We carry a chain saw on all of our trains - and all to often have need to use it. And not just after a weather event.
Because much of our line is within the Adirondack Park, we are restricted somewhat with what we can cut. In fact, if a tree falls across the ROW, it usually gets cut back to the edge of the ROW, and no more.
Highways often get the same treatment. NYS Route 3 through the Adirondacks used to be a “tree tunnel,” with the forest tight to the road. Any improvement to the road has resulted in a wide swath and plenty of daylight.
Something that seems to have been overlooked is that management requires a different set of skills than that of the line worker. A really good engineer or conductor may or may not be a good RFE or TM. A fair to middling operating person may have the skills to be an excellent supervisor.
Don’t forget the other oddball thing in the corporate world. Sometimes a person spectacularly good at his job WON’T get promoted out of it because those over him don’t know who they’ll replace him with who’s as good!
I think what the original poster was saying is that the new front line (and sometimes even higher) managers don’t know how things work out in the real world. (See on the internet any of the meme pictures of a young person with a book or manual with the caption, “I don’t know how to do your job, but my book says you’re doing it wrong.” I don’t think this is just a railroad industry phenomena either. I think it’s a growing trend that if you are a line worker, especially if you don’t have a 4 year degree, you are incapable of functioning without being told how to do everything.)
They come up with ideas and rules, especially rules that are supposed to be for our safety, that do little but slow production. Then when production slips, they are howling mad (literally, one manager had an EEO complaint filed against him for his actions) and threaten to eliminate jobs. (They came down on one of our terminals where production had slipped. Threatened to close it down and let the business go to trucks. The yard had recently had a rash of incidents and new rules and procedures had been issued. Compliance slowed things to a trickle.)
I think the more important question that needs to be asked in this thread are why are American business executives repeatedly called upon to take the helm of Canadian transport companies and straighten them out financially (airlines and railroads both). What is it about Canadian education or culture in which they believe running a business is like running a social club with perks with no regard to remaining competitive?
Came across this link elsewhere. It’s a Candian site for people to rate their employer. It’s not just for railroads. You can go to the home page of this site and search all employers by business/industry classification and/or by province. I just linked to the CP thread.
Very interesting. I did not read all of ratings on the first page, but there is the common theme: CP management does not know how to manage employees decently.
What I want to see is a lot more statistics for this railroad, which go below the thin financial surface veneer and tell the true tale.
For example, is track maintenance being deferred ? The rate of tie and rail replacement and surfacing miles per year - as compared to, say, the last 10 years - should be a good indicator. Similarly, the number of locomotives and cars needing repair, average age of the fleet (replacement rate), etc.
Others might be average train velocity, dwell time in yards, cars on line, carloads per year, car-miles per day, number of employees, Gross Ton-Miles per Train-Hour, etc.
Just as a doctor can’t tell the true health of a patient from his blood pressure alone, these other measures need to be looked at to gauge the condition of a railroad.
I would not be surprised to find the EHH and cohorts are just running fewer and longer/ heavier trains to drive up the GTM/TH and drive down the Operating Ratio. They may be ‘cherry-picking’ to keep the most lucrative traffic for those ratios - perhaps ‘captive’ traffic in the short-term. There are a couple problems with that philosophy:
The discarded traffic may not have been quite as juicy, but it contributed to the gross revenues and profits. Now that’s gone, so how long can the share price be kept so high ?
The captive traffic then has a big incentive to find an alternative, either another transport mode or a non-transport one (relocate, or close the plant and use another one, etc.).
This will bear watching - time will tell. Fortunately (?), there was enough of this in the 1960’s and 1970’s that the symptoms are fairly well known by now.
I dunno, I rode CN courtesy of VIA after Hunter Harrison took over and the CN / VIA employees had all sorts of conspiracy theories. Hunter was pulling superior forged Canadian rail for relay rail on the Illinois Central. Hunter was creating safety risks, etc, etc. A good portion of this is Canadian employees got used to the utility atmosphere before where productivity wasn’t a large concern and they didn’t like the change. Ever work with Canadians before? I had to when I worked at General Motors HQ in Detroit. Canadians are closer to Europe than the United States in work ethic and are pretty laid back on the job. On Salary jobs they expect some overtime consideration if they work more than 40 hours a week.
You’ll pick up on these things after a while. Not a surprise to me at all they do not like American management style and attention to becomming more efficient.
“Termination” in employer terms can cover everything from being fired to an employee being layed off. So you have to me more specific.
Some harsh forms of termination the employer can keep the pension. If your layed off you can ask for and recieve a lump sum IRA rollover of the current value of your pension funds but in the case of a rollover most firms require that you be vested in the plan at least 5 years…otherwise the company keeps it.
I made quite a chunk of change in IT jumping from companies with pension plans every 5 years and asking for the lump sum payout to rollover into my 401k. It’s not a trivial amount of money even after only 5 years contribution and growth. You would be surprised how many people would leave at 4.5 years or 4.75 years and just leave the pension funds for the employer to keep. Unbelieveable but it happens.
I think that Mr Harrison’s management style is rather ‘excessive’, even for Americans. I think PDN (above) makes a number of good points about a variety of CP’s metrics he would like to see before he makes an informed comment on Mr Harrison’s managment of CP. I concur with him.
I think also you misrepresent the work ethic of many hard working and productive Canadians.