Through attrition and following the lead of NS and UP based on consulting by Jim Vena, BNSF is staging for the furlough of 400 mech employees between Jan and Feb 2025. BNSF in conjunction with peak season profits and down term normally observed at the end of December, and uncertainty following the upcoming November elections, has also began the preparations for furloughs of approximately 400 TY&E system wide and 300 MOW workers system wide to account for lost volume associated with slowed rail traffic during winter months and weather related events during the same event, According to Kendall Sloan and various spokespersons within BNSF speaking through anonymity, BNSF has began preparing for furloughs through conditional offers of employment being offered to account for lost workers who will choose not to return following a seasonal layoff. This matches both BNSF and Ancora holdings plans to streamline profits in class 1 railroads through the implementation of an as needed staffing plan that intends to create quarterly short term increases in profit through worker layoffs for non exempt employees and benefit package cuts to exempt employees. While BNSF states that it is not implementing a progressive railroading plan, its plan is to reduce staffing to match the ability of trains to run with less workers to include in the southern trans con, where its ability to move more freight with longer trains and new fueling plans has resulted in the ability to inspect utilizing wayside readers and camera systems to identify defects, while eliminating delays that it considers to be associated with worker based inspections outside of mechanical facilities. In conjunction with partnerships with the FRA and the ability to receive in route waivers through digital flagging, and an ability to allow locomotives and rail cars to operate until they reach a repair facility without being removed from service unless deemed as an emergency or specifically necessary to operate repair will, based on BNSF operating strategy, reduce dwell, down time based on in route inspections, cost to customers, and BNSF overhead with regard to operating expenses.
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Prediction…BNSF will end up being sold off in one large chunk to the NS or CSX and a smaller chunk to the runner up of the those two. Probably soon after Id--t Warren Buffet finally kicks off. BNSF’s business model is laughable at best and they have no idea how to recover so they terminate and furlough for short term financial gain to Philandering Warren Buffets bottom line, but what is increasingly becoming evident, is the long term loss in business knowledge and operation experience deficits in management and the rank and file.
This is what happens when you continually hire new TYE, then continually furlough them then wash, rinse and repeat because the furloughed largely don’t return and you end up with larger and larger numbers of railroaders who don’t know how to railroad. Then you fire or run off the railroad managers who knew how to move cars and fill all the the officer ranks with detestable, sycophantic CMT’s who have ZERO idea of how to railroad let alone how to lead a safe railroad operation.
They are happening now, just got notified that I will be laid off by BNSF in April!
It's now March . Any news on those changes ?
Katie coming to temple first week of February
No law in a America prevents anything, simply laws that have consequences that should act as a deterrent for bad actors who can not afford the penalties, BNSF made between 3-6 billion in profits last year, if it took 5+ years to litigate whether a bad actor did or did not do something, by your own admission, the penalty for such behavior would be a drop in the bucket with regard to profits, in my best Vena voice “who cares, run it.”
Took them 40 years to hold them accountable for blatantly violating Native American contracts and driving cars and locomotives across their land, BNSF has been hit with crazy litigation this year, its a pipe dream to think that anyone in the upper brass would care if they got caught price fixing, and utilizing PSR to do it, even though they claim they are not. As a previous poster stated, age of the leadership, the amount of time it would be tied up in litigation, and speed of how fast the courts work, there’s no way anything they do would actually affect them. It’s why union leadership will look you dead in the face and ask, what do you expect us to do? Especially after the PEB and previous court rulings that sided with the company.
I urge everyone to maybe go to law school or at the very least do better research on anti-trust laws. Depending on what this Vena guy and the BNSF CEO are discussing, it can be construed as illegal and investigated. The previous poster is very right when he/she said that there's laws that prevent that from happening. That person only said they were having a hard time believing it. They never said it wasn't happening. I'd like to recommend the topic of na--d agreements or price fixing. Go ahead and look that up. The fine for one of those is 1 million per person involved or 100 million per corporation involved. Check it out! Wouldn't that look good for the UP and BNSF. The two CEO's may or may not be working together, but they better be extremely careful if they are. The FTC and the DOJ are watching!
They are going to hire a bunch to get a profit bump once the ports open up after the port worker strike ends, then layoff everyone they hired right after that profit bounce, plus all those they were planning on furloughing before hand. It’s inevitable unless the unions who haven’t signed contracts yet decide to strike to send a message, otherwise union leadership is just selling the bottom half of every seniority roster down the river. The upper half will just say that’s the way it is to make sure they get their pensions with no delay, but some of them may become collateral damage as well based on the new versions of extreme ops testing terminations.
That’d be a cool number to come up with when Tuesday comes and every port shuts down. Seems like a strike by port workers is unavoidable at this point, but seems like BNSF is prestaging to move a lot of freight super quick when it ends, conductor jobs everywhere. But when something catastrophic happens, that number will be very pertinent information, as they will try to point the finger at everyone, but those who made the decisions at the top to put the company in the position it’s in now.
What is the current number of furloughed/laid off employees system including clerks, warehouse workers, contractors, and union members? Wondering just what the total number is for 2024.
To the comment of not believing BNSF CONSULTS WITH OTHER RAILROADS. Look up Ed Harris. BNSF just hired him as a PSR Consultant!!!
When the railroad makes foreman post on here, you already know what’s coming, we get it…all the foreman on PIP have to get on here and make a positive post so they can get off their needs improvement before we fire you anyway evaluations lol
Wow. Company plants much? If you work here and truly believe the company gives two sh--s about you, you’re wrong. Tell this to the dozens of people I know who were told to kick rocks without even so much as a thank you.
