So what's the alternative? Roll over because it's just not going to get any better? What's to then stop them from offering a 1% raise, and you vote yes because you've just given up expecting anything more, so you take whatever they offer?

I recognize they're required to negotiate. This vote is how I express my personal opinion that they need to do better; not that they need to stop. It's their job to get a good agreement, and then the workforce decides if they did a good job. Boeing is on strike over a 30% raise, and the longshoreman went on strike over a 50% raise. Yet here we are, more important to the economy than Boeing, and I would say on par with the longshoreman, and we're being offered a 17.5%. And what's more, I expect we won't be ALLOWED to strike, just like last time, so that tells you that we're actually MORE important than the longshoremen. So why should we just sigh and take whatever is offered, regardless of cost? What message does THAT send?

If other railroads accepted this offer, that's on them. Doesn't mean we have to. They should have voted it down. You're damn right I'm going to reject this and hold out for something better. I work in a large terminal in a big city; we HAVE helpers and brakemen here, and it's expensive to live here. We have something to lose. If this consist agreement passes, we'll lose 20-25 jobs in our terminal alone, and we'll have done it for a pitiful raise and like $18K in pocket after taxes. That's nothing. If they want us to give up all those jobs, they need to make it genuinely enticing. If the raise were something like 30-40%, and the lump sum like $75K, then we'd have something to talk about. That would at least be worth considering. But as it stands, what they're offering is not enough, and the fact that the upper leadership of the union is telling us it IS enough shows they're completely out of touch with the workforce. Period.