Does anyone have any solid information about why the two big railroads in Houston Texas does not want to invest any money or substantial resources to rebuild shops and why they want everyone on maps program? I understand that the more we produce with less they are going to push on what we can do with less. These shops are very very old and crumbling around us. They shut down milby street shop when Bnsf took it over and honestly I have no idea how settigast with UP is even a structure and operating at this point. These railroads want nothing to do with Houston and it baffles me especially with the ports and oil and gas industry. Please no negativity or talking cr-p about the last person who commented. They want us divided so we don’t pay attention to what exactly they are doing behind the scenes which sometimes is so obvious if we aren’t paying attention to how much work another person does or what we don’t do right or clean up after our selves. You notice how they always want us to blame each other for the incompetence of lower management.
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@OP
The Houston area is a goldmine for the railroads but somehow these guys in Charge wanna invent the wheel again.
It’s funny how UP doesn’t publish their customer’s service and satisfaction reviews any longer!! Hhhmmmm
#1 once again as the country’s worst employer and will probably keep that spot since contract negotiations are ongoing.
And they wanna fire everyone for minor infractions, yet they are still hiring!?
Make it make sense.
Its a no brainer , come on now. Why would you pour money into buildings or structures where you want employees gone . Obviously they want to have contractors for a fraction of a cost. That's why they say "We are winning "
What contractors save is liability.
@c6+1 you are prob right, but what does watco charge the ‘customer’? Its not like a carrier just goes from paying a union employee $40 an hour to paying a contractor $20 an hour. Have you ever known any contractors who hold contracts w/ a RR? They are millionaires who for some strange reason have nonagreement railroad employees that are ‘friends’ who do things like living in houses that they own, driving cars leased by them, the railroaders family members work for them, etc etc. Its a misnomer to automatically equivocate contractors save money.
H town railroad bosses cheating like the Astros !
You think they are getting 15/16 of employee pay!??? Lol. I see Watco posting jobs for 20 an hour.
Paying a contractor 7/8 or 15/16 of what a railroad employee gets paid isnt a huge savings over having your own employees do a job right. H-town has really suffered from psr. Its a huge rail network in a complicated city that necessitates a lot more complexity and man power versus a single main line rural area that sees a train every 2 hours or so. But due to bad management outside of houston insisting on running everything off of oversimplified (and inaccurate) statistics on d-mbed down spreadsheets that any wet behind the ears intern could understand while they were both high and intoxicated is what causes these problems. Couple that with low and mid level managers never being allowed to actually voice the truth that they need more manpower (they would fabricate a reason to fire a manager who dared to admit such a thing) and you get what houston has become. There was one signal employee on a railroad in the houston area that was charging 12-14hrs of overtime every night 7 days a week. He took trouble calls all night everynight and charged his regular 8hrs for his regular shift of which he was sleeping during the day. He claimed on paper he was getting his regular inspections done on time, but he wasnt doing them. Turned out he had a major dr-g problem and was spending all his money on dr-gs. His manager loved him bcuz he took so many trouble calls and it was an FRA inspector that finally figured out what was going on. That is an example of what is wrong in houston.
Because there's enough contractor companies that will do the same work for a fraction of what actual employees are paid.