- Federal payroll processor: Oct. 11 is deadline to avert feds’ getting incomplete paychecks GovExec.com
- Federal shutdown threat prompts Navy Federal and other credit unions to offer interest-free loans – Washington Business Journal The Business Journals
- USAA offers help to those affected by potential government shutdown; also watch out for scammers WTVD-TV
- Help available for DAF Airmen, Guardians, civilians in event of lapse in appropriations Air Force Link
- Navy Federal to offer paycheck relief to members impacted by government shutdown CBS News 8
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: avert
Biden signs short-term bill to avert a government shutdown this week
CNN
—
President Joe Biden signed a one-week stopgap funding bill on Friday to avert a government shutdown, extending the deadline until December 23 to allow congressional negotiators more time to finalize a full-year funding deal.
The House approved the measure on Wednesday, and the Senate voted on Thursday evening to pass the bill – a day before funding was set to expire.
Biden signed the continuing resolution at the White House Friday afternoon following a short trip to Delaware, where he attended an event focused on the expansion of veterans’ benefits. The president returns to Delaware later Friday evening for the 50th anniversary of the deaths of his first wife Neilia and their one-year-old daughter, Naomi.
Congress is broadly expected to be able to avoid a shutdown, but lawmakers have little room for error given the tight, one-week timeline they are facing.
Senate negotiators have indicated that they’ve reached consensus on a framework for a broader spending deal for the next year, but they have not provided many specifics about the agreement. The framework deal is a major breakthrough, but there is still more work to be done as lawmakers work to finalize the sprawling legislation’s specific provisions.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said in a statement that he and Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the panel, and House Appropriations Committee Chair Rosa DeLauro had “reached a bipartisan, bicameral framework that should allow us to finish an omnibus appropriations bill that can pass the House and Senate and be signed into law by the President.”
On Wednesday, Shelby said the top line is about $1.7 trillion but would not elaborate. The Alabama Republican said the exact allocations to the different government agencies are still being negotiated.
A bipartisan agreement for a full-year government funding deal has so far proved challenging to secure amid partisan disagreements between the two parties over how much money should be spent on nondefense domestic priorities.
Republicans are critical of recent domestic spending by Democrats and argue that measures Democrats have passed while in control of both chambers of Congress, such as a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill and a sweeping health care and climate bill, are wasteful and will worsen inflation. Democrats say those measures were necessary to help the country recover from the devastating impact of the pandemic and to tackle other critical priorities.
This story has been updated with additional information.
Senate to vote on stopgap bill to avert shutdown at end of the week
CNN
—
The Senate is on track to vote Thursday evening to pass a stopgap bill to avert a government shutdown at the end of this week with funding currently set to expire on Friday at midnight.
The stopgap measure will extend funding for another week – until Friday, December 23 – to give congressional negotiators time to finalize a broader, full-year government funding deal with new topline spending levels.
The House approved the measure on Wednesday. It needs to be passed by the Senate before it can go to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.
In a sign of progress, top negotiators announced Tuesday evening that an agreement had been reached for a framework that puts lawmakers on track to complete a sweeping full-year government funding package.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said in a statement that he and ranking Republican member Richard Shelby and House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro had “reached a bipartisan, bicameral framework that should allow us to finish an omnibus appropriations bill that can pass the House and Senate and be signed into law by the President.”
So far, however, negotiators have not provided many specifics about the agreement.
On Wednesday, Shelby said the top line is about $1.7 trillion, but would not elaborate. Shelby said the exact allocations to the different government agencies are still being negotiated.
The announcement that a framework deal had been reached for a broader spending bill represented a major breakthrough in negotiations, but there is still more work to be done now as lawmakers work to finalize the fine print and the specifics of what the sprawling legislation will include.
The expectation on Capitol Hill is that Congress will be able to avoid a shutdown, but congressional leaders have little room for error given the tight timeline they are facing so the pressure is on for lawmakers.
A bipartisan agreement for a full-year government funding deal has proven challenging to secure amid disagreement between the two parties over how much money should be spent on non-defense, domestic priorities.
Republicans are critical of recent domestic spending by Democrats and argue that measures Democrats have passed while they have been in control of both chambers of Congress, like a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill and a sweeping health care and climate bill, are wasteful and will worsen inflation.
Democrats counter by saying those measures were necessary to help the country recover from the devastating impact of the pandemic as well as to tackle other critical priorities. Democrats say that money to respond to Covid, health care and climate should not mean there should be less money next year for government operations and non-defense, domestic spending.
House votes to avert rail strike, impose deal on unions
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. House moved urgently to head off the looming nationwide rail strike on Wednesday, passing a bill that would bind companies and workers to a proposed settlement that was reached in September but rejected by some of the 12 unions involved.
The measure passed by a vote of 290-137 and now heads to the Senate. If approved there, it will be signed by President Joe Biden, who urged the Senate to act swiftly.
“Without the certainty of a final vote to avoid a shutdown this week, railroads will begin to halt the movement of critical materials like chemicals to clean our drinking water as soon as this weekend,” Biden said. “Let me say that again: without action this week, disruptions to our auto supply chains, our ability to move food to tables, and our ability to remove hazardous waste from gasoline refineries will begin.”
Business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Farm Bureau Federation have warned that halting rail service would cause a devastating $2 billion per day hit to the economy.
The bill would impose a compromise labor agreement brokered by the Biden administration that was ultimately voted down by four of the 12 unions representing roughly 115,000 employees at large freight railroads. The unions have threatened to strike if an agreement can’t be reached before a Dec. 9 deadline.
Lawmakers from both parties expressed reservations about overriding the negotiations. And the intervention was particularly difficult for Democratic lawmakers who have traditionally sought to align themselves with the politically powerful labor unions that criticized Biden’s move to intervene in the contract dispute and block a strike.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded to that concern by adding a second vote Wednesday that would add seven days of paid sick leave per year for rail workers covered under the agreement. However, it will take effect only if the Senate goes along and passes both measures. The House passed the sick leave measure as well, but by a much narrower margin, 221-207, as Republicans overwhelmingly opposed it, indicating that prospects for passage of the add-on are slim in the evenly divided Senate.
Business groups and the Association of American Railroads trade association praised the House vote to block the strike but urged senators to resist adding sick time to the deal.
“Unless Congress wants to become the de facto endgame for future negotiations, any effort to put its thumb on the bargaining scale to artificially advantage either party, or otherwise obstruct a swift resolution, would be wholly irresponsible,” said Ian Jefferies, head of the AAR.
On the other hand, the Transportation Trades Department labor coalition that includes all the rail unions praised the vote to add sick time and told lawmakers who voted against it they had “abandoned your working class constituents.”
The call for more paid sick leave was a major sticking point in the talks along with other quality-of-life concerns. The railroads say the unions have agreed in negotiations over the decades to forgo paid sick time in favor of higher wages and strong short-term disability benefits.
Jefferies said Tuesday that railroads would consider adding paid sick time in the future, but said that change should wait for a new round of negotiations instead of being added now, near the end of three years of contract talks.
The unions maintain that railroads can easily afford to add paid sick time at a time when they are recording record profits. Several of the big railroads involved in these contract talks reported more than $1 billion profit in the third quarter.
“Quite frankly, the fact that paid leave is not part of the final agreement between railroads and labor is, in my opinion, obscene,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. “It should be there and I hope it will be there at the end of this process.”
Most rail workers don’t receive any paid sick time, but they do have short-term disability benefits that kick in after as little as four days and can replace some of their income for a year or more. Rail workers also receive vacation and personal leave days, but workers say it’s difficult to use those for illnesses because they must typically be approved far ahead of time.
