In today’s Wall Street Journal: “Railway Keeps Its Furloughed at Hand” - about 1/3 of UP’s 5,000 furloughed employees - mainly conductors - still have full benefits & partial wages, and a brief review of the situation at the other major Class I’s.
See: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124260409473628615.html
In the print edition, the article is in the 2nd or MARKETPLACE section, at page B-1, cols. 1 - 3, and B-2, cols. 3 - 6.
Paul, thanks for posting this.
It’s interesting to see how some of Dick Davidson’s bad moves still seem to be hanging over the current UP management.
PDN: Is it possible that the other Class 1s are doing the same thing by just not working the crews as much? Of course it would depend on local union agreements as to minimum monthly pay.
BTW : AMTRAK is hiring bothe engine and train crew at several locations.
The linked WSJ article says that NS is doing what you suggest - it has furloughed only 1,200 employees.
It also says that BNSF had been continuing to pay benefits, but discontinued that earlier this year due to the cost and recovery soon not being likely.
CSX has furloughed 2,300 employees, but there is nothing said about any special efforts to retain them.
Nothing in the article about the other Class Is - CN, CP, or KCS.
The way the UP system works, the employee has assigned days on instead of assigned days off. Two consecutive days a week for example mon/tue, wed/thurs etc. They are subject to call, but may not actually be called to work on those days. If not, they are paid for being available those days.
As the artice says, they remember the last time they had people furloughed. When things started picking up, many of them had found jobs elsewhere and didn’t come back.
One thing they didn’t learn was to stop hiring, at least around here. Both now and the last time things slowed down they kept hiring after they should’ve stopped. Too many were promoted to conductor and then cut off. Some left jobs that were as good as or better than the railroad. And they wonder why some didn’t come back after being recalled to service.
Jeff