A question on one of the other forums and the Thansksgiving/Christmas/Hannucah/Qwanza season(s) that we are in the midst of causes me to wonder how do railroad employees get holidays off.
Knowing that the trains will run as long as there is a crew, how does an employee (of any railroad) manage to get, let’s say, Christmas day off?
If you must post for it, how long before the holiday must you do this and how does seniority effect the process?
It’s all about the seniority…
From my experience, locals would be annulled for the holiday and resume their normal schedule the next day, yard jobs would get the day off, road jobs would be annulled for the day, anyone away from the home terminal would get a taxi ride to the home terminal. Everybody was subject to be called to work at 12:01 a.m.
Guys on the extraboard would work steady for a while because a lot of the senior guys would take vacations at this time.
Don’t know if that’s the way it’s done now but it was done that way as late as 2002 on the Columbia Subdivision of the NS.
The past two years, the only way to get the day off around our yard was to be holding a job that had that particular day of the week as its normal rest days. I worked Thursday and Friday again this year. Last year I had to work Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day (all paid holidays for yard employees). Frustrating at times, but this Thanksgiving’s misery will definitely have an effect on the pre-Christmas paycheck! The only jobs that didn’t work on Thanksgiving were the industry jobs–and everybody worked yesterday.
On my road, its the same as Carl…the only way to get off on a holiday is if your on an assigned job, and the holiday falls on one of your off days…like this holiday…I am off thursady and friday…so I got to take off…
Got paid 8 regular hours for each day thoug, and thoses that worked got 8 straight and 8 overtime hours pay…
Ed
Dispatchers work 365 days a year…
This thanksgiving, They ran everything they could…Even though I worked thanksgiving…I felt for the crews…knowing they are traveling away from home…and not gona get to go back the same day…
This christmas, Hopefull things will be different…
Over the last 30 years the Class I railroads have utilized every arc of the pendulum…From shutting the entire plant down, to trying to operate as if the Holiday is just another day and every mutation in between.
Everything the Carriers try is ultimately goverened by the secret UTU/BLE shut down plan. When crews stop responding to calls, you stop running trains.
Thanks, all.
It’s pretty much as I suspected.
Just another thing to respect rail crews for…
Here in Kansas City on the NS, we always work Thanksgiving and most of the time we shut down Christmas eve and Christmas day. New Years Eve and New Years Day are a coin flip. Since we do alot of transfers with the UP,BNSF,KCS…
Got treated real sweet on Turkey Day. Laid in the motel and even made some penalty. Home 6.5hrs and the phone was ringing. Oh well, such is life.
The last 8-10 years the SP was in existence, they tried shutting down for most big Holidays. They found that most guys would layoff 5 to 6 days ahead of the holiday just to make sure they would be off. Then late night of the holiday or early the next morning the guys would start to mark up. The SP figured why not shut down for, say Christmas Eve and Christmas day and have anyone out of town deadheaded back to the home terminal for those days and maybe people wouldn’t take 5-7 days off. This worked pretty good. Of course, then stUPid took over and they insist on working most holidays. Christmas being the one (maybe) exception. I went to work only one time in 40 years on Christmas day, and that was on duty at 5pm… after dinner was over. Turned out to be a good trip as we went from Los Angeles to Bakersfield CA. cab-hop and deadheaded right back.
Virlon
Mark off sick always works for me[:D].It’s about the only way besides on Christmas to have a holiday off.They was so kind as to start getting people home starting at 6.00pm this year to eat cold turkey.They have done me wrong on holidays once to many that I’m not ashamed to mark off sick.Back about 12-13 years ago I took a train out on Christmas eve and was told by the call office they(officials) promised a taxi back home upon arrival at our away from home.Well guess what,to the hotel we go!We caught the last train that was honestly moving on the NS’s tracks that day.When we arrived at the yardboard nobody would answer the yard radio.Not even a dispatcher would.So we took the train down the mainline and stopped at our regular fuel spot,and in a faint distance I could hear someone on a radio saying.“I’m coming to get you”.So i a few minutes here comes the junior yardmaster picking us up in his personal car!He told us that they had totaly forgot that there was a train out there,and someone called him at his house to come and get us.He had to unlock the yard office doors to let us register off [:(!] !So you won’t catch me out anymore holidays.
Ya I saw that. UP ran alot of Trains on Thanksgiving day.
Allan.