Republicans also voiced support for the measure to block the strike, but criticized the Biden administration for turning to Congress to “step in to fix the mess.”
“They’ve retreated in failure and they kicked this problem to Congress for us to decide,” said Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo.
Republicans criticized Pelosi’s decision to add the sick leave bill to the mix. They said the Biden administration’s own special board of arbitrators recommended higher wages to compensate the unions for not including sick time in its recommendations.
“Why do we even have the system set up the way it is if Congress is going to come in and make changes to all of the recommendations?” Graves said.
Pelosi sought to position Democrats and the Biden administration as defenders of unions and slammed the rail companies, saying they’ve slashed jobs, increased worker hours and cut corners on safety. But she said Congress needed to intervene.
“Families wouldn’t be able to buy groceries or life-saving medications because it would be even more expensive and perishable goods would spoil before reaching shelves,” Pelosi said.
The compromise agreement that was supported by the railroads and a majority of the unions provides for 24% raises and $5,000 in bonuses retroactive to 2020 along with one additional paid leave day. The raises would be the biggest rail workers have received in more than four decades. Workers would have to pay a larger share of their health insurance costs, but their premiums would be capped at 15% of the total cost of the insurance plan. The agreement did not resolve workers’ concerns about schedules that make it hard to take a day off and the lack of more paid sick time.
On several past occasions, Congress has intervened in labor disputes by enacting legislation to delay or prohibit railway and airline strikes.
___
Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska.
COP27 deal does little to avert future climate change disasters
Even as diplomats and activists applauded the creation of a fund to support vulnerable countries after disasters, many worried that nations’ reluctance to adopt more ambitious climate plans had left the planet on a dangerous warming path.
“Too many parties are not ready to make more progress today in the fight against the climate crisis,” European Union climate chief Frans Timmermans told weary negotiators Sunday morning. “What we have in front of us is not enough of a step forward for people and planet.”
The equivocal agreement, reached after a year of record-setting climate disasters and weeks of fraught negotiations in Egypt, underscores the challenge of getting the whole world to agree on rapid climate action when many powerful countries and organizations remain invested in the current energy system.
Rob Jackson, a climate scientist at Stanford University and chair of the Global Carbon Project, said it’s inevitable the world will surpass what scientists consider a safe warming threshold. The only questions are by how much and how many people will suffer as a result?
“It isn’t just COP27, it’s the lack of action at all the other COPs since the Paris accord,” Jackson said. “We’ve been bleeding for years now.”
He blamed entrenched interests, as well as political leaders and general human apathy, for delaying action toward the most ambitious goal set in Paris in 2015 of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.
An analysis by the advocacy group Global Witness showed a record number of fossil fuel lobbyists among attendees at this year’s conference. Multiple world leaders, including this year’s Egyptian COP hosts, held events with industry representatives and spoke about natural gas as a “transition fuel” that could ease the shift to renewable energy. Though burning gas produces fewer emissions than burning coal, the production and transportation process can lead to leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
In closed-door consultations, diplomats from Saudi Arabia and other oil- and gas-producing countries pushed back against proposals that would allow for nations to set new and more frequent emissions-cutting targets and call for a phaseout of all polluting fossil fuels, according to multiple people with knowledge of the negotiations.
“We went into the mitigation workshop, and it was five hours of trench warfare,” said New Zealand Climate Minister James Shaw, referring to discussions over a program designed to help countries meet their climate pledges and curb emissions across economic sectors. “It was hard work just to hold the line.”
Humanity’s current climate efforts are wildly insufficient to avoid catastrophic climate change. A study published midway through the COP27 negotiations found that few nations have followed through on a requirement from last year’s conference to boost their emissions-cutting pledges, and the world is on the precipice of warming well beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius — crossing a threshold that scientists say will lead to collapse of ecosystems, escalating extreme weather and widespread hunger and disease.
