Amtrak headcount

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

I just read that Amtrak’s headcount has gone from 25,000 to 20,000 under Gunn. That still seems like quite a few people to me.

In comparison, Norfolk Southern has roughly about the same employment level, but operates many more route and track miles and has many times the number of crew starts a per day.

I just can’t figure out what all those people could be doing. It’s almost like the “old days” on the freight RRs before deregulation when non-agreement staff levels were very high.

Does anybody know how Amtrak’s employment breaks down? Agreement vs. Nonagreement? T&E? On-board? MOW, Mech, C&S, headquarters staff?

2

Don,

I’m not sure about the breakdown of employees in the various departments, but the number of employees on one full service Amtrak train is approximately 20. Consider 3 or 4 train sets running on any calendar day for one “named” long distance train and the T&E, On-board, and Mechanical employee #'s add up quickly.

Jay

3

The headcount is one reason – a major reason – why passenger trains can’t be expected to make money. And haven’t, for at least 80 years. You need passenger service people; not only do the riders expect it, but they do need guidance and help. And you need to pay those folks a good wage! They are well trained, and have to remain pleasant and helpful in the face of the general public (not for me, thank you, and to all you Amtrak folks reading this, my hat’s off to you!).

So you wind up with a big headcount.

4

Here is a breaksown as of August 2004.

President-3,Inspector General 82,Law153,Finance473,Procurement469,Government Affairs15,Labor Relations30,Personnel Dept 154,Business Diversity18,Marketing/Sales1255,Planning20. Total so Far. 2672.

Operating Depts Viz:Sr. VP Operations3,Environmental25,Police 390,Safety18,Operations planning24, Transportation9228, Mechanical4585, Engineering2997, Plus 182 engineering positions reimbursed by other agencies, (Chicago Metra, Etc.)
Total Operations17,253.

Total Amtrak Actual 20,124. That was 1,358 headcount less than the original FY 2004 budgeted headcount.

If Amtrak does not NEED a position, Gunn will see that it is eliminated.

Source: Amtrak Monthly Report for August 2004 from “Other Reports” at Amtrak.com.

Jay

5

I don’t doubt that Gunn is no nonsense and he has a great RR background, but I have wondered about him missing the revolution in staffing at the frt RRs over the past 25 years. Staffing levels on the freight RRs were hacked/slashed/chopped way beyond what any of us thought was reasonable over the past 25 years or so. But a strange thing happened. We found that the RR still ran. We found out that some things really didn’t need doing. We found better ways to do things. And, in every case, the cuts came BEFORE the process improvements took place.

From the numbers, it looks like Amtrak may be quite a bit bloated, still.

Here’s one item. Amtrak has 4585 in the Mechanical Dept. NS has just over 1000. Amtrak has about 300 locomotives and 1300 pass cars to take care of. NS has about 3500 locomotives and 200,000 cars to take care of. Now, I figure a passenger car is about as complicated and demanding of maintenance as a locomotive (it costs about the same to buy a new one), but, even allowing for that, NS is doing more than twice the work with 1/4 the employees! What am I missing?

Amtrak’s Engr. Dept head count seems very high, too, but I have no good comparisons for that one. The Sale and Mktg seems high, too. It works out to roughly 250 on duty at any given point in time. Or, 55 riders per employee per day. Doesn’t sound particularly productive to me! Exactly how many res agents and ticket clerks does Amtrak need?

6

Don

There is only one apology that I could advance to your analysis and that is with regard to engineering and mechanical. As you know, Amtrak is trying to climb out of years of deferred maintanence. That causes a twofold impact on those departments. First, just holding the thing together probably requires a greater effort than would be needed if the assets hjad been kept in good working order. Second, there is the extra effort to try to reduce the backlog of deferred maintenance.

As far as anything else goes, unless one is in a fairly high position on the inside, I don’t think any rational arguement can be made on the level of headcount at Amtrak.

I will go back to something I mentioned in my first post. I know Dave Gunn well enough to know that he has NOT missed the revolution in railroad staffing and, as I said, if the position is not needed, it is going to be eliminated.

Jay

7

Jay-

I think that Amtrak may also need more people because they can’t outsource as much work. They are the sole owners of Superliners, for example, so they are the only source of expertise.

However, it still seems way out of whack, to me. I wonder what would happen if Amtrak just decided to lop 1/3 off their payroll. How about Email paper tickets like the airlines? Maybe LD trains don’t need a staff of 20. Could the lounge car be self serve? Could the res system assign seats instead of the car attendent? Could GE loco overhauls be done at Juniata instead of Beech Grove or Wilmington? Does Amtrak ever do benchmarking against other companies or hunt down best practices? What exactly is their employee productivity and how does it compare to similar companies here and around the world. Why does Amtrak have their own, home grown, one of a kind, odd ball, two tiered signal system for the NEC?

