Tweet
There are several organized unions but by far the largest being SMART TD against and BLET voting for ratification. The problems the union workers have is the rail companies have made their workers into a green world and are actively ditching locomotive engines, fired thousands of conductors and cut their repair mechanics by 2/3. One company has cut up over 1,000 engines and are now increasing train size dramatically. They used to be 5-7,000 feet long and now it is 15-18,000 feet with 2 engines in front, 2 in the middle and 2 in the rear. All those cars are operated by a crew of 2, an Engineer and a conductor. Breakdowns are becoming a problem because the mechanics do not have enough people to conduct even basic maintenance. If one of these engines breaks down and the conductor may have to walk 3 miles to the other end of the train to try to locate the problem.
Conductors and Engineers are quitting because they are treated like slaves. If you are on a broken down train somewhere in the boondocks it maybe hours (14+-) before they can be relieved.
Conductors are not paid enough for what they do. There are 2 boards, a Pull Board and a Extra board. The Pull board has a scheduled run while the Extra Board is called out for non schedule trips (trips to retrieve breakdowns). In the board my engineer son is on there are 18 Engineers and only 8 Conductors. That means an Engineer may be sitting hours on a repaired train waiting hours for a Conductor before he can move the train.
For a trainman, there are no paid holidays (Christmas/4th of July, etc.) and there are no calling in sick days. Instead they have 11 paid Personal Leave days per year. Problem is you have to give 3 weeks (+-) notice. For example my son has 37 PL days on the books that means in the past 4 years he has had 7 paid days off. Oh, but when out of town he can claim $9 per diem for a days meals.
Sorry for the rant. But these problems are rampant throughout the economy and it is going to get far worse!
Conductors and Engineers are quitting because they are treated like slaves. If you are on a broken down train somewhere in the boondocks it maybe hours (14+-) before they can be relieved.
Conductors are not paid enough for what they do. There are 2 boards, a Pull Board and a Extra board. The Pull board has a scheduled run while the Extra Board is called out for non schedule trips (trips to retrieve breakdowns). In the board my engineer son is on there are 18 Engineers and only 8 Conductors. That means an Engineer may be sitting hours on a repaired train waiting hours for a Conductor before he can move the train.
For a trainman, there are no paid holidays (Christmas/4th of July, etc.) and there are no calling in sick days. Instead they have 11 paid Personal Leave days per year. Problem is you have to give 3 weeks (+-) notice. For example my son has 37 PL days on the books that means in the past 4 years he has had 7 paid days off. Oh, but when out of town he can claim $9 per diem for a days meals.
Sorry for the rant. But these problems are rampant throughout the economy and it is going to get far worse!
Comment