Three years of rail workers' negotiations with management over this issue could soon culminate in an economy-disrupting strike, after the latest
tentative agreement included just one paid personal day off a year. That's too far from the 15 days of paid sick leave that rail workers pushed for, and which railroads argue would cost them
$688 million a year.
"People are going to work with the flu, and working around very dangerous equipment sick because we have no time off," a BNSF railway conductor of over a decade told Insider. "When you're on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you can't schedule a doctor's appointment or dentist appointment, take the day off for your wife's birthday. I mean, it's just made it nearly impossible to get any time off."
"People watched our industry shrink itself and watch the railroads demand more and more and more out of us, and discipline people for being sick or their family being sick," Michael Paul Lindsey, a locomotive engineer in Idaho who is a steering-committee member for Railroad Workers United, told Insider.
US rail workers want 15 days of paid sick leave, but companies offered one. A strike could disrupt travel, deliveries, and drinking water.
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