faced twice, which was have the congress adopt disagreement, which not only gave a lot of benefits to people in the railroad industry, but the alternative was a potential rail shutdown, hundreds of thousands of people, a lot of them unionized, losing their jobs, particularly in the auto industry another manufacturing industries, communities losing their access to clean water because they wouldn t have the chemicals to put in the water, hospitals shutting down i think in the face of that catastrophic alternative, the president believed the best thing for the largest number of working people, including unionized working people in the country, was to have congress adopt the agreement. final question, and quickly on this, is the white house looking into any executive action that could possibly deliver six for employees given that the railroads are a big federal conduct? always looking at ways to expand paid leave, that s what the president said when you put this proposal before the c
what do you say to those workers who say the president says he s pro labor, but he hung unfit to dry? first of all, what i d say is the agreement we re talking about this organized labor access to a point that produced a proposed settlement. that wasn t getting the. we went back to the table, and made the railroad industry give even more concessions to workers. and in the end, the agreement reached between labor and management was ratified by eight of the 12 unions involved here. it gave a 26% pay hike to the people who work in the industry. gave health care benefits. really solid permanent health care benefits for the first time in this industry. and gave unpaid leave digs to some of the workers who ve never had that benefit before, you were actually penalized for even just taking off and unpaid day. so i think the agreement made a lot of progress for a lot of the key issues for working people in the industry. was it perfect? absolutely not. but in the end, the president faced