Alright, so we avoided a national
railroad workers strike today.
The White House helped union leaders and
the railroad industry come to a tentative
agreement after 20 hours of negotiations.
But the back and forth negotiations will
they go back years with workers demanding
higher pay and better working conditions?
Any deal that gets done from here,
though, still needs to be ratified.
But it does look like trains will
continue on tracks across the country.
Have there been a strike beginning tomorrow,
though?
It would likely have been devastating.
It would have devastated railroad
service from coast to coast.
Including right here in Idaho because,
well, mostly our AG industry
with major commodities in bulk
like our famous potatoes.
Well, they take rides on trains.
Here's Joe Paris.
Appears to be off. The value of railroad
infrastructure is now on display,
as union workers had worked with
the railroad industry to get
better pay and working conditions.
There were real fears that significant
sections of America's railroad
system would be shut down for
worker strikes at home in Idaho,
a railroad strike would have
created severe implications.
Rail strike. Agricultural
commodities depend on the railroad.
You know you can't switch everything
from railroad to truck overnight.
That doesn't happen.
And then the big bulk
commodities like you know,
wheat, potatoes, corn, soybeans,
etcetera like that that are moved by rail,
can't you can't just be
switched to truck overnight.
Sean Ellis is a spokesman for
the Idaho Farm Bureau Federation.
Alice explains a railroad strike would
have had far reaching consequences,
implications when I heard would be
far reaching that they would be,
I don't want to say,
but they would have been significantly bad.
It would have affected everything,
would have affected every,
every segment of agriculture.
Keep in mind,
you know Idaho's landlocked state,
we produce a lot of different commodities.
We don't have a huge population.
Virtually everything we produce
here in Idaho is shipped out.
So we're heavily dependent on transportation.
Another issue a railroad strike
would have created an Idaho
supply lines into the Gem state.
We also get a lot of you know
inputs for the for farmers
and ranchers like fertilizer.
Those are shipped in.
So you have a double whammy there.
You can't ship anything out and you can't
ship anything into to keep growing for.
So yeah it would have been a
I don't think anyone knows the
the the extent of the impact,
but it would have been very significant
if railroads become unviable for shipping
and receiving products because of a
strike trucks on roads would have to be.
The next option, but that is an
option that pales in comparison to
railroad infrastructure there. There's
no real substitute for for
moving agricultural goods.
Construction only move a small
percentage of the big bulk and
commodities that are moved there.
There's no substitute at the moment for that.
The timing of the prospective deal to
avoid a strike is also huge for Idaho.
The strike would have been at
a crucial harvest time for
many Gem state AG operations.
It would have if we had a huge
impact and keep in mind that so
Idaho and agricultural state,
you know, we lead the nation in
a lot of different categories.
We produce a lot of potatoes,
wheat, barley, corn, you know,
dairy products that are out
that are shipped by rail.
It would, it would,
it would have had a large negative impact.
Idaho agriculture,
if Idaho operations were unable to ship
their products out, they would be.
Back holding on to their crops and products
with the potential of seeing it spoil.
That's millions of dollars left on the table
on a on an average year we produce 8
1/2 billion with a B dollars worth of
agricultural commodities in Idaho.
Like I said, virtually all
of those are shipped out.
So a railroad national railroad spike
would have paralyze Idaho agriculture.
And so if it truly has been averted,
that would be, you know, welcome news,
a big blessing to Idaho agriculture.
So what does a tentative agreement mean
here in terms of avoiding a railroad strike?
Well, it is good news, but the deal here,
it still needs to be ratified by
what's called the rank and file.
As you can imagine,
the top leaders of the unions,
they were the ones that were negotiating
and they came to a deal with the industry.
However, if it's not approved by the rank and
file and there's no guarantee that'll happen,
you would have another issue,
would have the situation where it
looks like we could see a strike.
But Brian, at this time,
at 510 here on Thursday afternoon,
it looks like the national
railroad strike will not.
Happen.
There is a strong belief that the deal
that they agreed to late last night,
early this morning that President
Biden helped work on,
there's a belief that this will go
through and will be an extensive deal
that would probably avoid any type of
issues like this for many years to come.
But until the rank and file ratify it,
it's not a done deal.
So we can still send out our Smokey
potatoes around the rest of the country.
That's right.
You're Smokey potatoes.
You can send them all the way to New York.
Excellent.
Thank you,
Joe.