I suspect that would be a picnic and a walk in the park compared to the daily dealings with BNSF managment that incited the action.
I can’ t help but wonder if these dispatchers were getting off of work and had to be at a family outing, pick their kids up from school, etc. and found that the sand truck/snow plow drivers had gone on strike that afternoon and there was a big ice storm (yes, they do get such storms in the DFW area), and the dispatchers could not get home, wonder what they would think and say…THEY NEED TO WALK IN THE OTHER GUYS SHOES FOR A WHILE.
Money is “POWER”.
POWER takes money!
Hey, buddy, their just fighting for their rights and trying to get a decent salary and good hours, come on. That was really harsh. I take it you are a commuter and dont work on a freight railroad. I can tell because you obviously have a crappy attitude about people who work on freight railroads and want fair pay and fair working hours. Not trying to p.o. any body but those are my feelings.
I’ve said it before and I will say it yet again…NOBODY FORCED THEM TO TAKE THEIR JOBS AND THEIR SALARIES, AND IF THEY WANT TO QUIT AND GO ON TO A “BETTER” JOB SOMEWHERE ELSE…GO FOR IT! I have gotten tired of former jobs that I did not feel were paying a fair wage, and I quit and moved on, but I did not strike and screw things up for my (former) employer, I SIMPLY QUIT, and these folks have that right as well…I DON’T KNOW WHY THEY WON’T EXERCISE THAT RIGHT…perhaps it’s because they really like their jobs???
Simply quit and move on? To where in today’s economy? Unrealistic!! I wish I could just find another job, frankly, a mortgage and child support and everything else in life that “aren’t free” stops me. If you’re not a railroader, then, you wouldn’t and couldn’t begin to understand! How about 5 years without a raise and being held in limbo because a fair agreement cannot be negoitiated, and, 4 years without a raise before that! No more retro-active pay either after being held out all of these years. It’s just reaching that retirement age is all that keeps me where I’m at. It’s a trap. I like what I do, no doubt, but there are many, many labor issues and rules that the typical rail fan doesn’t see or hear about. You have to live it.
I could not agree more.
I lived the life of a railroader from June 1966 to July 2003. When I did not like the job I moved on to another job on the railroad where I was or to a new railroad. I did that about seven times.
There are thousands of miles of Big New Santa Fe that don’t carry commuters and could have been the targets of a selective wildcat walkout, which would not have offended the Chicagoland and Puget Sound commuters but gotten the point across to management. Any more of these wildcat actions and it will start seeming French!
The conductor on my train deserves significant recognition for exceptional effort at keeping passengers continuously informed of departure status. This guy could never work for an airline, where delay information is seldom prompt and routinely inaccurate, seemingly as a matter of policy.
In other words, you were a boomer and some of the times you moved on, it was probably because you were furloughed and things weren’t looking good. That’s 37 years of bouncing around, speaking as one who gave up his seniority a couple of times to try something different, that’s a risky move and you never know quite how the landing is going to be. However, you post it so matter-of-factly and you know you were the exception, many who come stay and stick it out and build that seniority or else leave within the first three to five years, if not sooner.
Work Stoppages - Strikes - Withdrawal of Service or any other euphanism for employer/employee work actions are not taken lightly by either side in a dispute…they are an action of last resort.
Of course to those that are not a party to the dispute, it appears that the work action is the first inkling that anything is wrong. It is like the duck moving across the still pond…on the surface everything is calm and serene…beneath the surface the duck is paddling for all get out.
Work Actions are the action of last resort when nothing else has worked. While they don’t reflect all that well on the union, they also throw a very bad light up on the responsible Company Official, and a company official is responsible in every work action…Some are supported by the company, some find themselves reassigned after the work action.
Have you been a BNSF Dispatcher? Or a dispatcher for any railroad at all? Sounds like you might want to take your own advice. Pick up the kids from school? Railroading is a 24 hour a day business, weather doesn’t matter–not a lot of railroaders, in any craft, have much of a “home” life, let alone are picking up the kids from school. In your scenario, the schools would have already been closed account of the weather! But the dispatcher still has to make it to work.
From what I understand, the dispatchers walked to try and improve their quality of life over personal leave. Bet you like being home every night or when your kid is sick.
It’s easy to say just find another job, another thing to find one where you can actually afford to give your family a decent standard of living.
Most railfans have no idea of how complex or demanding “real” railroading can be. As far as dispatchers go, try running record volumes of freight on lines whose capacity was met several years ago.
I applaud the the dispatchers in their solidarity–picking and choosing lines to walkout on would show BNSF that the dispatchers weren’t united. Unity is the basis of a union. Railroading is one industry where unions are certainly needed. For all the union bashers out there, take a swipe @ the Screen Actors Guild or any of the major sports unions. Got hockey?
Take a walk in a dispatcher’s shoes, or an MOW gang, or a conductor and then get on your soapbox.
It is pretty clear that some of you have no clue what kind of garbage big companies, and the railroads in particular get away with! Obviously the dispatchers are unhappy and have probably tried many avenues before it came to this!!! I am sure this did not just occur over night. But with the unions basically being busted in this country they will not really be able to strike anyway.
