Nevermind. I can’t do it.
The person who doesn’t lay off too often isn’t going to get fired over one unforeseen emergency. It’s going to hit those when a string of them happen within a period of time, dependent on which policy is in effect.
Even with documentation that a reasonable person would accept for the absence isn’t taken into account by the railroad. My company has taken attendence matters out of the hands of local management so that legitimate, documented excuses and work records aren’t taken into consideration. That’s because they want to reduce active employees, those receiving gaurantee and/or health benefits to the least number possible to handle business.
Our policy has one other change. Our lay offs are normally for 24 hours. It used to be one could extend that up to a total of 72 hours without an additional occurance being charged to attendence. On road service assignments where you go out and lay over in a motel and then come back home, one may have to lay off 24 to 36 hours ( or more) ahead of the time actually needed to make an appointment, etc. Sometimes conditions may require extending a lay off to reach the required time off.
Your 5 days uncompensated off per year is worse than some of the actual policies.
We have, as the NCCC pointed out, paid leave time (road service) although they neglected the fact that those days are subject to manpower requirements. We have a program for preplanned approved single day vacation/personal leave days. You can put them in up to 4 or 5 months in advance. Sometimes you have to put in for them the moment the time period allows. They restrict the daily allotment and can blank outright some dates. Getting a PL/Single Vacation day on the spur of the moment is posible, but only when things are extremely slow. (Some pool engineers, with no gaurantee, will sometimes take PL days when things are extremely slow to augment the working trips.) I ban
I just made an doctor’s appointment for a follow-up - next April (really, I did). If (the rhetorical) I could be assured that I could plan to work trips in such a way as to allow me to attend that appointment without laying off…
Well, not so much for the railroad (ie, top level management), but for the honest working folks who are trying to make it all work without the necessary resources.
So how did the railroads deal with COVID? Still get the points?
Ed
For the most part the Class 1 carriers laid off a percentage of their workforces to accommodate the reduced level of business.
The carriers want to operate their post covid business at the covid staffing level.
Because of required quarantine periods, we would be placed in a special lay off status that did not affect attendence. For those that worked with someone who developed a confirmed case, those people exposed and then quarantined were paid a basic day for their time off. I was off 14 days paid because I had worked with a conductor who tested positive. I never developed covid from this exposure. Once the time had expired I talked to the company nurse who got me marked up. She was the one who notified me that I was out of service.
That status is still used for some temporary medical conditions, but I think one needs to go through the nurse to use it for any length of time.
Jeff
Jeff brings up a good point in having to take extra days off in unsasigned service.More often that not, you may have to take two or three days just to get one day. In some cases, it may be worth the roll of dice to wait and put in for an immediate layoff and see if it gets approved right then. If not, then its LOS and take the point dock. For example I had float days today & tomorrow as today (21st) the Mrs. & I are celebrating our wedding anniversy. In no way am I going to be on the ballast on this day. Last night, before midnight, I checked my turn on the board lineup and showed like 76 out which meant I was not going to work today. I pulled my vac day down and moved it to Sunday. If I had not done this, I would have wasted a vac day for no reason. It is frustrtating in having to log on and see your board turn status but, so as not to waste away a paid day away in order to save it for later on, this is what unassigned workers may have to do in many circumstances. Name of the game so to speak and not enjoyable in dealing with work issues when one is off for the purpose of getting away from it to begin with. Hope this was some helpful insight to non railroaders out there.
Sam from Wichita
Exactly and some folks just can’t understand any real railroader’s perspective, preferring to label them as “chest thumpers” in need of “the stick” whatever that is.