Sunday’s deal also fails to reflect the scientific reality, described by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this year, that the world must rapidly reduce its dependence on coal, oil and gas. Though an unprecedented number of countries — including India, the United States and the European Union — called for language on the need to phase out all polluting fossil fuels, the overarching decision only reiterated last year’s pact in Glasgow on the need for a “phase-down of unabated coal power.”
“It’s a consensus process,” said Shaw, whose country also backed the fossil fuel phaseout language. “If there’s a group of countries who are like, we will not stand for that, it’s very hard to get it done.”
Yet the historic agreement on a fund for irreversible climate harms — known in U.N. parlance as “loss and damage” — also showed how the COP process can empower the world’s smallest and most vulnerable countries.
Many observers believed the United States and other industrialized nations would never make such a financial commitment out of fear of liability for the trillions of dollars in damage that climate change will cause.
But after catastrophic floods left half of Pakistan underwater this year, the country’s diplomats led a negotiating block of more than 130 developing nations in demanding that “funding arrangements for loss and damage” be added to the meeting agenda.
“If there is any sense of morality and equity in international affairs … then there should be solidarity with the people of Pakistan and the people who are affected by the climate crisis,” Pakistani negotiator Munir Akram said in the early days of the conference. “This is a matter of climate justice.”
Resistance from wealthy countries began to soften as developing country leaders made clear they would not leave without a loss-and-damage fund. As talks stretched into overtime on Saturday, diplomats from small island states met with European Union negotiators to broker the deal that nations ultimately agreed on.
Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, said the success of that effort gave her optimism that countries could also do more to prevent future warming — something that’s necessary to keep her tiny Pacific nation from vanishing into rising seas.
“We’ve shown with the loss-and-damage fund that we can do the impossible,” she said, “so we know we can come back next year and get rid of fossil fuels once and for all.”
And Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy for Climate Action Network International, saw another benefit of requiring payment for climate harms: “COP27 has sent a warning shot to polluters that they can no longer go scot free with their climate destruction,” he said.
World has nine years to avert catastrophic global warming, study shows
The Global Carbon Budget, an annual assessment of how much the world can afford to emit to stay within its warming targets, found that greenhouse gas pollution will hit a record high this year, with much of the growth coming from a 1 percent increase in carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. Emissions in both the United States and India have increased compared to last year, while China and the European Union will probably report small declines, according to the report.
To have a chance of keeping global temperature rise within 1.5 degrees Celsius, humanity can release no more than 380 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent over the coming decades — an amount equal to about nine years of current emissions, the report says. Avoiding warming beyond 1.5C will require the world to curb emissions by about 1.4 billion tons per year, comparable to how much emissions shrank in 2020 as a result of the economic slowdown from the coronavirus pandemic.
Yet even as scientists warn of the world’s dangerous trajectory, leaders here at the U.N. Climate Change Conference, known as COP27, have advocated for natural gas as a “transition fuel” that would ease the world’s switch from fossil energy to renewables. At least four new gas projects have been reported or announced in the past 10 days, with several African countries pledging to expand export capacity and supply more fuel to Europe. Representatives from both Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, the host of next year’s climate conference, have made clear they view COP27 as an opportunity to promote gas.
This rhetoric has alarmed scientists and activists who say expanding natural gas production could harm vulnerable communities and push the planet toward a hotter, hellish future.
“Gas is not a low carbon energy source,” said Julia Pongratz, a climate scientist at the University of Munich and an author of the Global Carbon Budget report released Friday.
Pongratz said it is still technically possible for the world to avoid temperature rise beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius — which scientists say is needed to avoid disastrous extreme weather, rampant hunger and disease and the collapse of ecosystems on which humanity depends.
But if fossil fuel use does not dramatically decline, “in a few years we will no longer be able to say it’s possible,” Pongraz said. “And then we would need to look back and say we could have done it and we didn’t. How do we explain that to our kids?”
Yet activists say they are also encouraged by other countries’ growing willingness to embrace a phaseout of fossil fuels. The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu this week joined Vanuatu in calling for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. Kenyan President William Ruto declared that his country would not develop its hydrocarbon deposits but instead invest only in clean energy. Norway’s state owned energy company on Thursday put a hold on plans to develop a new Arctic oil field.
The gas study by the research group Climate Action Tracker shows that planned projects would more than double the world’s current liquefied natural gas capacity, generating roughly 47 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent between now and 2050.
According to the Energy Information Administration, burning gas for energy emits about half as much carbon dioxide equivalent as burning coal. But liquefying natural gas for transport and other parts of the gas production process can lead to leaks of methane, an especially potent greenhouse gas.
The planned expansion goes beyond what is needed to replace interrupted Russian fuel supplies, the study said. And it runs counter to findings by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency that there can be no new gas, oil and coal development if humanity wants to prevent dangerous warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“The world seems to have overreached in its bid to respond to the energy crisis,” said climate scientist Bill Hare, founder of Climate Action Tracker partner organization Climate Analytics and an author of the report.
The only way for these projects to be compatible with the 1.5C target, Hare said, would be for them to close before the end of their useful lives, creating a risk of turning billion-dollar facilities into “stranded assets.”
Both reports stand in contrast to the way fossil fuels — especially natural gas — have been discussed at COP27.
Nations made history at last year’s conference when they agreed on the need to phase down coal and fossil fuels — the first time an explicit reference to the main drivers of warming was included in a COP decision text. On the sidelines of that conference, a group of more than 20 countries pledged to stop public investments in overseas fossil fuel projects by the end of this year. But now some of those same countries are backsliding amid a frantic hunt for alternatives to Russian gas.
This week United Arab Emirates president and upcoming COP host Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan told leaders that the UAE would continue providing oil and gas “for as long as the world is in need.” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called for a brief increase in fossil fuel production, saying “without energy security there is no energy transition.” Tanzanian energy minister January Makamba announced a $40 billion new LNG export project. And although German Chancellor Olaf Scholz publicly said “there must not be a worldwide renaissance of fossil fuels,” his country has also encouraged nations like Algeria and Senegal to expand their gas production.
Meanwhile, an analysis of conference attendees by the advocacy group Global Witness found a sharp rise in representatives of the fossil fuel industry since last year’s COP. Some 200 people connected to oil, gas and coal are included in country delegations, the group said on Thursday, and another 236 are here with trade groups and other nongovernmental organizations.
“I’m really worried,” said Lorraine Chiponda, an environmental justice activist from Zimbabwe who co-facilitates a coalition of advocacy groups called Don’t Gas Africa. “This is supposed to be a space to discuss climate solutions, but instead it’s being used to drive fossil fuels.”
African nations are among the most vulnerable to climate change, and can’t afford to build out new fossil fuel infrastructure that will continue to heat the planet, she said. Local communities have also suffered as gas projects displace residents and generate air pollution.
European leaders’ justification that new gas projects are a short term solution to an energy crisis rings hollow, Chiponda added, given that some 600 million people in Africa have no access to electricity.
“Is that not a crisis?” she asked.
Catherine Abreu, director of the nonprofit Destination Zero, which calls for an end to fossil fuel use, said the push for gas was intertwined with the other issue dominating discussions in Sharm el-Sheikh: developing countries’ demand for more financial support from wealthier nations as they cope with the consequences of climate change.
Developing nations’ push for a loss and damage fund, through which large emitters would pay for irreversible climate harms like Pakistan’s recent floods, faces an uphill battle amid skepticism from the United States and other industrialized countries.
Meanwhile, wealthy nations have still not fulfilled an overdue promise to provide $100 billion to help vulnerable areas reduce emissions and adapt to warming that’s already underway. According to Climate Action Tracker, which also rates countries’ climate finance pledges, every rich country’s funding promises are insufficient.
“There’s such an imperative on investment in this region, and the only kind of investment that is available is for oil and gas,” Abreu said.
That tension was evident at a meeting of African leaders Tuesday, where African Development Bank president Akinwumi Adesina declared that “Africa needs gas” to develop.
“We want to make sure we have access to electricity,” he said, as the room broke out in applause. “We don’t want to become the museum of poverty in the world.”
Pongratz, one of the Global Carbon Budget report authors, hoped the findings would inform negotiators as the high-stakes, highly technical portion of the climate conference begins.
“We have depicted the urgency of the problem,” she said. “No one has the excuse of not knowing these numbers.”
U.S. should pump more oil to avert war-level energy crisis: JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon
Dimon said in June that he was preparing the bank for an economic “hurricane” caused by the Federal Reserve and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Monday that the U.S. should forge ahead in pumping more oil and gas to help alleviate the global energy crisis, likening the situation to a national security risk of war-level proportions.
Speaking to CNBC, Dimon dubbed the crisis “pretty predictable” — occurring as it has from Europe’s historic overdependence on Russian energy — and urged Western allies to support the U.S. in taking a lead role in international energy security.
“In my view, America should have been pumping more oil and gas and it should have been supported,” Dimon told CNBC’s Julianna Tatelbaum at the JPM Techstars conference in London.
“America needs to play a real leadership role. America is the swing producer, not Saudi Arabia. We should have gotten that right starting in March,” he continued, referring to the onset of the energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.
This should be treated almost as a matter of war at this point, nothing short of that.
Jamie Dimon
CEO, JPMorgan Chase
Europe — once a major importer of Russian energy, relying on the country for up to 45% of its natural gas needs — has been at the forefront of that crisis; facing higher prices and dwindling supply as a result of sanctions levied against the Kremlin.
And while EU nations have hit targets to shore up gas supplies over the coming winter months, Dimon said leaders should now be looking ahead to future energy security concerns.
“We have a longer-term problem now, which is the world is not producing enough oil and gas to reduce coal, make the transition [to green energy], produce security for people,” he said.
“I would put it in the critical category. This should be treated almost as a matter of war at this point, nothing short of that,” he added.
‘It’s Pearl Harbor’
Referring to the war in Ukraine more broadly, Dimon dubbed it an attack of similar magnitude to that of Pearl Harbor or the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
“It’s Pearl Harbor, it’s Czechoslovakia, and it’s really an attack on the Western world,” he said.
However, the CEO said it also presented an opportunity for the West to “get its act together” and defend its values in the face of autocratic regimes.
“The autocratic world thinks that the Western world is a little lazy and incompetent — and there’s a little bit of truth to that,” said Dimon.
“This is the chance to get our act together and to solidify the Western, free, democratic, capitalist, free people, free movements, freedom of speech, free religion for the next century,” he continued.
“Because if we don’t get this one right, that kind of chaos you can see around the world for the next 50 years.”
Railroad strike 2022: Intensifying efforts to avert crippling strike go overnight
New York
CNN Business
—
Talks aimed at averting a freight railroad strike that could cripple US supply chains continued overnight into Thursday. If the strike goes ahead early Friday, it could send prices higher for goods from gasoline to food to cars.
Two rail unions, representing more than 50,000 engineers and conductors who make up the two-person crews that make the trains run, are threatening the first rail strike in 30 years as of 12:01 am ET Friday. Union leaders and the railroads’ labor negotiators began meeting with Labor Secretary Marty Walsh at his Washington, DC, office at 9 a.m. ET on Wednesday.
The talks were still underway 18 hours later at 3 a.m. ET Thursday, a Labor Department spokesman told CNN.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One on Wednesday that “all parties need to stay at the table, bargain in good faith to resolve outstanding issues and come to an agreement. A shutdown of our freight rail system is unacceptable outcome for our economy and the American people, and all parties must work to avoid just that.”
The Labor Department asked both management and labor not to comment on the state of the talks, and neither responded to a request for comment.
