Maybe in Canada. Career change after 30 started becoming quite common 20 or more years ago.
It is correct in that the carriers are having problems finding help to fill newly created positions. With the job market strong, folks are looking elsewhere for employment. As a selling point, some carriers have created bonus payments for taking on rr employment. This is up to around 15 grand. This is spmewhat of a catch: one has to agree to stay at their point of hire for the first five yrs and if one quits within that time, the money is required to be paid back. The rrs will never gain the jobs that are really needed out there. Just a sign of the times
Apart from all the other minuses, there is the lifestyle requirements. You will be expected to work on-call, working variable start times, every day of the week including weekends with no set days off for most assignments. You will be drug and alcohol free when reporting for work and subject to random testing.
Our culture seems to value work, especially work where you might get your hands dirty and break a sweat, less than in generations past. In this day and age it’s a wonder they get anyone at all.
Jeff
That’s still better than being a long haul truck driver and being out on the road for 2+ weeks at a time.
And much of the career change in the early years, and even today, was/is forced on people. Now the mantra is that a person will change jobs and/or career paths multiple times over their working lifetime.
There are thousands of people who are willing to work hard, but we keep rounding them up and throwing them out of OUR country. They are people who would be working and paying into Medicare and Social Security but for some reason we call them invaders.
[quote user=“jeffhergert”]
charlie hebdo
Ulrich
charlie hebdo
Ulrich
About liking/loving one’s work… its a matter of personal choice: it ain’t about the work itself… it’s all about one’s attitude towards it…i.e. if you’re a professor or a locomotive engineer or whatever, you have the power within you to decide to love it or not… it’s all about your approach to it.Oh yeah, try telling that gem to almost anyone under 30 or folks in many jobs with horrible conditions. You’ll get a mixture of derisive laughs and boos.
Better act fast then, after 30 you pretty much have what you have careerwise…so you may as well learn to like it. You’re going to be doing this or something very much like it for another 35 years.
Maybe in Canada. Career change after 30 started becoming quite common 20 or more years ago.
Likewise employers are not willing to hand out higher compensation levels for ‘newbies’ coming into a work classification than those already there - more likely the ‘newbie’ will be paid much less account the ‘newbie’ status without regard to age.
It is in the best interest of those currently in power that the citizens stay distracted from what is really happening in “our” government, by getting people focused on imaginary (or at best, contrived) problems and by keeping people afraid of “others”.
Sure would be nice if we could accept our differences and focus on our similarities. We’re all humans on this third rock from the sun, and the only way we will survive is by working together.
I keep looking and asking online but can’t get an answer on how much it costs to become an American citizen these days. I bet it’s more than working class people have in disposable income.
I would opine that’s because some of them are invaders, not hard workers here to earn an honest dollar.
The problem comes in separating the wheat from the chaff.
The driver shortage is driving up the cost of motor freight. At what % difference in cost will shipping by rail become attractive for non ultra time sensitive freight?
Balt, You earlier answered my question about the CSX’s dispatcher relocation policies. Now my question is about where do RR’s obtain dispatcher candiates. My recolection was that some came from the tower operators and some came from engineers or similar people who had some operating experience. Today when conductors are an almost entry level job, what are the “prerequisites” to become a disptcher?
This may be an aside. In the early sixties, I knew an IC agent operator in South Mississippi who, after I moved to another place, was promoted to dispatcher, and had to move to Chicago. I do not know how long he lasted there, but he was not happy and, I believe, went back to being a dispatcher.
You both have that right. It’s a huge distraction from what is really happening. As they say, “Follow the money.”
With all the focus on “illegal aliens” what about the many employers who break the laws about employing them? Very few arrests there, much less sending them to detention centers.
Jeff, I have a question that I hope you can enlighten me on. The articles like the Tribune where they quote wages for engineers and conductors as being $60,000.00/yr or what ever make me curious. Whien I worked for the PRR in college in the '50s engineers and operating employees had a milage based “day” and they were paid by the run. When they were furloughed, they got nothing. And today, with the railroads short help, some crews have runs almost as soon as their sleep time is up but during traffic slowdowns, a crew might wait a day or more between runs. So my question is: How variable is a crewpersons pay with traffic? Is there a floor to the contract that kicks in if traffic is low? Or are they “day labor”? Here in Chicago, I talk to BNSF conductors that are working Metra runs which it seems they like because they get home every night. But they have talked about working freight to Savana, and waiting for a run back to Chicago with an indeterminate wait while the higher seniority crews man run-through trains. I am courious as to what effect that has on the amount of earnings they make?
Thanks.
Do you mean …went back to being an operator?
Whoops!! Yes.
Being a Train Dispatcher is not for everybody. I have seen many that go through the training and OJT and become qualified on the number of jobs required and then either quit the company entirely or go back on the seniority on the craft they previously worked. Location of the office may or may not play a part in these decisions as some were required to move to become a Dispatcher and some weren’t.
Dispatching is a stressful form of employment as you are trying to accomplish many successful outcomes, perform you job functions within the Rule Book and the CADS computer system. Deal with the conflicting time requests of MofW, Signals and Train Operations in managing ‘your’ territory. Coordinating the operation of ‘your’ territory with fellow Dispatchers of adjoining territories. One minute your territory is running like a Swiss watch - the next second the main spring has b
The citizenship process is long and involved and expensive (I don’t know how expensive). My wife used to work for a law firm that did pro bono work helping people go thru the process, and from her description the process cries out for simplification and streamlining. Without getting into politics, it should be as quick and painless as it can be to become a citizen while still doing the necessary checks to weed out the bad apples.