Potential freight railroad strike

[lifesavacation]

That's a really poor union contract. No wonder they were about to strike. Most unions have decent benefits.

The real sticking point happened earlier this year when the company implemented the new attendance policy.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

It is awful. The average person hearing the story doesn't understand how the RR handles sick time. This wasn't about the money. It's about the attendance policy and how it impacts the quality of life for the railworker.

My husband has it better than some. He gets Thursdays and Fridays off. Some of his coworkers are on call 24/7 and have to report to work within 2 hours of a call. They are why this is so important.

I could rant about this for awhile. Stupid RR. Thank goodness they have unions.



Yep. No paid sick days. The union was asking for protection to use unpaid days off for medical procedures and illness. Hopefully, they've also made some exceptions for funerals and births in the new agreement.

I was pretty appalled when I read that article from the Washington Post yesterday.

The real sticking point happened earlier this year when the company implemented the new attendance policy.

So that was a new attendance policy?

I don’t understand how people can be on call 24/7 infinitely.

 

[lifesavacation]

I was pretty appalled when I read that article from the Washington Post yesterday.

So that was a new attendance policy?

I don’t understand how people can be on call 24/7 infinitely.

Yes. A new policy called Hi-Viz was implemented at my husband's company earlier in the year. I'm not sure about the other rail companies. The union asked to strike at that point, but a federal judge granted a restraining order preventing it because of the impact to an already weak supply chain.

 

[LuvOrlando]

My husband is part of this Union. The big sticking point is the attendance policy. Many of the workers are on call 24/7 with no scheduled days off, which means no real way to plan for funerals, surgeries, illness, births, etc. The unions weren’t asking for paid sick days. They wanted unpaid sick days that protected the workers.

Currently, should you have a heartattack or need surgery or schedule a routine doctor’s visit, you’d get points deducted and if you reach zero points there’s an investigation. And god forbid it happen on a weekend or high impact day. That’s even more points. It’s demoralizing and impossible to work around. My husband got a max of 2 days off (unpaid) when he had COVID and had to return still feverish and feeling terrible. He would have reached 0 points and triggered an investigation if he took another day off.

We haven’t heard the details of what was negotiated. Hopefully, it helps address some of these issues. The union workers still need to ratify the agreement so there's still the potential to strike if it can't be ratified.

Unacceptable conditions, good luck!

 

[lifesavacation]

I don’t understand how people can be on call 24/7 infinitely.

I want to answer this comment, but I don't have a lot of time and it's complicated. There are a number of hours of service rules in their contract.

 

[mrodgers]

My husband is part of this Union. The big sticking point is the attendance policy. Many of the workers are on call 24/7 with no scheduled days off, which means no real way to plan for funerals, surgeries, illness, births, etc. The unions weren’t asking for paid sick days. They wanted unpaid sick days that protected the workers.

Currently, should you have a heartattack or need surgery or schedule a routine doctor’s visit, you’d get points deducted and if you reach zero points there’s an investigation. And god forbid it happen on a weekend or high impact day. That’s even more points. It’s demoralizing and impossible to work around. My husband got a max of 2 days off (unpaid) when he had COVID and had to return still feverish and feeling terrible. He would have reached 0 points and triggered an investigation if he took another day off.

We haven’t heard the details of what was negotiated. Hopefully, it helps address some of these issues. The union workers still need to ratify the agreement so there's still the potential to strike if it can't be ratified.

Wow. No company or any kind of entity or person should be able to own another person like that. That is modern day slavery you described right there.

 

[bcla]

Wow. No company or any kind of entity or person should be able to own another person like that. That is modern day slavery you described right there.

Doctors (especially residents) have to work like that often. And of course in the military when fighting in the field.

I think the issue they have is that trains are delayed and often the work that they do depends on being on call once they come in. But the points system with almost no room (even for illness or other things beyond the control of the employee) does seem almost like indentured servitude. They could of course make it easier on employees by having more workers available, which is what airlines tend to do.

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/14/1122918098/railroads-freight-rail-union-strike-train-workers​

Like so many essential workers in the pandemic, the engineers and conductors who drive the nation's freight trains have had it.​

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They're tired of unpredictable, inflexible work schedules. They're tired of being penalized for taking days off when they're sick or tending to a family emergency. They want a better quality of life.​

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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/business/economy/railroad-workers-strike.html​

Workers, industry analysts and customers say the practices emanate from a business model that focuses relentlessly on holding down expenses, including labor costs. They say this leaves rail networks with little capacity to work around a disruption, whether it be a personal issue for an employee or a natural disaster like a hurricane — or, for that matter, a pandemic.
********​

Unions complained that to manage a shortfall of employees, the carriers effectively forced their members to remain on call for days and sometimes weeks at a time, partly through the use of strict attendance policies that could lead to disciplinary action or even firing. They said the policies pushed workers to the limits of their physical and mental health.​

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“Every facet of your life is dictated by this job,” said Gabe Christenson, who until this year worked as a conductor for a large freight rail carrier. “There’s no way to get away from it.”​

 

[NotUrsula]

Doctors (especially residents) have to work like that often. And of course in the military when fighting in the field.

