Why America’s Railroads Refuse to Give Their Workers Paid Leave
This problem does not seem unique to railroads. Any business that depends on human labor to deliver a service would have this problem. Airlines, restaurants, theatre companies. The way to deal with this is to have excess labor available (slack in the system). Are railroad profit margins so small that paying for excess labor will bankrupt them? Maybe labor in the railroad industry is so highly regulated that labor flexibility very expensive to maintain. Railroad pensions are the only private pensions that I know of that are specifically called out in IRS tax forms. That has always seemed odd to me, and is probably some indication of how tightly regulated labor in the railroad business is.