CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) -As the nation’s rail workers and the rail companies they work for remain at an impasse in contract negotiations there is growing concern regarding the nation’s fragile, still recovering supply chain, as union workers claim they will be locked out of their jobs on Friday and the nations rail lines shut down.
Rail workers and the Railroad are still debating over what the union claims is a lack of adequate sick time and time off to go to doctor appointments. The Railroads counter with a claim that employees are on “platinum level” health care plans.
While that fight drags on, it has grabbed the attention of President Joe Biden because of what a rail shutdown could mean to the nation’s economy through supply chain disruptions.
Michael Goulder, a professor at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management said that the nation’s rail lines carry 30 percent of what is shipped across the country on a daily basis.
The supply chain simply could not handle that loss.
“And it is particularly worrisome to me because we are still correcting from those COVID supply chain shocks that were so bad 2 years ago,” Goulder said, “It takes a long time for the system to settle down.”
Consumer prices would begin to rise rather quickly after a rail shutdown and subsequently, factories would find themselves without the product needed for production and it would not be long before workers were laid off.
The trucking industry, which remains in desperate need of drivers, does not have the capacity to pick up the slack of a rail shutdown.
And our ports, many of which remain clogged due to those trucking shortages, would find themselves beyond capacity with goods that they are unable to deliver move out.
And Goulder believes the financial crunch and supply chain issues of a rail shutdown would last much longer than the shutdown itself.
“Because we’re so tight on supply chain capacity, right now, that for each day of the shutdown it could take a week to recover,” he said.
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