First off, lets get some stuff straight here, most important is a job action such as a walk-out (strike) is the last thing a union and its membership wants. Fact is that most (98%) contract negotiation or grievances are solved without any jobs actions.
Next, the only tool that labor has is a job action, the act of withholding work from the employer. Over the last 30 years and the erosion of labor law protection from the federal government, the strike is labors only tool left.
You assume that you know what the issue was about, and then summarize it for us “trains forums” members by saying something like, lets see - quote: “WORK LESS, GET PAID MORE” as the issue over this stoppage. The only report for the reason for this stoppage in the accounts I’ve read is a BNSF management spokespersons quoted as follows:
“The walkout was over a dispute concerning personal leave, according to BNSF spokesman *** Russack.”
The above quote from BNSF’s *** Russack in no way equates to your “WORK LESS, GET PAID MORE” summation.
Then you go on to make this statement:
“that you got paid a fair wage for a fair days work and if you didn’t like what you were getting paid, YOU WERE FREE TO QUITE YOUR JOB AND FIND A NEW ONE AT ANY TIME.” This is completely managements answer to the world of employment, this not any statement that would be spoken by any rank and file bother or sister.
This job action by BNSF represented "American
We as labor have won the right to organize and bargain for a better situation at the work place. And through collective bargaining we help the employer understand what a fair wage is, along with some basic rights like safety and security on the job, which determines working conditions.
I’m sorry, but everything that you’ve written so far, has been written before. Many years before, these are the same old tired phrases used 70 to 100 years ago by anti-union folks.
Get some new material, please!
Jim - Lawton, NV MP 236
Just get up and quit you say. OK…Let’s do just that. Four pm on a weekday afternoon, and the whole lot of dispatchers have all found other “fair paying jobs” at Pizza King, dispatching tasty pies throughout the land. Meanwhile, the railroad, in one swell foop, has found that there is no one except a few management folks to dispatch one of the busiest railroads in the country. The hours of service laws say that they can only work 12 hours at a time. But this is an emergency so they’re there for perhaps 16 hours. Now they’re fatigued beyond belief, and someone creates a head-on wreck. How long would it take the railroad to train and qualify hundreds of new dispatchers at once and keep the railroad running?
In order to be a train dispatcher, or any other craft in railroading you have to be dedicated. Dedication to duty doesn’t include the phrase,“Just quit.” As time has gone on in this society, many areas of employment have become overburdened with responsibility. Simplistic answers have never solved much, but created a whole lot more. Not necessarily for the positive.
Mitch
Just think of the potential excitement if the dispatcher’s union had decided to do a nationwide strike on all railroads!
I’d be willing to bet that the conditions that led to the strike are not that much different on other railroads.
Although, perhaps a nationwide strike might not be such a good idea–think of what happened to the air traffic controllers.
Too bad MWH is no longer posting; I bet he could have given us a good perspective on the situation.
OK, I will take another approach here. I apperciate that many of you can not simply quit your jobs as you have mortgages to pay and kids to feed, SO DO I…and I appreciate that you all work hard for your salaries, SO DO I…and I appreciate your point about having worked hard to earn the rights you now have, SO HAVE I.
I have worked in my current position (not a railroad) for over 14 years now and it keeps me traveling away from home about 65-70% of the time and I DON’T LIKE IT, but it is the job I have chosen and I feel obligated to do the job as best I can until I am ready to move on (if it comes to that). Would I like to sleep in my own bed each and every night, SURE WOULD, but I can’t and still earn the money they pay me each month, so I continue to do the job well. Do I keep my eyes and ears open for alternate opportunities that would possibly combine more money and a more “normal” work/family mix, YES I DO…and so should you…but until then, DO THE JOB YOU WERE HIRED TO DO AND WHICH YOU ACCEPTED AND ARE TAKING A SALARY TO DO…AND P-L-E-A-S-E STOP GRIPING ABOUT NOT HAVING ANY CHOICES, we all have choices, perhaps not attractive ones, but choices none the less. AGAIN, IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE ENVIRONMENT YOU WORK UNDER, QUIT OR SIMPLY SHUT UP, BUT PLEASE DON’T TAKE YOUR PERSONAL FRUSTRATIONS OUT ON THE INNOCENT COMMUTERS OR RAILRAOD CUSTOMERS WHO INDIRECTLY PAY YOUR WAGES, they don’t deserve it! Also, strikes frequently do not garner the strikers much support from the general public and can hurt the unions long term. Take for example the New York City garbage collectors strike in the late 1960’s…they thought they would hold all the cards as the public would get behind their cause and force the city to settle and get the garbage off of the streets (believe me that it was a real mess, I lived there at the time), but the real result was the public being anti-union as a result and the bottom line was that the union for the collectors did not get nearly the results for their membership that
Well I am no longer a commuter nor did I ever work for a freight RR but maybe I am incorrect vut are not dispatchers covered by some craft union & at this moment that union has a signed agreement with the BNSF? If I am correct then actually the dispatcher strike was illegal the way I see it. [?]