Link to Forbes Article:
HOPE THIS REPAIRS LINK[;)]
The general public believes that rr workers are living in a upper class culture and that simply isn’t so. It depends on the job one may be working on. If you’re on a yd job, which gets very little or no ot, then you’re on the low end of the pay scale and won’t be making anything close to a mainline xtra bd or pool job that claims high miles. I’m single, have no debts, 20% of what i make goes into my 401 and after bills are paid, i really don’t have much left, but I can get by w/no problem w/what I earn. If I had a family, I would be struggling just to get by. In contrast, a good friend of mine works @ a refinery, works M-F w/ot, makes $80,000 yrly (i’m not close to that amount)and has a life outside of his job.
wow… i didnt know that 45k a year was big bucks in this day an age… i wonder if they took into consideration health insurance deductions… union dues…job insurance premiums… life and accidental dismemberment insurance preiums… and the higher deductions for RRR into consideration… after they all get a cut of your check… there isnt a hell of alot to live on afterwards… now this is yard rate… what was 45k quickly turns into a little over 20k a year with all of that pluse taxes taken out of it… and the trade off for making the “big bucks” on the railroad is your home and personal life suffer due to working long hours and being away from home…and not realy haveing a true sence of when you will be comeing and going to and from work… just my 2 cents on that…
csx engineer
Having been a regular working stiff at one time, I understand that various tax and benefit withholdings can take a big wack out of the gross pay. For railroaders, the extra points taken out for Railroad Retirement makes the situation a little tougher. On the other hand, Railroad Retirement pensions do run a little better than 50% of what one would receive under Social Security. Of course if your retirement is 20 or 30 years out, that bit of news doesn’t mean much when your current bills arrive.
I will be the first to agree that a 50 grand a year gross family income is not going to have you living very high on the hog. May I offer this caution for those of you that are currently working for railroads. Don’t assume that the grass is actually greener on the other side of the fence. As some of you know, I have a tax business and thus see the income records of a fairly large client base. Among my clients, most taxpayers with income from wages over $50,000 have both the husband and wife working. The only exceptions that I see come from auto assembly plant workers and electric utility lineman. Of course my survey is not scientific and there are likely other blue collar jobs that pay more. However, those jobs may also require extensive skill training and seniority to get the better bucks.
Everything depends on individual circumstances, but if your seniority will get you to the top pay levels-I have heard $70k- in some reasonable period of time, then you might want to keep on railroading.
They may be paid well, but frankly they are tied to the Duty via telephone 365 days/ 24/7. If they are not working, they are probably resting, eating and getting cleaned up rather fast to prepare for the next duty time. “Working to work” if you please.
It is better to make that kind of money and work a 40 hour week with the rest of the time you call your own time.
Actually, one of the reasons I posted this is if you read the article you will find that railroads have risen by comparison to other blue collar wages because railroading is one of the few occupations that can’t be outsourced overseas…
LC
Sure they can. Remote signalling, switching, robot locomotives… shipper/reciever loading etc.
Yep. That has been the case with most blue collar work in this nation. If you are skilled and in a job that can’t be outsourced, you are in high demand. Part of the reason for this is that most high schools view blue collar work as a dead end job. If you don’t have a college degree, you are pretty much not useful. Very few counselors actually will encourage students to study a trade like the railroad (or construction, for that matter). What is even harder to find are students that excel in math and reading who want to pursue careers in these fields. They are told that you need a college degree to suceed, and this simply is not the case.
There is a lot of money to be made if you are looking at skilled labor. It is too bad that it has such a negative reputation to it.
Don’t hold your breath on that. FRA has already required that dispatchers for U.S. railroads be on U.S. soil. So the remote signalling and switching can’t head overseas. “Robot locomotives” don’t yet exist beyond a handful of transit applications (non-RR) and it is very doubtful that even if they are approved that live human train crews won’t be required for safety purposes. FRA won’t even permit single person RCL crews beyond certain limited circumstances and I doubt that will change much given the current fascination with grade crossing and trespasser fatalities. Shipper/receiver loading/unloading (e.g. unit trains at mines and grain elevators) has a minimal impact on train crews as most of those are new facilities, so the effect is largely limited to a reduction in branch line crews to smaller elevators and mines.
LC
Edited:
Went overboard with a soapbox.
Let’s just say the High school students are led like sheep to the shearing house of the Finance department.
On the other hand my family includes an aeronautical engineer and a software engineer, both doing the six figure tango with just 4 year degrees.
Not exactly true that the two types of higher paid blue collars I work with get the big bucks on just a 40 hours week. For almost a year, Chrysler’s Belvedere, IL plant had mandatory 10 hour shifts for 6 or 7 days. Also many auto assembly line workers retire after 20 or 30 years with fairly racked up bodies from the physical labor involved. Electrical utility lineman also have to hang pretty close to the phone, and then there is the thing about making repairs before the thunderstorm has passed over.
I work for an electric and gas utility in CA in which any job that has a “journeyman” attatched to it, i.e. Lineman, Welder, Machinest, Mechanic has a base salary of around $70k for a 40 hour work week. Even with that we still have a tough time finding new apprentices. Overtime was voluntary for the most part but as the large amount of boomers start to retire and a lack of replacements are available, forced overtime starts to become the norm.
I think both UP and BNSF are in the middle of the oops we didn’t hire people lately and we now have too many people retiring and not enough replacements. I find it shocking that with what they pay that they can’t seem to get enough replacements to do the job.
Once you have done the job you will understand why so many people leave. All the missed occasions, calls to work 24/7/365 takes a toll on lives. Take out the ability to enjoy the occasional beer anytime around when you go to work, the 6+ day work week on most jobs and you really have to love it. The divorce rate is extremely high. It takes a LOT of cash to buy off one (or more) ex-wives…
LC
Yeah, the pay SEEMS high - until you figure how much time you spend working, at the hotel, or not able to do anything since you’re 2nd out on the list.
we make more than most of the blue collar workers but we have to put up with a ton of BS to get it. We definitaly earn every penny. The money sounds like a lot when you first come to the railroad, but then you start to see things for what they really are. On the road constantly, an unpredictable schedule and so on.
We earned about 67K one year on the road… I think it was 330 days on the road away from home out of 365 and half of those days were spent with just a few hours between runs emptying bloated mail boxes etc. I think we spent about 12 actual 24 hour periods at the house where one actually had a full night to sleep and a day to catch up on errands.
The money was good, very good in fact, too good. It piled up in the bank unspent. It really became a situation where you had a thousand plus dollar check deposited and it’s like “Who cares?” 7 days later, another thousand rolls in… ho hum… back and forth from La to NYC twice a week… fun. fun fun.
We dont live like that any more. We make do with much less each week and it is full of joy and enjoyment of home life when we are not completing our assigned hourly work. And good riddiance to demanding dispatchers who thinks the USA will stop functioning if that 4 month old moldy load of toilet paper and kitchen towels didnt make it to the reciever in time.
Because of our improvement in health at home we think that jobs that demand away from home time are best suited for young folk who are single and unmarried and does not own a home.
Yes, total wages look pretty good but that is for a 60-80 hour work week for months and years on end. That does not count the away from home time which is not compensated until you have been tied up on the other end for at least 16 hrs. Sure, you might like to cut back on the hours you work but the railroad has different ideas to minimize the fixed costs of employees.
So take the Forbes article with a grain of salt. I am sure some of the other wage ranges are a bit skewed by one factor or another. Also note the railroads do not seem to have a long line of applicants standing at the door trying to get in. The UP in particular is recruiting and advertising all along their lines trying to fill the job they have.
In my work on the RR, I listen to two groups of people out there. The more recent hires (10 years -) and the old timers (25 years +).
The younger guys tell me it is worth it, stick it out, money, money, money. The older guys look back at their years of service and all tell me it just isn’t worth it. Recently I talked with an older guy, with many years on the railroad. He finally has the seniority to hold a decent job with two regular days off. He has something planned for those days until the end of the year. He told me the same thing - it is not worth it. Sure there’s money - but you sacrifice your life.
It isn’t like there are no other jobs that work weekends and holidays - but those you usually have some idea of when you’ll be off and when you’ll be working. You can actually take your car in for service, actually mow your lawn, go to festivals, etc. With this job, half your “off” time is spent in a hotel across state within walking distance to nothing. I’m sorry - but I don’t consider that “off” time. Or you may get lucky - have 7 starts in 7 consecutive days and get a whopping 24 hour rest. (I’ve only had one of those all summer). Of course vacations will slowly fade way, and the boards will start to die; real great for those of us without guaranteed boards. (meaning no workie = no money).
It is a shame - as the work isn’t too bad - if we could only get some real time off. I have a feeling I may soon hang up my grip for the final time. Let some other money-chasing fool take my spot. I’ll wave to you on my days off…
Ps>> This is in addition to some other factors that are driving me away… such as poor crew management and planning. Sure it can make us money – but whom really wants to spend 20 hours in a motel just to be deadheaded home???