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Those related rarely to the structure of how the railways schedule many of the union members, sick leave is really the number one issue you hear about over and over again, staffing issues, quality of life issues, those are issues that the unions who rejected this tentative agreement have continued to raise as problematic. that has left the white house in the position of looking at those downside risks and looking at the potential calamity of strikes and saying it s time to pull the trigger on the mechanism they still had available to them and that is having congress move forward. now, just a few hours ago the top four congressional leaders met with president biden, ana and all four said they are ready to move forward on the it but understand that the risks here far outweigh any other options and it looks like congress is going to move forward on the president s request. matt, the economic implications are huge. walk us through what could happen. well, ana, a rail strike is one of t ....
To an economy, just how expensive? anderson economic group pegs it at a become dollars just the first week alone. the problem is that rails really are at the fulcrum end of the supply chain. trains make this economy go. without them you d be causing a lot of chaos. there would be widespread impact from the delivery of gasoline, coal, oil. the delivery of car, all this would be impacted. agriculture, so you see an impact to food prices potentially supply issues there, commuting too. a lot of the trains that amtrak uses they actually run on railroads that are owned by freight railroads so you would see a huge impact, i think, all of this is why we ve seen even pro-union and president biden come in and step in and ask congress to intervene here. matt, paid sick leave has been a big sticking point here. can you help put what they re asking for in a better context for us. well, paid medical leave has ....
We have cnn s matt egan standing by, first to phil mattingly at the white house. phil, this is tricky for president biden because he is the pro-union president and enforcing this deal appears to undermine the union s negotiating power. reporter: yeah, not just a pro-union president but the president himself calls himself the most pro-union president in the history of the country and it s something that white house officials tried to really point to as they reach that tentative agreement really driven by labor secretary mar think walsh himself a former union member but the reality remains that a tentative agreement is not a final agreement. they needed the rank and file of the unions to support that, all 12 of them to do so. 4 of those 12 rejected that. in part, it s because of the contours of that agreement. the agreement, white house officials make very clear, has some clear positives, immediate 14% pay increase, up to 24% by the year 2024 as well. a thousand dollar bonus but the pr ....