I think the issue they have is that trains are delayed and often the work that they do depends on being on call once they come in. But the points system with almost no room (even for illness or other things beyond the control of the employee) does seem almost like indentured servitude. They could of course make it easier on employees by having more workers available, which is what airlines tend to do.[snip]

That's true, but in those jobss, the demand is normally for a short period of time, or if it is longer; there are compensations, such as the military providing housing, meals, and onsite medical care when serving in combat, and often extra pay as well.

US freight railroads are, I think, unique in the world, in that the cost of the entire infrastructure is privately paid. Trucking companies are not made to build/maintain all our roads, nor pay landowners for the right of way to drive on them. (They pay some in the form of special taxes that take wear & tear of road structures into account, but nothing close to the entire cost.) Railroads are made to buy the rights of way, and lay & maintain their own track, in addition to the cost of labor and the rolling stock, which not only drives up their operating cost percentage relative to other forms of freight carriage, but also puts not only workers, but members of the public at risk of incidental harm. Those added costs create much greater incentive for railroads to systematically cut corners on safety.

Apparently one of the other points the Union was fighting for was having 2 operators on duty. If you've ever witnessed the damage that derailment of an out-of-control large freight train can cause, you know that having only one human on hand to operate it is a VERY bad idea. It's all too easy for an exhausted operator to fall asleep for a few minutes, let alone what could happen if the driver had a major health crisis like a heart attack while alone at the controls.

Why is it that we only seem to ask these kinds of insanely long work shifts of people who do dangerous jobs? Train operators, soldiers, physicians; one of the few other things all those jobs have in common is the probability that exhausted inattention is very likely to cause another person(s) to be hurt or even killed. We all have a vested safety interest in ensuring that such workers are well-rested and as healthy as possible while on duty. For rail freight, if that increases the cost of cars or animal feed or even bread a wee bit, well, I think it's money well-spent.

 

[bcla]

US freight railroads are, I think, unique in the world, in that the cost of the entire infrastructure is privately paid. Trucking companies are not made to build/maintain all our roads, nor pay landowners for the right of way to drive on them. (They pay some in the form of special taxes that take wear & tear of road structures into account, but nothing close to the entire cost.) Railroads are made to buy the rights of way, and lay & maintain their own track, in addition to the cost of labor and the rolling stock, which not only drives up their operating cost percentage relative to other forms of freight carriage, but also puts not only workers, but members of the public at risk of incidental harm. Those added costs create much greater incentive for railroads to systematically cut corners on safety.

I've worked with freight railroads. It was part of a summer job where I had to do assorted things including track our customer's containers being shipped around the country. Even then it was automated, although I'm sure now it's all available on the internet. It was really weird once when I hand delivered a $200,000+ check to Southern Pacific.

But the railroads bought most of their rights of way over a century ago. And they had the right of eminent domain to do so and often still do. That's been extremely lucrative to them over the years. Not only that, but they were given land (not necessarily for rail use) by the federal government in exchange for laying down rails. In California there are areas with these checkerboard patterns of ownership, where the railroads owned and then sold the land. I think they still own some of that land.

 

[NotUrsula]

Yes, but maintaining everything in the right of way still falls to private companies, unlike roads, airports and inland waterways, which are are least partly maintained by govt entities.

I'm not saying railroads were or are poor, goodness not, but by insisting that the entire industry pay for itself in the modern era, we also give them near carte-blanche to put the making of money above every other interest. I don't think that's a good idea for an industry that is so vital to our basic infrastructure.

 

[Lumpy1106]

All the employees who maintain the tracks, handle switching and all of the behind-the-scenes stuff are with the freight lines, so if they're striking it isn't safe/possible to use those tracks at all. Amtrak only owns and operates a very small portion of the tracks they run on, mostly in the NYC-to-DC corridor. That's a big part of why we don't have meaningful passenger rail service in the US - because the lines were build and are owned by freight railroad companies, and passenger service is just a little side hustle that they allow when they're not using the tracks for their main business.

Thanks for the explanation. I do wonder if that somehow factors in to the route decisions on California High Speed Rail (not a fan). The first piece is being built now, parallel to an existing AMTRAK served rail line. It crosses over it in fact. There was definitely some horse trading for votes in the San Joaquin valley but I wonder if they also intend to abandon that AMTRAK line and save some money they are spending to use the existing freight rail line. I always thought it made more sense to run CHSR over the Tahachapis into Bakersfield, then direct up the I-5 corridor (no stops) to the Bay Area, leaving the San Joaquin AMTRAK line in service for the local traffic up the 99 corridor. The CHSR is now planned to stop at the cities along the 99 corridor making it a lot less "high speed". It makes the FL Brightline look a lot more rational by comparison - that's for sure.