Time to Change the Railway Labor Act!

[Bob Owens]

Sure it does. People can take alternate routes.




Uh, no, there aren't alternatives to everything. You can't ship windmill turbine blades over the road, they're too long.

Nor is it practical to bring 100 carloads of coal to a power plant by truck, or 100 carloads of taconite into a steel plant by truck. It's simply too damn heavy to move on a rubber tire vehicle.

Nor are there enough trucks in the US to carry the tens of thousands of sea containers which arrive each day at the various container ports...

And driving into the city? Where pray tell are there some 250,000 vacant parking spots in Manhattan or Chicago? And what about the growing population of people who purposely live in transit-oriented housing that doesn't require one to even own a car? I forget the exact number, but the number of reverse commuters (city dwellers working in the suburbs) across the country is in the low double digits and growing...



Of course it is communist in nature. Don't forget that the history of unions and the Socialists are intertwined...

And, neither ideology (socialism/communism) has really survived in the long run. Even China is no longer really truly a communist society... As Frank says, it's probably more facist with a tiny ruling elite instead of a dictator.


But it is not one-sided. You guys have your closed shop. And you cling to it like Ted Nugent does his hunting rifle...

There are better things to hitch your wagon to than the closed shop...

The RLA does not mandate closed shops. It does allow unions to negotiate that the work that falls under the agreement is done by members. Such agreements are common between corporations. The NLRA isn't a fair law either,it too puts corporate interests above tax paying workers interests.