I do a lot of community work and talked yesterday with a manager of a local youth center here. He said he met with government and industry officials at our state capital (Sacramento) a few weeks ago and gave me some stunning info. He said he met with officials from UP and BNSF who told him that 80% of the railroad workforce will be retiring in the next five years! With freight railroads still very vital to the American economy, as well as the world’s economy, he said that the railroads are going to be aggressively hiring young people to fill in those positions.
If any of you work with high-school aged students, make sure they know about this, there’s gonna be lots of jobs open to them in the next few years…
The catch is that they will (1) actually have to work; (2) have to have common sense plus something between the ears] and (3) have a work ethic. Otherwise, they won’t be working on the railroad very long.
Yes the Jobs, but also the sacrifices. Im not sure that some young folk can endure it for long.
The ones you put on the railroad are ones you dont want to get tired and go somewhere else after 90 days like they sometimes do in trucking.
I would hope that they will tell these young prospective hires that there are going to a ALOT going to the railroad if they do sign on. No parties at 2 AM because the phone probably will ring with duty orders in 6 hours.
Say that to a room ful of young-uns and see the majority leave. The ones that remain are the ones you want to consider hiring.
Me? Hah. I dont delude myself with thinking for one second I can survive a day on the ballast or the main. Im too many years for that.
I am one of those “young folks” and I have actually considered it. However at this point it will have to wait because I intend to get an undegraduate degree and then try to get a masters and PhD. Unfortunitly I don’t think the railroads offer many night jobs for college students and by the time I get done with all that school everyone else will have filled up all the jobs. Also for many it can be a hard profession to break into because you need job skills to get hired and there aren’t many places to get the skills you need.
So for now I am contenting myself with being a nerdy train geek and going to school. And heck by the time I retire they will be selling diesels by the dozen for scrap metal and I can have my own railroad (now all I have to do is find the money to run it).
If you got an associate in computer Technology the UP will put you into the Signals Dept with a pay of about 13.00 + change an hour. Hell of alot better than flipping grocery boxes at minimum wage.
One job that I looked into recently that seemed do-able was UP Bridge Tender, working at one of four lift or swing bridges in the St.Paul MN general area. Only reason I couldn’t take it was the pay - RR jobs (I thought) paid pretty well, but in this case it would have been about a 25% pay cut. At one time I could have done it (i.e., when I was single and had no mortgage) but not now. Too bad, sounded like an interesting job.
Well I definitly know for sure that I won’t be getting a degree in computer technology( I don’t really like computers that much), but I would settle for being a bridge tender for a few years. Doesn’t sound like a bad job as long as you have another job for later where you can make better money.
MC is right–all it takes is a look at the seniority lists to see the “fallout” among the recently-hired people. Either they give up or the company finds out something and terminates them.
When I retire (yes, I’m one of those guys they’re talking about!), I’ll probably be doing my railfanning from a safer distance from the tracks than I do now!
As for bridgetending, I was pretty envious of the high-school classmate who got a bridgetending job for the GTW locally. Of course, his dad was also a bridgetender, and that may have had a little to do with it. At least there, tending the bridges had to be about the most boring job imaginable, unless you liked watching pleasure craft go through. Of the two bridges near Grand Haven, one’s now operated by train crews as they cross (that didn’t come out quite right, but you know what I mean!); the other one’s gone completely.
So I could take my AS degree in networking and get a job in the signal department? Never thought of that before, could be intresting? Whats the life like as a signal maintainer? Do the railroads send you to training for signal maintance? Does the pay increase as your experience increases? The only perks to my job are on Friday at quitting time I go home and don’t have to worry about being called in to work, and the snow is so much prettier from the warmth of an office building. I did 10 years on the ramp at are airport so I know what its like in a blizzard or when its -20 or the sun is beating down and its 98 degress with a heat index of 115. Maybe I should look into this. Any insight is welcomed[;)]
The signal maintainer’s job is a lot like the ramp job except after you put in a full day at 40 below the phone may ring about 0130 when the wind is blowing and the highway patrol is not recommending any travel on the main roads let alone the secondaries and you have to drive 100 miles to find out why the gate are still down or the switch heaters are off. The railroads are usually short of maintainer positions and a lot of the old guys are retiring. Some parts of the systems you will be working on were installed before WWII but the have to interface with the latest in technology, lots of band aids and bubble gum electronics here.
Yet, it beats flipping burgers I am told. Pay has to be over $25/hr by now.
Its not just ‘young people’ the rrs will be looking to hire. The carriers do hire help in their 30’s and 40’s. They look for folks w/past working experience. I was 35 when I set foot in the industry almost a decade ago. The rr is not the best line of work to get into, doesn’t always pay the best and sometimes it is just plain lousy but hey, its a job that provides an income to pay the bills and can provide a good standard of living if common sense money mgmnt is used.
I would really question the figure of “80% will retire in the next five years”. With the hiring the railroads have done the last 48 months I think it may be closer to 45% will go in the next 60 months.
Soo and D&H actually furloughed trainmen earlier this year. Bet they won’t be able to figure out why, when most of them don’t return. In the Soo’s case it is something they have to relearn every few years.
