Yahoo Finance Labor Secretary Marty Walsh on rail deal success: It didn't start as 'necessarily a lovefest'
On Thursday at 5:04 a.m. ET, President Joe Biden announced that a tentative deal was in place to avert a nationwide freight rail strike that could have wreaked economic havoc around the nation.
A strike “would have had catastrophic impacts,” added Labor Secretary Marty Walsh moments later in a tweet. Walsh — who played a central role in brokering the agreement between labor unions and freight rail operators — explained what went into negotiations in an interview with Yahoo Finance on Thursday afternoon.
“This contract negotiation has been going on for over two years so it wasn't necessarily a lovefest when we started the night,” Walsh said of this last, 20-hour burst of negotiations. "But at the end of the night, as we got towards the end of the contract, there was a lot of mutual respect there.”
While Walsh described his main role as facilitating conversation, he also acknowledged that, at times, he had to do "a little persuasion” to nudge both sides closer to an agreement.
The accord came after acrimonious talks had stretched for years to renew a contract that expired in 2019. Both the rail industry and the unions hailed the deal as a key breakthrough, marking a sharp turnabout from the tone even earlier this week. On Sunday, a statement from two unions accused the rail companies of “what can only be described as corporate terrorism.”
'It's a contract that helps the carriers'
The deal implements recommendations from a Presidential Emergency Board that Biden appointed this summer and will provide rail employees with a 24% wage increase through 2024. The unions also got a key concession with a new agreement to change rules for how workers can take time off for medical events.
“It's a contract that respects the workers. It's a contract that helps the carriers and allows us the opportunity to avert what would be, I think, a national catastrophe,” Walsh said Thursday afternoon from the White House, adding that the better pay and more flexibility “is a great tool to attract talent to work on the rail."
Biden appeared at an event in the White House Rose Garden moments later with Walsh; Brian Deese, director of the White House National Economic Council; and the negotiators themselves to proclaim “this agreement is a big win for America.”
The president reportedly called into the negotiations at about 9 p.m. ET to underscore the stakes as the sides moved closer to a deal. Eight hours later, they'd publicly declared success. The agreement will not be finalized until workers ratify it, but union leaders have agreed in the meantime that a strike will be averted.
“The key to this is keeping sides at the table,” Walsh said Thursday.
Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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