I should have posted this yesterday, the actual golden anniversary of my seniority date. I didn’t write this yesterday, but rather two years ago.
Fifty years ago this evening, I was probably coming back to Proviso from Wood Street in the cab of a Geep, with the first of two transfer runs we made that night). There was a bit of snow on the ground, and I remember wading to a few switches once we got into the yard.
I just realized that it was 48 years ago today (a Saturday) that I established my brakemen’s seniority at the Chicago & North Western’s Proviso Yard. This was after hours of testing—including a physical—at their employment office downtown (“why would you want a job like that?”), and five days of learning the rules and basic tasks, learning where the yard offices were (five in Proviso alone!) then taking a test on the operating and safety rules we’d covered, I had to go home (my Dad’s cousin’s row house near Lincoln Park), and wait for my turn to be called. It came in less than a day, for a 3:59 job at “the Middle”. I got there in plenty of time (face it, they never saw anyone show up that early!), and was overwhelmed just listening to two channels’ worth of radio chatter. The yardmaster was cordial enough, but he wasn’t the guy I had to work with. My yardmaster seemed awfully young to me, but I never really got to know him.
Just remember when the minimum wage was instituted in 1938 the naysayers were saying civilization would end be cause of the exhorbitant 25 cents an hour minimum wage.
According to an on-line inflation calculator, that 25 cents comes to $4.65.
Conversely, that $15.00 today comes back as 81 cents in 1938.
In 1968 I was working for a buck an hour, first at a liquor store, then at a park concession stand, so Carl’s $4.16 makes sense. Today that would be $28.15.
As an aside - in the fall of 1968 I joined USAF at $93 a month… That did include room and board, if you will.
For all those that want to jack Minimum wage to 15 an hour. That comes out to at 40 hours a week to right around 2400 a month. The average SS amount is less than 1/2 of that for a senior citizen. Are they going to raise SS to cover the inflation that will hammer those that can least afford to pay for it. Most people on SS do not have a nest egg to fall back on anymore as there were no pension plans to tide them over. So what about the largest voting block are they going to get taken care of also or will they be forgotten like normal. Just thought I would put that out there. My MIL gets less than 1400 a month for her SS. My husband on SSDI gets a little more than 1600 a month. Just wanted to put that out there to show you what will happen if they do ram that through.
Social Security was NEVER intended to be a standalone pension equivalent. It was intended to be a supplement to private pensions and personal savings. Thank Wall Street for the disappearance of private pension plans.
STCO–a few points. The average SS amount is about $1500. You’re also forgetting that the person earning wages has to pay federal and state income taxes, along with SS and Medicare from their pay. $15/hr is probably too much but the current minimum wage is far too low.
Another misconception is that if you fully contribute to your 401K/IRA, that you’ll have enough to retire on. You might, but you might not. Nobody did the research and decided that it was an amount that you could like on, it’s merely the amount the govt decided that they would let you defer taxes on. It’s best to have Social Security, retirement accounts and a regular investment account. Then, you might have enough…
It was. But for the purposes of that prticular transfer job, it was the place where interchange cars for the C&O, EL, Chicago Junction, and possibly others, were switched out. We used to make a “mine run” Wood Street block at Proviso…I suspect that taking that down was the first trip we made that night, with the second trip being a road train (254? 256? 258?) that had the same type of car from points west.
My wife brought this news clip to my attention. It deals with the RRIF used by short lines and regionals to finance rail projects. Watching the railroad action, what got my attention and is relevant since Carl worked on the Proviso hump, was the hump yard action. The hump action begins about 1 minute in.
Carl, is that about how fast they humped cars when you were still working?
They only wish! When I hired out, they could do four cars a minute on a given shove. When I retired, they culdn’t do half that. Reasons? Safety rules, reductions in crewmen (think one RCO pulling pins, on a job that used to have four members…five with a fireman), reductions in trains being operated (face it–to hump the cars you need places to put 'em), and–and I fought for this!–better accuracy in car classification. We used to have people who didn’t car where the cars went as long as they went over the hill.