I just retired from the Army here in Tennessee went to my local ACAP office and looked into jobs on the railroad. I was given this site for my college portion of the class. WWW.AMDG.WS
You can have your kids check out the company websites and there will be listings on what colleges are available within that company’s territory. Now alot of these companies are doing what is called “DIRECT HIRE”. The company will pay the student about 650 a week starting on day one of their training. The training is broken down into 3 phases. The first phase is your classroom portion. The second phase is part classroom and part application of what you learned in the books. The third phase is “CUBBING” the yard and territory that you will be expected to work in.
I am now into my 4th week of cubbing and have a great respect for the people that make the whole process work. Attitude and a realization that “THIS IS NOT A JOB, BUT A LIFESTYLE” will make you a success in being a railroader.
The turnover of new hires is pretty high for a person that is between 19 and 30 years old. Mainly because of the long hours that you will be putting in crimping your style…
I love my new career and look forward to having a successful railroading career.
P.S. If you served in the military you can use your GI Bill to fund your courses. Depending on your disability rating you may even qualify for full tuition assistance and payment of $1,000 a month while you are in your 3rd phase of training. Check out www.va.gov for more info.
Getting called at 0130 is nothing new been there done that, and usually my daughter is pretty good at waking up at around that time anyways. Hey at least when the phone rings I wont be sounding all groggy like I was just awoken from a deep sleep[zzz] I guess I should have paid better attention in electronics class[D)] I use to say what use am I going to have for Ohms Law.
Speaking of calls, there are two messages on my machine from overnight, asking me to come in early. That’s one of the disadvantages (at least in my case) of being first in seniority–they have to call you first when the overtime comes around.
I’m not at all sure that the 80% figure is correct, but if it were only 50% and I was in the management of a railroad I’d be very carefully considering the current working conditions of my workforce. Specifically, are this company’s work practices really necessary to accomplish our objectives or are they a function of “we have always done it this way”? I suspect extensive use of a call-out system, for example, is an illustration of the later.
Likewise, if I were a union official I’d be equally concerned. I’d be asking hard questions about the benefit of the union’s activities to its members. As has just been illustrated in the UTU/CN conflict, there can exist significant differences between the union leadership and their members. I’d also be working hard to identify promising individuals in the 20-something portion of the workforce and recruiting them to act as union representatives.
50% is about an accurate number. It’s not due to any bad management or shortsightedness on the part of the railroad, but a result of all the mergers in the 80’s and 90’s. When the railroads merged they took on all the agreement and non-agreement employees of the former railroads, thus throwing a wrench into long range workforce planning. Now most of those employees are eligible to retire within 5 to 8 years and instead of loosing all the valuable experience the railroads (notably NS) are hiring trainees to learn from the experienced managers. This is in fact a great step in forward planning.
I just got done interviewing with the NS for just such a position in management, my 22 years of military experience in leadership is what they are looking for, not necessarily my knowledge of railroads. They want to hire leaders, people who can manage other people and get the work done. Your college degree really doesn’t matter much, your people skills do. Getting late night calls and working weekends seemed to be an important part of the interview, but that is nothing new to anybody who ever served in the military. Work ethic is the number one priority, sadly many of our youth don’t possess it so they won’t get hired or won’t last long on the job if they do.
Go online to http://www.nscorp.com/ or any of the other class I railroad web sites to apply online, that is the first step to getting hired. It worked for me, within 2 weeks of posting my resume I was on a plane (at the railroads expense) to attend a job interview. If I, a simple trained monkey, can do it, then you should have no problems at all!
I’ve been reading this thread and it’s pretty interesting. they’ve been talking about what the railroads were going to do when the “old-timers” start to retire since the buyouts in the 1990’s. Well, that day is almost here. I agree that railroading, be it on the road or in management, is a way of life, and not alot of young people are being raised for that concept (blame it schools, parents, society, whatever, it’s the modern thought). Not to say they won’t turn out to be hard workers, just the mindset of dedication seems to have changed. In my parents generation and before, most workers (not just railroaders) had a mindset of work is a lifestyle where personall life must be work around (or into). Sometime, and I’m not sure when (seems to be with my generation, not the 20 year olds), the mindset seemed to change into personall life first, then find a job that supports it. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but it doesn’t work in jobs, like railroading, trucking, barging, ect, where that enviroment still exists.
Companies (well, lower management, anyway) used to “let slide” personall “habits” and such in the workplace (i.e, liquid lunch,informal tem leagus as bowling or softball,personall phone calls from/to family, yadda, yadda) in return for a certain amount of dedication, and the long hours not quit as bad. I don’t see how any 24-hour service industry can get rid of the "lifestyle mentality without sacraficing service, but they could loosen up on somethings if they want younger people to be on constant call. No, I’m not promoting drinking on the job, but you used to be able to ask for layovers in trucking if you were out for weeks or months to go fishing, drinking, or whaever. Now they seriuosly frown on anyone bringing any personal items on the rig, or even asking a day or two off in an out of town spot as a “mini” vacation. younger workers are gonna want to let loose and get out, so do older worker’s.