These are things right off the top of my head.

I don’t think Amtrak is doing the wrong things. I just suspect they are doing them with too many people.

8

Don

Of course, I can’t answer those questions, but I suspect they may have been bounced around sometime in the last couple of years.

By the way, on my recent trip on the SW Chief, the on board crew was 2 cooks, 2 waiters, dining car chief, lounge attendent, 2 coach attendents for three cars and 2 attendents for 2 sleeper cars. These people work the entire trip. I believe this is a reduction of three personnel from pre-Gunn operations-1 waiter, 1 coach attendent and an on board “Chief”. I wasn’t able to keep track of T&E personnel. As you know they only run typical crew districts, I did not see anymore than one conductor on at any time, but some parts of the trip may have had an AC. And again, I couldn’t say if the engine assignment was one or two.

By the way, a Yahoo job site reports that Norfolk Southern Corp has 34,000 employees. Is there more than 4000 in NS Corp Subsidiaries? If not, the ratio of headcount to operating expense is just about the same for NS Ry and Amtrak.

Jay

9

Hey guys, for your information, most of the major freight railroad companies barely work on their own engines anymore. Most of the work is contracted out to other maintenace companies or by aggrement with the builder. I’ve talked to some freight railroad employees that say much of this work is being done right there in those same shops in their yards. Just like this contractor that was created by Amtrak and the builders of ‘IT’S’ high speed trainsets, we worked under their management with Amtrak’s approval. Although the unions fought very hard to prevent this from happening, we eventually forced their hand and the contractor (Northeast Corridor-Maintenance Service Company [NeC-MSC]) had to hire us to work on those train sets. Eventhough, we sometimes had to work side-by-side with their personnel whom were non-union workers. As far as the freight rail companies are concerned, they’ll run their equipment until it dies. Do you think for one minute that they’ll pour any huge amount of money into equipment maintenance?? NOPE!!! And…if it wasn’t for passenger rail companies leasing the use of their tracks, do you think those right of ways would be maintained to a usable standard?? NOPE!!! You see, unlike the freight rail companies, we at Amtrak and some of the commuter rail companies HAVE to fix our equipment. It not like there is an endless supply of capital coming our anytime soon. Also, there are no longer any manufacturers of passenger rail cars in these United States, and barely any passenger rail car parts suppliers either. Although Bombardier of Canada and some of the Japenese rail car companies claim to make their cars here in the United States, much of the work being done is still done abroad, so there in lies the costliness of manufacturing a passenger rail car. Most of the cars’ parts, or sometimes the whole car itself, must be shipped to their plants here, in the US, then ‘assembled’ here, in the US. Most freight cars that the freight companies use are ‘built’ right here, in the US and som

10

At the end of 2003, total employment at NS Corp. was 28,000 including subsidiaries. It’s not changed much this year. Don’t know where Yahoo got their numbers. Wouldn’t be the first time they were in error.

I think the expense per man might be a reasonable measure except the higher your mancount, the higher your expenses…whether they are produtive or not.

Even so, Amtrak’s monthly expenses are about $250,000,000. NS’s are about $450,000,000. Dividing, I get:

Amtrak - $12,500/man/month
NS - $16,000/man/month

That’s still a pretty big gap.

NS does all it’s own loco work and actually takes in outside work at Juniata. They’ve done rebuilds, overhauls, modifications and painting for Amtrak, MBTA and NJT to name a few.

I also don’t think Amtrak service was too shabby in the 80s. The heritage fleet was freshly rebuilt. Amfleet and Superliners were only about 10 years old. The F40s were all in good shape. The frt RRs ROW was in good shape and not too congested. The NEC was getting the concrete ties and new rail and was good for 100 mph in Conn, RI and Mass, 125 mph south of NYC. AEM7s were on the property. The Hudson Line had 110 mph service for the first time, ever, with Turboliners. I rode quite a bit in the period from 1978 - 1994.

Amtrak actually ran fairly well under Claytor. It think things started getting ragged under Downs and Warrington.

My concern is that I just don’t understand what Amtrak is doing with all those employees. While the frt RRs have hacked their non-agreement staff down to bare bones since dereg, Amtrak does not appear to have followed suit. I wonder what would happen if Amtrak whacked another 20% off the payroll, particularly out of Washington, Phila and Wilmington.

I wonder if they couldn’t show some good benchmarks for productivity if it wouldn’t take the wind out of the sails of their most vocal critics. There wouldn’t be this pu***o “reform” it, kill