All of the major systems appear to be in hiring mode now for various reasons… too many cuts due to PSR, baby boomer retirements, etc. But have railroads experienced a shortage of crews before or is this something new? I would imagine that during the world wars railroads lost many men to the war effort and that there would have been crew shortages, but I’ve never read anything about railroads being unable to provide services due to lack of crews. I remember a yardmaster telling me back in the 80s that they prefer to hire people who have family who already work for the railroad… so if you’re an applicant and check NO where they ask “Do you have any relatives who work for the railroad?” your chances go way down. I guess that’s nolonger a concern these days.
Back in the day - railroads would adjust their T&E employment levels consistent with the rise and fall of business, hiring as necessary when necessary. During that period of time if the carriers laid off 100 people, when it came time to recall them 90 or more would answer the call and return to the carrier that had laid them off. Additionally the Hours of Service Law back in the day allowed for 16 hours on duty, allowed split service on 2 hours rest and only required 8 hours rest after the off duty time to be fully rested. The extra boards ‘back in the day’ for the most part weren’t guaranteed and as such were staffed at a higher level than is being done today, thus there were more people on the boards to be called for any vacancy.
With the 21st Century PSR style operations, the boards are cut to the absolute minimum and routinely adjusted to keep them at the minimum level. The Hours of Service now limits working to 12 hours, with at least 4 hours rest to implement split service. Full rest reqires 10 hours UNDISTURBED r
Didn’t Union Pacific have a little bit of a meltdown about 15-20 years ago, when they instituted an early retirement program and underestimated how many people would go for it?
Other than that, crew shortages can happen when there is a spike in traffic. Often these are localized (such as CP / BNSF in the Bakken in 2014). It’s unusual that the nationwide economy swings so wildly as it did in 2020 / 2021.
And once you’re in a hole, it takes even more resources to dig yourself out. That’s why hiring frenzies eventually end with newly-hired people getting furloughed - once things are back to normal, you suddenly have more people than you need to keep them going.
Dan
UP has had relatively periods of being caught short. They would get caught short, start hiring towards the end of the boom, and then hire too many. The result would be those completing their training would get furloughed. The next boom, the number coming back would be less and less of those recalled.
The biggest problem is we’re losing experienced people we shouldn’t be losing. Not because of retirements, they’re just fed up with UP. Truth be told, I’m kicking myself for not going to the Iowa Interstate when I had a chance 20 years ago. They still hire, have openings now for four locations, but it’s too late for me.
About having family already working. Some railroads would not hire close family members for the same craft on the same seniority district. The CNW was one such road. We had a father/son that the son had to work on a different district. Once UP took over, they didn’t have, or no longer had, that prohibition. The son moved into the same district as dad.
We have and have had many cases of close family working on my district. One was a mother and son, until the son tore up a switch engine in a switching incident. A GP15 just doesn’t look right with no front steps.
Jeff
One would think that treating people like human beings rather than commodities and avoiding the continual staff churn would result in a more efficient business. Instead, big corporations of all stripes want to solve the problem by cutting people out of the process entirely.
Yet, there is one big exception. They start their employees as part-timers, but once they’ve proved themselves, they are in for good. They also are unionized and continually outperform their main competitor, who uses mainly low cost “private contractors”. Who is it? UPS, of course.
Your thesis carried to the extreme
Years ago I worked for a copper mine in Northern Manitoba that had a nice way of keeping enough staff on hand. When things slowed down they shifted people over to “bull gang”…where they would remain until things picked up again, and they would then resume their normal jobs in the smelter, fuming plant, or underground. One added perk was that we got to meet other employees from other areas that we might not otherwise have met. Bull gang consisted of miscellaneous mostly unskilled work, and one could find all kinds of people there… miners, engineers, draftsmen, truck drivers…even managers. The company probably figured it was better to keep people minimally employed rather than to lay them off and risk losing them altogether. Maybe the same idea could work elsewhere.
Would it be accurate to say that prospective employees for new hires in Northern Manitoba area would be limited? I’d guess that a furloughed associate would have to leave the area to find other employement, and that it would be difficult to bring them back or find a replacement.
Jeff nailed it.
There’s always been times RRs were short on crews, but that was because of trouble finding people or getting people to stay after they hire on right away.
Today’s troubles are people with 10-15-20+ years walking off the job (whether because of treatment, or because their jobs were eliminated/consolidated).
And there’s a lot of people watching the contract process right now.
The crew shortage issue is perhaps also part of something bigger…an across the board shortage of people, for a number of reasons. I was chatting with a local taxi cab company owner the other day…he says he can’t find drivers and had a couple of cabs sitting. I was surprised to hear that… weren’t cabbies going to be uberized out of existence a decade ago? Apparently not. Lots if job vacancies everywhere one cares to look.
How many of them pay decently? How many companies are treating their employees decently?
And before someone comes on and says “it’s the railroad, that’s how it’s always been”. No. It hasn’t. And that’s why we are where we are at wondering where the people are at.
That would be correct…but the company often had to hire from afar…and people who were let go would be younger and more inclined to leave. We had miners and mill workers from Peru and Chile as I recall, along with guys like me who were single and could move about easily. The biggest drawback of “bull gang” work is that sometimes we got to like it a little bit too much inspite of the cut in pay. Going from a brutal midnight shift in a copper smelter to running a lawn tractor on dayshift is a change that isn’t hard to get used to, especially when the sandy beaches and beautiful ladies beckon…but just the same, the company had the right idea…keeping people on is better and probably cheaper than the hiring and layoff roller coaster…
I’m sure that’s part of it…not all jobs pay well, and not all employers are good to work for.
And I believe current/younger generations are wanting the latter.
Railroads need to get out of the 1800s with their thinking.
ALL:
The Northern Pacific got rid of some fireman about 1962 due to a national directive. More engineers retired then they expected and two of them became clerks only to be called back before I started in 1966. The NP also hired additional firemen for passenger trains.
I called crews on the NP at Northtown in 1969 and the NP would not hire any switchmen so they would have any more protected switchmen before the 1970 merger. One Saturday I had no brakemen (I did have a conductor and engineer) for a local freight from Northtown Yard (Minneapolis) to Brainerd, MN and return. I told the trainmaster and two hours later two x-brakemen from Labor Relations showed up. Not much fun calling crews with one to call.
Ed Burn
Retired Clerk NP BN BNSF from Northtown.
In today’s world of railroad labor relations - bringing ‘officials’ out of Labor Relations to fill craft vacancies would be a legitmate cause for a work stoppage.
I’ve heard the strike authorization ballots are in the mail.
I’m currently reading “Understanding the Railway Labor Act.” It’s going to be an interesting summer/early autumn.
Jeff
It’s not just railroads with shortage of crews, airlines are cancelling flights and even cancelling destinations because of crew shortage.
And the Great Lakes freighters are also looking for people…
The hire and job interview process has been turned on its head. Both my kids have had multiple interviews and are now working at summer jobs that are pretty much tailored to what they want. And the interviews were more along the line of “so tell me why I should work here”…