Those that haven’t worked under the conditions that railroaders in Pool or Extra Board service cannot comprehend what those working conditions actually are. They can’t comprehend the 2 AM phone call to report for duty at 4 AM Monday. Working to get their train assembled. Depart the terminal at 8 AM and move the train to the first siding on the route and sit there for hours being passed by following trains and meeting opposing trains. Ultimately pulling their train to the next siding and repeating the process. Finally at 3 PM they are still 100 mile from their run’s destination and pull into another siding to await their relieving crew that arrives on the scene at 5 PM. The crew gets in the van that brought the relief cr
I dunno about that Balt, I’ve endured my share of surprise calls that lead to 30 hour shifts, or to being called out of town on an hour’s notice…and I was salaried, to boot.
Any job worth having experiences hardships. That’s why they pay above minimum wage. [2c]
[quote user=“Convicted One”]
I dunno about that Balt, I’ve endured my share of surprise calls that lead to 30 hour shifts, or to being called out of town on an hour’s notice…and I was salaried, to boot. Any job worth having experiences hardships. That’s why they pay above minimum wage.
Me too Convicted One, and I would do it all again, with perhaps a few days excluded that no one could control.
When you get that type treatment as a one off, or even once or twice a year it isn’t THAT objectionable. When that is representative of your NORMAL work experience, day in, day out, week in, week out - that is when the ‘indians’ want to revolt - and do so in many cases by obtaining other employment.
Everyone of the three corporations that I worked for granted employees time off for personal issues, i.e., doctor, dentist, funerals, new births, etc. The was true for union as well as nonunion employees. And it was true for everyone from the executive suite to the mailroom.
The challenge for supervisors and managers was to flag the relatively small number of employees that gamed the system. We even had training programs to help detect the shirkers. The other side of the coin were the employees that came to work sick. We had to counsel them in a supportive manner to go home until they were well.
Every person wants and deserves to be respected. Treating them like children is not the way to get there.
I never worked for a railroad. Having grown up in Altoona, I got some insights into what it was like to work in the shops and on the trains, but that is a long way from experiencing it.
I don’t see how Labor can achieve what they regard as an improvement in attendance policies unless they can make the case that the policies are harming health and safety; thus posing a danger to employees and the general public. Making that case convincingly would provide strong legal and regulatory leverage to improve the dangerous working conditions.
I agree that people who have never worked under railroad conditions will not easily understand them. But the legal and regulatory solution will have to come from many such people who don’t understand the problem.
What is needed is a video presentation in the most clear, diagrammatic format that can present the entire case of these dangerous working conditions in a way that anyone can truly relate to them. With the intense focus on this problem that exists, I am surprised that this has not already been done.
There has already been a lot of focus on the dangers of fatigue created by the biological dangers of night shift work upsetting the natural balance of humans. Unpredictable shift work scheduling further upsets this
But you have to explain all this to people that have the attention span of half a tiktok video.
Heard something on radio today that I have NEVER heard before!
CSX advertizing as a equal opportunity employer, no degree required for CONDUCTORS.
This is in the Baltimore area, I don’t know if they are running ads in other areas.
I have seen electronic billboards in the Chicago area with similar messages from CSX.
Oh I think they will be able to understand it if it is clearly explained. But the explanation contains many interrelated facts. Explainers of something like this tend to state one fact after another, thus building the explanation “one brick at a time.” They know where all those facts lead, so they assume one hearing the explanation will understand it if they are shown the same pile of facts.
But the one receiving the explanation has no prior knowledge of it, so they must wait until they have the whole pile of facts without knowing how they fit together. Only then can they begin to assemble the pile of facts as though it were a puzzle where every possible solution must be tried out.
A good explanation should begin with a summary of the conclusion to convey the whole picture in a generally understandable way. Then using that conclusion as a template, you fill in the facts along with an explanation of how each fact fits into the preceding facts stated, thus maintaining a total understanding of whole story as it develops. Each added fact has to be built into the total explanation along the way. This way, the explanation can be tracked as it develops. Video graphics could help to reinforce this explanation as it
It can be fully and factually explained to someone and they will go - I know, I know I know. But until the reality of the real situations hit them squarely up side the head - THEY DON’T KNOW.