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President Joe Biden on Friday signed legislation aimed at averting a nationwide rail strike while acknowledging that workers didn’t get everything they wanted.
Biden, speaking from the Roosevelt Room, said the bill “ends a difficult rail dispute and helps our nation avoid what coming out of that would have been an economic catastrophe in a very bad time in the calendar.”
The legislation, passed under pressure of a looming Dec. 9 deadline by the House and Senate this week, forces workers to accept a tentative agreement Biden himself helped broker between unions and rail companies back in September that offered union members a raise and increased health care benefits.
That agreement was later rejected by some worker unions because it didn’t include days of paid sick leave.
But on Thursday, the Senate voted 80-to-15 to impose the agreement while subsequently voting down a bill passed by the House that would have provided workers with seven days of paid sick leave.
Six Republicans voted to add sick leave but the measure ultimately fell short of the 60 votes needed to pass. Some of those lawmakers joined five Democratic caucus members, including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, in voting against the bill forcing workers to accept the agreement.
“Look, I know this bill doesn’t have paid sick leave these rail workers, and frankly every worker in America, deserves,” Biden, criticized for not doing more for workers despite calling himself a pro-union president, said Friday.
