Union Pacific is one of the largest rail carriers operating in the United States.
And if that name stands out too,
it might be because they've been in the news a lot over the last six months or so.
They were one of the major rail carriers involved in the White House brokered
contract talks late last year that produced an agreement without any
guaranteed paid sick days, rejecting one of the central demands of rail workers.
There were some good things that came out of that, including an increase in pay,
but one of the main things they were asking for the ability to be sick and
not have to work anyway during pandemic was rejected.
Now look, you have to be sympathetic to Union Pacific.
Obviously they don't have $10 to rub together.
How are they going to afford to give workers sick days,
they just don't have any cash.
Except of course they reported $7 billion in net income for
2022 as a whole, which already doesn't sound great
from a corporation that was crying poverty all last year.
So they wouldn't have to give their essential workers their due.
But it's actually even worse than that because for that year for
2020 to the company's employee pay and
benefits rose by about $500 million 12%, that's good.
That's $4.6 billion far less than the $6.3 billion
they spent solely on repurchasing shares of stock.
So it turns out there was some excess money, money that is so
excess, you can just use it to consolidate control over the corporation
a way of boosting your stock price.
It's doesn't have anything to do with the actual operational capacity of
the railroad, let alone the the well being or morale of your workers.
And when this news comes out they know the worker are going to see it,
they're not gonna like it.
We'll know the newly elected president of the brotherhood of locomotive engineers at
hall said instead of buying back their own stock ups should be investing in their
employees by offering paid sick leave, reasonable schedules and
a better quality of life for railroaders.
This is the only way the railroad will be able to solve their recruitment and
retention problems and keep the trains running.
So that's the Union Pacific two other major freight railroads, CSX and
Norfolk Southern are due to report results Wednesday and I don't know about you, but
I can't wait to find out.
Did they get to buy some stock back to, stay tuned?
I mean, I don't know, I'm on pins and needles.
They sounded like they were barely sustainable because I mean they can't even
offer one sick day to their workers.
So they're probably just about to go out of business.
>> They're about to derail, so to speak.
>> Yeah, and I mean at best they're gonna be very human, right,
that it's weird that they made that other company made $7 billion in profit.
That seems like they might have a lot of money and
that they're just choosing to screw over their workers to make just another dollar.
Now, what happens with stock buybacks?
Well there's two main reasons you do it, one is executives compensation and
options are a lot of times tied to the stock price.
So if you buy back a lot of stock, it inflates the stock price and
then the executive conversation becomes much higher.
So they have an incentive to go.
The most important investment we can make is not in our workers,
hell no in our infrastructure.
Hell no making a better product, hell no, my salary, hell yes.
>> Okay, so that's by the way guys, they're not angels, they're not geniuses.
They're regular dudes.
They are just saying, of course I want the money.
What do you think I was gonna give it to someone else?
No, and which leads to the second reason that they're doing these buybacks, they've
taken it home before people wake up and go, what have you guys been doing, right?
There's a lot of attention paid to the railroads because of the potential strike.
So there was like extra heat that they normally never see.
And there could be a little bit of like, well if we do buybacks, a lot of that
money just gets taken home by the richest people in the company shareholders, etc.
It's gone, they can never get it because we already took it home.
You keep it inside the company, maybe they figure out we're full of crap and that,
hey, this is basically a utility now, right?
I mean, there's a lot of different things that can happen.
But of course it won't happen because who's the one that crushed the workers
in politics in this particular case, Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg.
They came out and they said, no, hell no, they're not allowed to strike.
No, the company will keep all seven billion, okay.
And the workers will get no sick days, and if you guys try to strike,
there's going to be legal ramifications.
Republicans didn't do that, I mean, they would have and they totally agreed to it.
They would have crushed it even more.
But but Biden did Biden did do it.
He doesn't care about the workers at all.
He corporate democrats, moderate democrats, and mainstream media tells
you are these lovely human beings who cares so much about the democratic agenda.
Joe Biden doesn't believe in his own agenda.
He pretend to be in favor of the unions and that the most spectacular moment when
he could have helped them, he could have forced the company to take their
terms instead of taking the forcing the workers to take the company's terms.
And as always, moderate democrats are not at all moderate, their massively
conservative on economic issues and mainstream media works with them to trick
all of you into compliance so that you never fight back against these guys.
>> Yeah, that's why I personally think that moderate centrist should be banned as
terms their corporate democrats there.
The local of their politics is the interests of corporations,
that's what it is.
But I also wanna put what Union Pacific did in perspective because sure
they bought back $6.3 billion of shares but then there are basically
broke compared to Chevron which announced $75 billion in stock buyback.
>> Wow, holy cow, and okay, last two things on this one company.
Okay, guys they were talking about a windfall profit tax because they used
the excuse of inflation to increase prices massively and take home all the money.
By the way these are all natural resources that they are extracting from our land,
American land, Saudi land, Venezuelan land and said they,
well not the Venezuela's and that's why we're trying to do a coup in Venezuela.
But they extract the resources from us,
the citizens of all of these countries that own it, then they make a $75
billion on profit at the time when we were most hurt during inflation.
They take advantage of that, they buy off all these corrupt politicians,
the entirety of the Republican Party and a huge chunk of the Democratic Party people
like Joe Manchin and to look the other way and then the minute they have the loot,
they're like, do a stock buyback, do a stock buyback, okay.
They're taking it home before we realize we're getting robbed.
These are the companies that are causing climate change in the first place and look
at how spectacularly wealthy it's making them, it's injustice on top of injustice.
>> 100%, and the biggest villain here clearly is Bernie Sanders who
spent last year talking about the fossil fuel industries price gouging.
>> Yeah, but it did look, he did talk about it and
his friend Joe Biden didn't do a goddamn thing about.
>> Hey, hey, hey, hold on, sir.
A Spokesman for the White House responded to this news saying for
a company that claimed not too long ago that it was working
hard to increase oil production, handing out $75 billion dollars to executives and
wealthy shareholders, sure is an odd way to show it.
We continue to call on oil companies to use their record profits to increase
supply and reduce costs for the American people.
>> Whoa.
>> That's a strongly worded letter right there.
>> I didn't know they were calling on them to do that, why did you lead with that?
>> I demand that you voluntarily give up billions.
How would that work, what would they do?
Just be like, hey, you know what, that was a strongly worded letter and
they've called upon us.
So you know what, here's seven of the 7.5 billion.
>> [LAUGH] >> There's not even a mechanism
to do that.
What that is, is a statement that spits in the face of the American people and goes,
we think you're dumb,
you're never gonna figure it out that were actually on their team.
And the good news for
the Biden administration is we have the entire mainstream media in our,
in our back pocket by the way, including right wing media.
Right wing media never calls them out for this because they love this,
this is the kind of corruption that right wing media fees on and
they were attacking the things that they attacked Biden on.
They never Italian about what's real.
>> No, the right wing literally spent all year going from gasoline is way too
expensive, people are paying way too much.
Hey, stop talking about price gouging,
it's definitely not that it's something else.
I have no idea what and we won't do literally anything to drive down the cost
of gasoline, but it's definitely not price gouging, that's what it is.
The media is the corruption.
They're the ones that are paid to make sure you don't see the $75 billion dollars
that they just took home.
The media is the getaway driver.