Why America’s Railroads Refuse to Give Their Workers Paid Leave
Fuck the shareholders. Strike. Yes, I am absolutely willing to pay more in the short term for things so that people are treated with a little basic human decency.Moreover, I'm more than happy to pay a little more for things in the long term to ensure that there's enough slack in the system to absorb the shocks that periodically come around.We've just spent almost three years slowly killing everyone in healthcare because every "inefficiency" in the system has been trimmed to the bone. We've been asking people to shoulder crushing loads to make up for the lack of what is normally excess capacity. We shouldn't need a reminder that all that inefficiency is what adds resilience to the system so soon.Airlines claim to have learned this. They say they're reducing schedules to more realistically match their ability to absorb hiccups during the holiday travel season. Time will tell, but it seems nobody wants a repeat of last year. If you make flying awful enough, evidently people will find ways to not do it.Maybe part of the solution is to treat other industries like the banking and finance industries. Banks get periodic stress tests; perhaps it's time to do the same for all of the other systems that we rely on holding together but don't have to think about until they're falling apart under load.