Hi, I'm Maximilian Alvarez.

I'm the editor-in-chief of the Real News Network and host of the podcast, Working People.

And this is the art of class war on breaking points.

Last time I was in the Breaking Point studio, we talked about the unbearable heat conditions

that UPS workers in package cars and warehouses have been enduring on the job.

Part two of that segment, where we'll look more at heat as a workplace hazard impacting

workers across many industries, is still coming.

But we're pushing that back just a little bit more to bring you this special edition of

the Art of Class War to talk about the crisis on the country's freight railroads as we count

down to a potential national rail shutdown this Friday, September 16th.

If you follow our work at the Real News Network, then you know that for the past eight months,

journalist Mel Buer and I have been extensively covering the ways that corporate greed has

wrecked the freight rail industry, the supply chain, and freight rail workers themselves.

And you know, Breaking Points is one of the few other outlets that have actually covered

this story regularly.

The stalled negotiations between the major rail carriers and the 12 different unions representing

rail workers have been going on for over two years, officially reaching an impasse in

late spring of this year.

And you know, the issues that workers have been raising the alarm about have been plaguing

the industry for years, if not decades.

And yet, it's been next to impossible to get media and political elites to pay attention.

And when they have paid attention, they almost never talk to the workers who make the railroads

...