The new date is Dec 1, 2022, 04:12pmEST.
The Senate approved a new contract between railroad companies and labor unions on Thursday in a last-minute vote, but rejected the unions' demands for paid sick leave.
There are freight train cars in Atlanta. The file is labeled "Danny Karnik."
The Senate voted 80-15 in favor of the agreement brokered by the Biden Administration in September.
The Senate voted 52 to 43 to reject seven days of paid sick leave for rail workers who have complained that current policies keep them on call for days or weeks at a time and penalize those who call out sick.
The Senate voted down an amendment that would have extended the negotiating period by 60 days to give the parties more time to reach a compromise.
The bill now goes to the desk of the president, who urged Congress to approve the labor deal on Monday.
Four of the 12 rail industry labor unions voted against the agreement Biden's Emergency Board negotiated in September due to the lack of paid sick leave. If the four holdouts went on strike, the other eight unions would stay home from work. The pay raises offered by the contract are among the highest in decades, according to the railroad companies. Lawmakers amended the contract to include paid sick leave. The Senate's approval of the deal without the new sick leave policy makes the unions powerless. Clark Ballew, a spokesman for the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, told Forbes that if Congress imposes the terms of the next contract, it would be the end of the line.
The senator said paid sick leave was the problem. They are one of the few industries that don't have sick leave. If a worker on the rail industry gets sick, they get a mark for missing work and can be fired.
The Senate vote comes after Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg warned that railroad companies would begin slowing operations as early as this weekend if Congress didn't reach a deal before Friday.
Legislation to prevent rail strike is approved by the house.
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