Scandalous failure (updated)

The Senate has failed to pass the proposal to add paid sick leave to the contract being imposed on American rail workers (see yesterday's post for background).  Only six Republican senators voted for the provision; forty-two Republicans plus Joe Manchin, stabbing American workers in the back and acting as craven toadies to the railway companies and the hedge funds that own most of them, voted against requiring this bare-minimum benefit which would have cost the parasites a mere two percent of their obscene profits.

As far as I have seen, the fake-pro-labor Biden administration never lifted a finger to fight for the sick-leave addition.  The administration sent out Pete Buttigieg to deliver its craven, cowardly evasions -- yes, the union leaders agreed to the original contract, but the members of four unions voted to reject it.

I've been critical of Bernie Sanders and the progressive wing of the Democrats on various grounds, but in this defining moment of the Biden presidency, it was they who did try to save the soul of the party, fighting hard for the paid-leave provision which most Democrats ultimately supported.

As an aside, I've been shocked by how little attention this critical fight has gotten from most of the left-wing internet.  If the left can't drop everything else for the moment and come together for something like this, then there is no "left" worthy of the name.

The Senate did comfortably pass the main legislation forcing railway workers to accept the original, shitty contract with no paid sick leave.  This does not mean, of course, that the rail strike everyone is dreading will be averted.  It merely means that if such a strike happens, it will be illegal, which may not matter very much to the workers whom the government has just betrayed.  You can only push people so far.  The brave rebellions we're seeing by the Iranian and Chinese peoples are also "illegal" according to the laws of their rulers.

The Senate has now left for a long weekend and will not return until Monday afternoon.  Unlike the railway workers whom they just voted to force to come to work sick, their own access to civilized working conditions is safe.

Update:  Some are now claiming that Biden could guarantee the paid leave with an executive order.  But will he?