
Speaker 1: where I just started reading the lyrics to Bruce Springsteen's
Speaker 1: Blinded by the Light. But I didn't do it. I
Speaker 1: didn't do it that. I'm glad we were saved from that.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's because everybody, nobody, nobody gets the lyrics
Speaker 1: to that one, right, because of the Manford Man's earth
Speaker 1: band version, which makes it sound like he's saying douche
Speaker 1: when he's really saying deuce and talking about an engine,
Speaker 1: which is why it would have been relevant to railroads.
Speaker 1: But none of you all would have got that, and
Speaker 1: you would have fucking made a big thing about it
Speaker 1: on Reddit. So to hell with you all. Anyway, support
Speaker 1: rail workers if they do an illegal strike, make sure
Speaker 1: we set up things so that they get protected and
Speaker 1: they get food and things to fight cops, go make
Speaker 1: rail way, I mean, people like, just keep it, keep
Speaker 1: an eye on what's going on, and if it happens,
Speaker 1: there will be ways. There will be ways to support
Speaker 1: these through the US government. Like I don't know things
Speaker 1: of this nature. Yeah, I mean that would be that,
Speaker 1: that would be nice. But if we got to put
Speaker 1: a pin in that you know, keep an eye on
Speaker 1: the situation. And if these people go on strike, there
Speaker 1: will be community resources and what not popping up to
Speaker 1: support the wildcat strike. It's the thing that's happened before.
Speaker 1: Wildcat strikes have a long history in this country too, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and we will we will be collecting resources
Speaker 1: if that happens for ways people can help with the wildcatters.
Speaker 1: So this is a thing to have on the old
Speaker 1: on the old noggin as we as we lurch forward
Speaker 1: into the holidays and uh possibly gigantic labor battle. We'll see.
Speaker 1: And I like people in the UK have been doing
Speaker 1: rail strikes, uh like for a good part of this year,
Speaker 1: like they've been they've been. There's been on and off
Speaker 1: rail strikes for most of for like, for like the
Speaker 1: most of the past few months. Um, it's possible, except
Speaker 1: again they're they're they're they're British, so they stopped doing
Speaker 1: the strike when the Queen died. Well of course, So look, look,
Speaker 1: there's certain realities that can't ever be eclipsed. Regram. Here's
Speaker 1: the here's the thing we have thrown off the shackles
Speaker 1: of the anglos are where all rail strikes stops for
Speaker 1: no one, al right, except for the most pro labor president,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden. Alright, and that's the episode. Yeah, it's the episode.
Speaker 1: And remember, if you see a Diesel train, it is
Speaker 1: a Nazi you you were obliged to punch it. M M.
Speaker 1: It could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone
Speaker 1: Media and more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our
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Speaker 1: Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot
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