Hey everybody, it's Will here coming at you with a bonus choppo episode today.

It's been a week of railroads here in the US with a tentative agreement just about to be

imposed on railroad workers in the name of a verdict strike. So we're going to get into that

today joined by Jonah Furman, a journalist at labor notes and Ross Grooters, co-chair of

railroad workers united and Devon Mans of BMW ED teamsters. Now, so I'd like to get into the

tentative agreement that's just been opposed and a little bit of the Congress, the White House,

all of that. But let's look to begin as a fan of trains and the people who operate them. I'd

like to begin by asking our two real life train heads, I guess I'm beginning with you Devon. If

you could just tell our listeners a little bit about yourself where you're from, what your job is,

and your perspective on the conditions at the railroads and your relationship with management

that led to this current moment. So Devon, I'll begin with you. Yeah, thanks for having me on, Will.

So I'm brotherhood of maintenance away employees. Basically, we fix the tracks. We build buildings,

we build the bridges, we construct tracks, the ties, the rail. When they break, we fix them.

We don't do a whole lot of pre-maintenance anymore because we're running around with our heads cut off,

it seems like now, but we do not drive the trains. The trains destroy our tracks and we fix them

after the trains destroy them. So the trains are your enemy? You're fighting against the trains.

They keep the trains running. Sometimes they can. They don't like to let us out on the track,

do much fixing because they want the trains running, which is our right too. So yeah,

so like I said, I work for BNSF, Railroad of North Dakota, and we started a caucus called

Rangan Fowl United within the BMW ED, a reform caucus. And yeah, so anything else that you wanted

to know? No, I guess just moving on to Ross, because he tells us a little bit about where you're

from and what your job is like. Hi everyone, I'm Ross Gritters. I'm based out of Central Iowa. I'm

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