National Railroad Strike Averted In Tentative Agreement, Biden Says

WASHINGTON, DC — An economically devastating national freight railroad strike has been averted in a tentative agreement between railroads and the unions representing their workers, President Joe Biden said Thursday.

As the 12:01 a.m. Friday strike deadline approached, the railroads and union representatives hammered out a deal in a marathon 20-hour negotiating session at the Labor Department Wednesday.

Amtrak canceled its long-distance routes in preparation for a strike, but said in a statement Thursday it "is working to quickly restore canceled trains and reaching out directly to impacted customers to accommodate on first available departures." The Amtrak workers weren't involved in the labor dispute, but the passenger rail service uses the tracks the strike would have shut down.

Such a development would have further tangled supply chains, and devastated the economy in the weeks before the midterm elections. A railroad industry trade group earlier said shutting down the nation’s railroads would halt shipments of food and fuel at a cost of $2 billion a day.

Biden called Labor Secretary Marty Walsh about 9 p.m. Wednesday as the talks were ongoing and asked the negotiators to consider the harm of a strike to families, farmers and businesses, according to a White House official who spoke to The Associated Press.

The five-year deal, retroactive to 2020, includes the 24 percent raises and $5,000 in bonuses that a Presidential Emergency Board recommended this summer. But railroads also agreed to ease their strict attendance policies to address some of the unions’ concerns about working conditions.

Railroad workers will now be able to take unpaid days off for doctor’s appointments without being penalized under railroad attendance rules. Previously, workers would lose points under the attendance systems that the BNSF and Union Pacific railways had adopted, and they could be disciplined if they lost all their points.

The unions that represent the conductors and engineers who drive the trains had pressed hard for changes in the attendance rules, and they said this deal sets a precedent that they will be able to negotiate over those kinds of rules in the future. But workers will still have to vote whether those changes are enough to approve the deal.

The tentative agreement resulting from back-and-forth negotiations will go to union members for a vote after a post-ratification cooling-off period of several weeks, but Biden's blessing is a signal that workers were closely involved in the negotiations, The Washington Post reported.

“These rail workers will get better pay, improved working conditions, and peace of mind around their health care costs: all hard-earned,” Biden said in his announcement of the tentative agreement. “The agreement is also a victory for railway companies who will be able to retain and recruit more workers for an industry that will continue to be part of the backbone of the American economy for decades to come.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting.