President Joe Biden celebrated his administration avoiding a billion-dollar supply chain crisis after negotiators reached a tentative railway labor union agreement before a threatened strike.
“This agreement is a big win for America and for both, in my view,” Biden said Thursday at the White House. “This agreement is validation of what I have always believed. Labor and management can work together.”
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Biden greeted the negotiators in the Oval Office before his Rose Garden remarks, having spoken to them on the phone at roughly 9 p.m. the previous night. The agreement secures a 24% pay increase over five years and another paid day off for railway workers, without which they would have shut down a majority of the network.
“It feels good,” Biden told reporters in his office. “They should be home in bed.”
Biden earlier touted the agreement in a statement shared with reporters at 5:04 a.m. In it, he thanked the unions and companies, in addition to Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, and National Economic Council Director Brian Deese, for approaching discussions in good faith. Walsh, who advised the White House of the deal at about 2 a.m., led approximately 20 hours of talks as they headed toward a conclusion.
“For the American people, the hard work done to reach this tentative agreement means that our economy can avert the significant damage any shutdown would have brought,” he wrote. “With unemployment still near record lows and signs of progress in lowering costs, tonight’s agreement allows us to continue to fight for long term economic growth that finally works for working families.”
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West Coast port workers are in a separate dispute that could similarly upend supply chains after the pandemic. Amtrak canceled many of its long-haul trips on Wednesday in preparation for the strike.