Not only that, LR and the decision makers will make every attempt possible to avoid paying any sort of labor protection claims they can. They’re lining up to fu-k dozens more people right now and ensuring their ducks are in a row so they don’t have to pay labor protection when the big axe gets swung. They’re also making every attempt possible to avoid putting out WARN notices. That’s why they’ve been making smaller cuts instead of one big cut.
Read between the lines.
Finally, someone gets it! They are trying their best. Just look at our new contract, we finally got one done before the previous one expired. I’d say that’s a win and shows they are working on improving things!!
You guys just don’t see the big picture. BNSF is a big family and if you can’t trust family then who can you trust?! I love BNSF and I know they have our best interest at heart! I ❤️🚂
Tough decisions need to be made, I think the company is trying their hardest. Give them a break!
Let's see if they get rid of more people starting at the beginning of October since it's a new quarter
Considering BNSF revenue has decreased 2% year over year according to quarterly filings, while stock price in Berk B continues to rise, it’s only logical to think that more furloughs are on the way, as furloughing is seeming to have a positive impact on shareholders, while negatively affecting everyone else. If shareholders see bigger profits while attributing those profits to axing jobs, the furloughs will continue. What’s worse, it seems union leadership are in lockstep with the company, as the only thing you hear these days is what do you expect us to do.
So much for all the conductor jobs, word is they’ve canceled all the classes indefinitely until 2025 under the company needing to be more fluid….and anyone in class right now is most likely getting furloughed at the end of their training
BNSF is ran by corporate cronies and thugs who only care about their yearly bonus. They don't care if people are left out in the street. Stop giving your life away to these așṣhøles! Seek alternate employment!
BNSF is at 880 furloughs system wide since February, maybe a little more if you include clerks, office staff, contractors, and various positions that are not listed as union based employment. You throw in the mix the new smart contract that was just signed at the beginning of September, it’s looking pretty bleak for seniority rosters across the system on the TY&E side, might start preparing to move to bump in or looking for new employment. If you read the new labor agreement, a traveling conductor a.k.a RUP will be taking the place of van drivers via the use of a company vehicle doing crew (engineer one man crew) transport. Meaning even Halcon is getting cut too. Reading between the lines, 2025 going to start with a sc--wed up Christmas bonus of being unemployed.
lol, phone calls being recorded, the only time that matters is if someone goes to court, and the idea you would get Vena or Buffet in court would be if they magically stopped liking money and wanted to turn on each other, and you'd have to give warren a cup from the fountain of youth, otherwise he'd show up looking like the crypt keeper. Good luck there corporate mouthpiece, it was a nice attempt to distract, but its good to see the layoff is still being monitored by corporate IT in attempt to stop any flow of information from coming out.
Is it really that hard to believe that C1 railroad CEOs do not consult one another? A simple scroll through indeed and google will yield multiple post, and search results that highlight joint ventures between the railroads including the pictures of them together highlighting the fact they are working together. In the not so distant past, BNSF utilized the PEB under the current administration to quell a strike by BNSF unions, and now the same administration is advising the Canadian government on how CN and CPs leadership can utilize the government to force the same style of labor contracts on their unions. The idea these things happen in a vacuum is simply naive, or a corporate mouthpiece attempting to say look the other way, there's nothing to see hear. In reality nothing has to be approved by Berkshire Hathaway, as a matter of fact the last time Warren Buffet said he didn't like his profit margins, the layoffs started the following week, as Fort Worth arbitrarily stepped in and said let the layoffs begin, hence the benefit of being a privately owned C1, arbitrary anything can occur at any moment, and no one has to explain anything to anyone. The simple reason for Vena being consulted is because, despite his bad decision making, he was able to utilize number manipulation, sketchy book keeping, and a willingness simply to pay FRA fines rather than change the business model, resulting in lower operating cost and higher profit margins for short term quarterly bounces, ie no real consequences for bad decisions making, as long as the bottom line was good...safety, worker moral, longevity, none of that really matters. Pair that with Warren Buffet with one foot in the grave due to his age, its pretty simple to see where the short term matters more than the long term, as he won't be around long enough to actually have to deal with the long term, lawyers would tie up any litigation for years in a slow court system, and by that time the guilty would be hanging out with saint pete, so what would they care. Its simply a short term money grab, with no real reason not to exploit the system or be deterred not to.
I'm having a hard time believing this one. The BNSF CEO consulting with the UP CEO about business operations? Kind of doubt it! The BNSF is a privately owned company and just about all operations have to be approved by Berkshire Hathaway. The CEO cannot unilaterally make decisions based off of input from the CEO of its biggest competitor. There's actual corporate laws that prevent that from occurring. Yes it could be happening, but it's very unlikely! Vena is not a role model in any sense of the imagination! He's the epitome of bad decision making. He went to the UP and turned that place into the worst railroad in America. Anyone can look that up by the way! Then they ousted the last CEO and brought him back to the UP again for another round of bad decisions. So please explain WHY the BNSF would consult with Vena on the operations at the BNSF? That's a really big gamble for both CEO's to be taking, especially when phone calls and emails are recorded/archived.
The Jews did this ..
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/09/21/rail-s21.html
There’s all your TY&E jobs right there, might be higher than OP originally said.
All mechanical repairs in the Pacific Northwest are going to be contracted out by the end of the year. It will be spread over several locations and have a huge impact in the area.
Should be renamed BNSL- Better not start a life! What a joke. Way to wreck people's lives.
What yall are saying it is going to be near the 1600 original number
Seems realistic considering everyone has been on edge for months considering the trickle furlough effects, realign then furlough the same folks or more again
I guess that would explain the whole high number of job postings for conductors and the New Mexico corridor jobs. Figures, BNSF looking to hook people up for Christmas and New Years.