More than 40 years after President Ronald Reagan fired air traffic controllers who went on strike, President Biden decided against taking a hard line in the negotiations between freight railroads and unions. In private talks, Biden defended the workers' positions, the Washington Post reports. In the middle of the night, when the talks appeared to be successful, he called representatives from both sides into the Oval Office for a celebration. And Biden recounted some of his Amtrak trip stories for them. If the unions ratify the agreement, the economic disaster of a strike or lockout is averted. The companies and the unions, as well as the president, praised the deal. "This is a vast improvement over what that railroad life was like before," Dennis Pierce, president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, told USA Today. The agreement includes: