IT COULD BE THE PERFECT STORM.

Two of the railroaders' unions have already rejected the contract the bargaining committees, railroad managements, and federal officials put together.  Now come the shippers, praying for Congressional action.

Agricultural shippers have urged Congress to prevent a national railroad strike or lockout, which they said would have “devastating consequences to our national and global food security.”

A railroad network shutdown would exacerbate agricultural shipping challenges, which include rail congestion on the big four U.S. systems, record low water levels that have brought Mississippi River barge traffic to a halt, and a shortage of trucks, the National Feed and Grain Association and 192 other members of the Agricultural Transportation Working Group told Congress this week.

If that correlation of forces isn't adverse enough, the aviators also want a life away from the extra board.

The Allied Pilots Association (APA) said on Wednesday that its board of directors rejected a tentative agreement (TA) for a new contract with American Airlines by a vote of 15-5.

The proposal would have increased pilot pay by 12 percent on the date of contract signing with a 5 percent raise the next year and a 2 percent raise the year after. However, after pilots have been working for three years under the old contract with no wage increases during the coronavirus pandemic, and with annual inflation topping 8 percent, this 19 percent raise is insultingly low.

“We cannot vote to approve a [tentative agreement] that does not adequately address the quality-of-life items of our airline pilots,” APA officials at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport said in a letter to pilots. “The Company has returned a proposal that is not only subpar in these areas, but it also demonstrates a complete lack of understanding how important these issues are for you.”

There are growing signs that a significant movement is underway among airline workers and pilots, in particular. The APA, which covers approximately 15,000 American Airlines pilots, rejected the TA only one day after United Airlines pilots voted down a TA by 94 percent, and two days after 15,000 Delta Air Lines pilots voted to go on strike by 99 percent. Earlier this year, pilots at Alaska Airlines also voted to authorize a strike, although they voted to accept a new three-year contract earlier this month.

Earlier this year, pilots and flight attendants held informational pickets at airports across the country. Internationally, strikes by air crews have also taken place at Eurowings in Germany and Ryanair in Spain.

The main issue for AA pilots is overwork and unpredictable working schedules. These have worsened over the course of the pandemic, which has compounded a pilots shortage that has been building for years. Over the summer, American saw the number of pilot fatigue call-ins increase to quadruple the normal rate, APA spokesman Dennis Tajer told AINonline.

What that story won't tell you, because it steps on the Zero Corona Is Attainable Under Trotskyism narrative still on offer by the World Socialist Web Site, is that the staffing problems on the flight deck reflect in part the reluctance of pilots to keep being injected with a vaccine of dubious efficacy.  It's not as if the air carriers have a large reserve army of unemployed aviators to draw on.

Staff shortages were already a chronic problem before the pandemic but were exacerbated by tens of thousands of workers leaving the industry and not being replaced.

Workers are also pressing for their demands in other critical transportation industries. On the major US railroads, 120,000 workers are pressing for strike action and the rejection of sellout contracts reached with the involvement of the White House. As with pilots, erratic scheduling and overwork is the number one issue for rail crews, who are on call 24/7 and have no guaranteed sick days. Workers in three out of the 12 rail unions have already rejected their tentative agreements.

Both the railroad and airline industries are under the jurisdiction of the notorious Railway Labor Act, which severely limits the right to strike and prohibits contracts from expiring.

If the next month of labor relations in transportation aren't going to be challenging enough, that "incredible transition" has so disrupted domestic crude oil extraction that inventories of the heavier crude used to produce diesel fuel, which the trains and trucks use, and heating oil, which is still in use in the northeast and New England, are in short supply going into winter, and a problem with the refineries that extract those grades of fuel will have unpleasant consequences.