President Joe Biden said on Thursday that a 'tentative' deal has been reached between US freight rail companies and unions, averting a potentially devastating strike before the pivotal midterm elections.
The agreement, hashed out as a national rail strike loomed at midnight on Friday, will raise rail employees salaries 24 percent from the period from 2020 to 2024, with workers getting an average lump sum payment of $11,000 for the backdated portion of the raise, according to a group representing rail companies.
Biden called the deal 'a win for tens of thousands of rail workers who worked tirelessly through the pandemic to ensure that America's families and communities got deliveries of what have kept us going during these difficult years.'
As negotiations between the rail companies and the unions came down to the wire, the White House and Biden's Labor Secretary Martin J. Walsh had stepped in to help broker an agreement.
The tentative agreement must now be voted on by union members, but even if they reject it, a rail shutdown has been averted for several weeks due to the standard language included in such a deal, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.
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