The Senate voted Thursday to approve a new deal between rail companies and railway workers. The final deal includes a 24% increase in wages over five years, schedule flexibility and an additional paid day off, but did not include the seven days paid sick leave some unions were asking for.

When asked why she voted against the bill to avoid the rail strike, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand told Errol Louis on “Inside City Hall” that she thought it was important for her to stand with the workers who asked for a week of paid sick leave.

“We’ve just gotten through a two and a half year pandemic and we know how important it is that when people are sick, they can actually stay home. That if loved ones are sick, they can be taken care of,” she said. “And I think a lot of the workers really wanted these quality of life things, part of the negotiation.”

Gillibrand continued that she didn’t have any behind-the-scenes knowledge of the negotiations.

“The truth is, this is what the union actually negotiated for, but several of the individual unions oppose the deal because of that one issue,” she said, adding that she thought it was best to stand with the workers.

9/11 responder health fund

Gillibrand recently sent a letter to leadership pushing Congress to pass the 9/11 Responder and Survivor Health Funding Correction Act in order to deliver $3.6 billion in supplemental funding to close a funding gap in the World Trade Center Health Program.

According to Gillibrand, the shortage came about because of the cost of health care, which she said rose faster than the cost of inflation.

“So when we estimated how much this health care program would cost, it just wasn’t accurate because of this increase in health care costs — largely caused by almost three year pandemic,” she said.

She added it’s important to close the gap because “we want to make sure our first responders and the family members that lived on or around ground zero could actually get the health care they need to survive.”

Gillibrand said the ideal choice is to attach this legislation to omnibus, which is a single document that’s accepted in a single vote by a legislature, but puts together several measures into one.

She said she’s going to work with her colleagues, including fellow New York senator and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, to make sure that they “close this gap if we have any chance of doing so by the end of this year.”

Georgia Senate runoff

In Georgia, it’s almost the end of the battle for the final seat in the Senate. Gillibrand said she made a campaign call Wednesday night to Sen. Raphael Warnock’s volunteers to "cheer them on."

When asked how a 51st Democratic seat in the Senate will affect business, she said, “it’ll give us a different margin in each committee and it gives us more authority over the schedule. Because it was 50-50, we had a power sharing agreement with the Republicans, so there was a lot of things that took much more time, like judges.”

She added that if Democrats have 51 more votes, “we have a majority in every committee, not a 50/50 and it means that we can do judges more efficiently.”

Gillibrand also discussed cryptocurrency and migrants camping overnight in New York City.​