That's exactly what it is. I didn't intend to sugar coat it.
There are certain functions that are so critical that people who work there are not allowed to strike and disrupt the economy. Railroads are one of them. Democrats tried to get them the best deal possible while also preventing an enormous economic recession which would have been the inevitable result of a freight shutdown.
I personally think those critical functions should be nationalized under government control, rather than having private companies reap the benefits of their special control, but that's a conversation for another time.
At some point people just quit and go work for McDonalds. Unless you literally force them at gunpoint to work the rails, you eventually have no rail workers.
So far the working conditions haven't got that bad for enough to be noticeable, but at some point you'll have no new employees and the old ones will quit or die off.
This is also why Republicans fight so hard against safety nets, nationalized healthcare, unions, worker rights, etc. The more desperate and struggling people there are, the more workers for these horrific, anti-work life balance jobs there are. The Fed purposely pushes for an economy with a set minimum of jobless people, purposely encouraging desperate out of work people who will take anything to put food on their plate.
I also think Democrats are happy to let them be the bad guys, while they make a lot of noise and token efforts to make things better, but never enough to hurt profits.
The consequence of an illegal strike is that the workers in question may lose their jobs. This happened to a rather large number of air traffic controllers in 1981 and the union in question was decertified. They didn't just lose their jobs, most were barred from federal service (i.e. working for the federal government) for life.