Nearly 30% of the nation’s freight moves on the nation’s railroads. Many vital sectors — including oil refining, agriculture, auto and other manufacturing, plus the imports of consumer goods — depend on the railroads to operate. While a short strike would have a limited effect, economists say a strike lasting a week or more could have severe economic consequences.
The railroads announced last Friday that they had stopped accepting shipments of hazardous material, including fertilizer, as well as security-related materials, due to concerns that trains will immediately stop wherever they are once the strike begins. On Wednesday many stopped accepting shipments of agricultural products.
Members of Union Pacific
(UNP) train crews were informed by the railroad late Tuesday that if they’re in the middle of a trip when the strike begins at 12:01 am EST Friday they should park and secure their train and wait for transportation.
Freight railroad Norfolk Southern
(NSC) is planning to use management employees to operate a limited number of trains in the event of a strike Friday. That could allow critical materials to reach their destinations, like chlorine to water treatment plants.
“We’ll have some capability. Not a very good capability, but we’ll have some if it comes to that,” Norfolk Southern spokesman Connor Spielmaker told CNN Business Wednesday. “How we’re going to utilize them is still being planned out.”
Spielmaker said the railroads still hope to reach a deal with the unions and avert such a situation. Freight railroads CSX, BNSF and Union Pacific declined to say if they’ll be using management employees to operate trains in the event of a strike.
The threat of the strike could snarl commutes across the country. Many Amtrak and local commuter trains travel on railways owned by freight companies. If striking engineers park their trans midroute Friday morning, commutes could be disrupted. Amtrak on Wednesday said it canceled all long-distance trains starting Thursday, and it announced 10 additional routes would be shut down Thursday evening. Amtrak said additional delays or cancellations are possible.
The effort to avert a strike is a major test for President Joe Biden and his White House, which has positioned itself as one of the most pro-labor administrations ever. At the same time, it also wants to avoid any potential shocks to the economy, especially with the midterm elections just seven weeks away.
Railroad workers are governed by a different labor law than most workers, one that limits their freedom to strike and allows for more governmental intervention. In July Biden issued an order that prevented a strike at that time and created a panel, known as a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB), to try to find a solution to the dispute. It also imposed a 60-day cooling off period during which the unions could not strike and management could not lock out workers.
But Biden cannot order the railroads to keep operating once the cooling off period ends Friday. Only Congress can act to keep workers on the job if there is no deal. Sen. Richard Durbin, the second highest ranking member of the Democrats’ Senate leadership, told CNN this week that Congressional action is unlikely, despite business groups calling on Congress to act. The Senate is in recess on Friday, and many members of Congress are flying to London to attend Queen Elizabeth’s funeral.
The PEB’s recommendations called for workers to get an immediate 14% pay raise, plus back pay dating back to 2020. It also called for a 24% increase in pay during the five-year life of the contract from 2020 to 2024, and cash bonuses of $1,000 a year.
But it did not address the staffing shortages and scheduling rules that have become the key sticking point in the dispute. The engineers’ and conductors’ unions say the railroads are requiring their members to be “on call” and ready to report to work on short notice as often as seven days a week. Leadership of the two unions say their members would not accept a contract without changes to those work rules.
There are more than 50,000 other unions members at the railroads who maintain tracks, operate signals, dispatch trains and work as mechanics, among other jobs. But they are not subject to the same work rules, and those unions already accepted tentative deals with the railroads based on the PEB’s recommendations.
One of those unions, the Machinists, announced Wednesday that its members voted to reject its tentative labor deal. There are about 5,000 members of the union at the railroads working as locomotive machinists, track equipment mechanics and facility maintenance personnel.
Their rejection of the proposed contract is not an immediate setback in efforts to avoid the strike. The union said it will not go on strike before the end of the month, as it tries to reach a change in the tentative agreement that its members will accept. But it is a sign of the complexity the railroads are facing in reaching deals with a dozen different unions that are also acceptable to rank-and-file membership.
