Summary
President Joe Biden’s economic achievements—lowering inflation, reducing gas prices, creating jobs, and boosting manufacturing—are largely unrecognized by the public, despite his successes.
His tenure saw landmark legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS Act, and major infrastructure investments.
However, Biden’s approval ratings remain low, attributed to inflation backlash, weak communication, and a media landscape prone to misinformation.
Democrats face a “propaganda problem” rather than a policy failure, with many voters likely to credit incoming President Trump for Biden’s accomplishments due to partisan messaging and social media dynamics.
I agree with you for the most part. That being said I have tried to explain this point to multiple people and they don’t care that the Biden admin got the rail workers what they asked for. They insist that stopping the strike means Biden was anti union full stop even after the IBEW put out releases thanking the Biden admin. they also said it was just propaganda. It’s just as much about people not wanting to listen.
Workers were asking for 15 days of sick leave, Congress and Biden gave them 1 with the act that ended the strike. Later, the railroads continued negotiating with some of the unions and gave them four days of sick leave. People from the Biden administration were present for those conversations and take credit for that.
So, no, the Biden administration did not give the unions what they asked for, and yes they likely did do material harm to them by stopping that strike.
If they did nothing then why did the IBEW thank them for the effort? Yea they didn’t get everything they asked for, that’s how negotions work. The people that were effected thanked the Biden admin, why don’t you believe them? Also according to Reuters, most get 5 paid sick days + 2 convertibles.
https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/most-unionized-us-rail-workers-now-have-new-sick-leave-2023-06-05/
Because placating the egos of the people in power make sense, same reason Zelensky congratulated Trump on winning
I got my numbers on sick days from here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_labor_dispute?wprov=sfla1
Yeah. It’s called negotiating. You start at a number higher than what you’d be happy with, expecting to meet somewhere in the middle.
When a third party swoops into a negotiation and steals your leverage it has a significant impact on what that middle ends up being
They didn’t get what they wanted though. The points system still is in place that limits the ability to use leaves. The “sick leave” still required notice, so all it did was allow doctor visits to not take PTO, provided the worker could afford the points.
I can’t find a solid confirmation but it looks like as part of the law killing the strike and enacting the recommendations of the emergency board, the attendance rules creating points was vacated without further agreements from the unions. So from what I can tell, your statement is incorrect. I looked up the emergency board’s recommendations but I didn’t do a deep dive into the law to confirm. Link to the recommendations below.
https://nmb.gov/NMB_Application/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/PEB-250-Report-and-Recommendations.pdf
Yeah, hence why I say that union leadership has to do some work here too.
I’ve worked with the machinists union during a statewide right to work ballot initiative to overturn the legislatures recently passed right to work bill.
So much conversation about how “we have to strike out down!” But at the same breath talk about voting Republican. Well that’s what they did, killed right to work, elected more Republicans to the state legislature.
Cue shocked Pikachu face when the people they voted in immediately submitted a bill to enact right to work.
I mean what the fuck is union leadership doing at that point when you can’t get your own members to not fuck themselves over?