As we discussed here last week, Congress voted to avert a rail strike, but thanks to the likes of Joe Manchin and most of the Republicans in the Senate, the workers were denied the lousy seven days of paid sick leave that the unions were fighting for.
The fact that one party was primarily responsible for that outcome seemed to be lost on CNN's Jake Tapper, who did his best to paint Democrats as somehow anti-union for voting to avert a rail strike despite the fact that they couldn't get the paid leave amendment through the Senate during an exchange this Sunday with Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown.
After playing a video of a union rail mechanic attacking Biden for supposedly "turning his back" on the workers, Tapper asked Brown about his yes vote after the amendment failed, using talking points you could have just as easily heard on Fox.
TAPPER: Now, you, Senator, you voted to add the seven days of paid leave. But after that amendment failed, you still voted for the final deal.
How do you explain this to a union worker like Reece? It doesn't seem like Democrats were truly standing up with all of their force against these billion-dollar rail companies?
I'm not sure just exactly what "force" Democrats were supposed to use to overcome a Republican filibuster, which Brown proceeded to explain to Tapper in response.
BROWN: Yes, I mean, we have -- every Democrat but one voted for the sick pay days, the seven sick days -- sick days. Only six Republicans did. We couldn't get to 60 votes.
We're -- I take a backseat to nobody in fighting for workers, in fighting for union members, and non-union members too. But the issue here is, we have to keep the economy going. I'm going to go back, and I'm working with staff, working with the leader's office, working with the White House on, how do we help these workers to make sure eventually they get these sick days?
And, as Brown continued to explain, a lot more workers than just the rail workers would have been harmed if the strike had been allowed to proceed, before reminding Tapper again which party voted against the sick pay.
BROWN: But we also know, if there had been a strike, that, literally, hundreds of thousands, maybe more, workers would have been out of work for a lengthy period of time. We have to look at the whole economy, but I will never lose my focus on those workers who didn't get as good a deal as we'd like to have had.
But, again, almost every Republican voted no. We're continuing to try to work bipartisanly with them and with the White House to fix this.
Sadly, we're not going to see this fixed as long as we don't have a pro-labor filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