Two other unions, the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen and the Transportation Communications Union, which between them have 11,000 members, ratified deals on Wednesday.
– CNN’s Matt McFarland, Ali Zaslav, Kate Sullivan, Phil Mattingly, Maegan Vazquez and Andrew Millman contributed to this report
White House scrambles to avert looming railroad strike
The stalemate pits two of Biden’s top priorities against each other. The president has been an adamant defender of union workers but does not want a breakdown in the nation’s transportation infrastructure that would disrupt commuter and passenger services.
The administration has little time to act: The nationwide rail shutdown is set to go into effect on Friday, and labor and management have been at an impasse over difficult issues such as sick time and penalties for missing work.
The freight industry has warned that the first national rail strike in decades would shut down 30 percent of the country’s freight and “halt most passenger and commuter rail services.” The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes, a division of the Teamsters, on Sunday announced a tentative agreement with national rail carriers, leaving only two of the 12 unions without a deal in place. But those are the two biggest rail unions in the country, representing 57,000 engineers and conductors.
Concerns about the political impact of a labor shutdown extend to parts of the administration as well. Farm groups have clamored for an agreement to be swiftly reached, as their operations could be heavily impacted. The administration has already faced criticism over its handling of the nation’s transportation infrastructure, which was wracked last year by supply chain snarls and this year by a spike in cancellations and delays at the nation’s airports. Some administration officials fear squandering the Biden economic victories of August that have helped increase Democrats’ poll numbers.
The Federal Railroad Administration, a part of the Transportation Department, has estimated that failure to reach an agreement could cost the U.S. economy as much as $2 billion per day in lost economic output. U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Suzanne P. Clark on Monday said a strike would be an “economic disaster” with “catastrophic economic impacts,” calling for urgent action to resolve the standoff.
“The last thing they want right now is a major strike in a key sector like this,” said Dean Baker, a White House ally and economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal think tank. “I think Biden is going to be pushing really hard to get a deal. He’ll presumably push on the employer side but I’m sure he’ll push the union side as well … though there’s a question of how hard he’ll be willing to push the workers.”
Still, the president has made supporting unions one of the top priorities throughout his administration. Many Biden aides are sympathetic to workers’ complaints of poor working conditions and unjust treatment by management, and are reluctant to lean too aggressively on labor leaders to end the strike.
At issue is the recommendation of the Presidential Emergency Board, which is run by three Biden appointees. The board outlined wage hikes and annual bonuses in a 124-page report that were between the demands of the union and management, and were generous enough to peel off 10 of the labor unions that represent a subset of railway workers who do not operate trains.
But the remaining two unions slated to strike are infuriated by the board’s lack of strong proposals related to certain working conditions that they say are “destroying the lives” of their members, such as facing penalties for taking any time off. Labor groups say engineers and conductors have been fired for going to routine doctor’s appointments or family members’ funerals, and can be on call for 14 consecutive days without a break, for up to 12 hours. They are also afforded no sick days.
“We’re facing the potential of a strike because the railroad refuses to grant one single day of sick time,” said Ron Kaminkow, a member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, one of the unions that has not reached an agreement. “It’s about the phone rings at 2 a.m. to be at work at 4 a.m. after just 10 hours of rest prior. It’s about not knowing when you’re coming home and being penalized with discipline up to firing if you need to go to the doctor.”
At least $1 billion needed to avert famine in Somalia – KION546
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. humanitarian chief is predicting that at least a billion dollars will be needed urgently to avert famine in Somalia in the coming months and early next year when two more dry seasons are expected to compound the historic drought that has hit the Horn of Africa nation. Martin Griffiths said in a video briefing from Somalia’s capital Mogadishu that a new report from an authoritative panel of independent experts says there will be a famine in Somalia between October and December if it isn’t avoided with massive aid as was the case in 2016 and 2017.
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