>Reagan effectively elimianted the ability to hold an EFFECTVIVE strike,

Hold on a minute. Railroad labor affairs don't come under Federal nor State labor laws. These are pre-empted by the Railway Labor Act of 1918/1920, which in effect says "use the agreement provisions [as interpreted by Board awards]".

The reason railroad unions can't go on strike at the drop of a hat anyomre is because of the Taft-Hartley Act, which dates from the Korean War. Along with the RLA, it specifies that provisions in the agreement must go through a defined process: Section 6 notices and then negotiations. If these fail, then there are prescribed cooling off periods, warming up periods, voluntary arbitration, binding abritration, and a Presidential Emergency Board. Ultimnately Congress can (and has) passed legislation which becomes "the new agreement".

If at any point along this torturous path, the parties agree to a contract, then end of dispute. It can take a long time. PEB 242 of December 2007 ended a five to eight year dispute between Amtrak and 12 or 14 of its unions. Both the BLE and UTU had gone 8 years with no new agreement (although not party to the PEB).

If you finally do go on strike, the railroads all have their "tame" judges who they can wake at all hours of the night to get the requisite injuction against the striking union. So the strikes never last more than a day.

Railroaders can wildcat for anything which isn't covered by either the agreement or the active Section 6 notices -- the SP engineers wildcatted in the early 1980s because the SP was going to eliminate 50% of the special agents, something not in the BLE contract nor the Section 6 notices.

If you are in a railroad union and start a job action (strike, etc.) which hasn't been sanctioned by the National hedquarters, you and/or your local can be sued for lost revenue by the affected carrier. It's happened in the not to distant past, although I forget the details.

The situation with allowing these contractors to haul railroad cars around (and that grinder train which derailed on Donner a few years ago) is that the various union agreements have been tweaked and watered down since the 1980s, by both agreement and Board desicsions, to allow these sorts of things. Therefore, no strike until [see my second paragraph].

It's a case of bottom-line-ism which derives from the Reagan eara. The railroads want to reduce costs by hiring the lowest-cost labor they can get. This derailment, and the grinder train on Donner, are graphic examples of "you get what you pay for".

If your reference to Ronnie (Popular) Reagan is about the air controllers, forget it. The air controllers had a no-strike clause in their contract and went on strike anyway. They did themselves in. Even Obama would have to "break the union" in this circumstance, albeit more reluctantly and without so much relish. Predictably (and somewhat ironically), I read a piece in the news about a year ago where the "stike breakers" hired under Reagan now want to unionize. Any union which accepts a no-strike clause in its agreement is absolutely nuts.