Dude, the rail worker strike would have been devastating. Inflation was already rough, supply chains were still fucked post COVID, railways shutting down for days would have fucked businesses, especially small and mom and pops, and restaurants, that were all struggling because of lockdowns.

And they still negotiated with the union and got them most of what the wanted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_labor_dispute

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 13 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

How to say you’re a scab without saying you’re a scab: Won’t somebody please think of the economy?! And what happened soon after Congress defanged workers’ safety concerns? The East Palestine derailment catastrophe.

Citations Needed podcast:

[–] ScoobyDope@lemm.ee -4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

My restaurant never would have survived it. I went into debt to keep my workers paid during this time. I was in a group for small business owners in my city who were in the same boat as me. The economy would have been hurt, sure, but it wouldn’t screw over Walmart and Amazon. It would have screwed over us little guys just trying to get buy.

You can claim to be anti-oligarchy, but big business would have been fine. And a McDonald’s probably would have taken my spot and replaced my jobs with minimum wage drones.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 hours ago

I don’t claim to be merely anti-oligarchy; I’m socialist. And I don’t mean progressive liberal like AOC was or Sanders is, I mean actually socialist.

Anyway, maybe the strike really would have forced you to shutter, or maybe you could have gotten the PPP loans to limp through it. Or maybe in response to the strike, Congress could or would have increased the PPP loans to employers and/or COVID relief funds to families. We’ll never really know.