Once Biden got involved, the writing was on the wall. And not surprisingly, the rail unions made out like bandits.
Labor headaches are the last thing any president needs — especially when it involves critical transportation infrastructure like railroads in an election year. So, on Wednesday, the eve of a potentially politically and economically ruinous rail strike, Joe Biden asked the two sides to meet in Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh’s office for negotiations.
Harry Truman reportedly tried this method of persuasion during the steel strike of 1949 by locking the negotiators for both sides in a room and not letting them out until they made a deal.
