This site used to be for people to share information they heard in the yard and office.
It was a way to validate concerns or share real-time updates.
Source from a respectable GD Vena plans on reducing headcount 20% in his first week. That’s the rumor predominantly agreement jobs but UPC and HDC as well.
Change the retirement by offering earlier retirement with a reduced annuity. ✌️ They will get their reduction voluntarily if they do that.
13 days later and there are already cuts being made.
I think you guys have it all wrong. Vena is on a contract. He's not trying to do anything right. His whole goal is to run UP into the ground and make the board buy out his contract. He'll make the same money with much less time and effort. That has to be the only explanation for this nonsense. We've lost 14 mechanical guys at North Platte in the first round of cuts and we couldn't keep power working before! And now the FRA is out there tearing the place up. There's just no way he's legitimately trying to better the company. He's looking for a quick buck and poof, he's gone.
@nrc. You were saying?!?!?!?!
Vena already cut 20 to 30% in 2019 and UP hasn't hired back but around 1500 te&y. There is no more space for agreement cuts. The cuts done have already halted the movement of frieght. I hope the FRA and STB are watching and hope they come down hard on him. Fritz was not happy with the STB and it made him increase employees and quit implementing PSR. Vena will be kicked out if he gets on the bad side of the STB, the board wants money but not at the cost of government intervention. If Vena halts the RR more (which I fear he will do) the board will have him out in 12 months. They will give him 2 Qtrs to improve if the government gets mad. I will enjoy watching the downfall of Vena just as much as the Trump indictments.
One thing that isn’t a rumor is that the managers at hinkle are running around with their tales between their legs. They’re all on edge. Some of the workers are worried, as for me I couldn’t give a rats a$$ one way or another. If he wants to totally gut the place again I’ll just find another job. We’re on life support as it is with new employees who know nothing. I don’t really care to go through the skeleton crew do everyone else’s job shenanigans again.
You could cut 50%-75% of management, in every location.. And still have too many
Speaking of rumors I heard Fritz say on a video this week that “they” removed a ton of work out of the railroad? I work in signal and want to know who told him any work was removed? Tech and inspectors jobs got combined into one position, maintainers got their territories extended greatly, we now also do SOC’s and dispatcher duties, and relief maintainers were eliminated meaning those duties also fall onto everyone else to do also. Who f^cking told these upper management suits that signal work was eliminated so it was feasible to reduce the signal dept head count?
As has been stated we've been barely able to hire back a fraction of the bodies that were cut before and the quality of the new hires is lacking waaaaay more than I've ever seen in the past.
If he wacks jobs now we're going to have even a harder time rehiring.
Not to mention that their alleged focus on "Growth" is not going to do well with less bodies to move and fix the things required to actually "grow"
@hwa Exactly! You hit the nail right on the head. There not much room to cut anywhere except on the management side. Vena and his team has to be very careful about doing any cuts. The UP has been hemorrhaging employees since there PSR run, the UP has been labeled worst employer in North America, and getting quality people has been a big challenge for most class 1 RR. If Vena was smart and I'm using that term VERY lightly, then he would be better off leaving everything the way it is. Just his last name, is having a negative effect on the already bad morale at the UP. Vena simply can't afford to sc--w this up. The federal government IS watching very closely, and they're taking names. If people are already leaving, then I think the best rumor right now is that people are sick of the sh1t. That's really more of a fact than a rumor at this point.
These rumors are pointless, clearly made up out of speculation. Some facts; the operating department sits at just over 33,000 employees. These are 85-90% crafts who do the work. A cut of 20% would be 6800 jobs of people who move trains and work on cars and locomotives. Operating is only a few hundred more than they were just two years ago not much room to cut. None operating fluff accounts for about 3,000 more all managers that are not in the field running trains, this is where there is likely to be a few cuts but only in the hundreds at best…
Well you kind of highlighted the actual problem. People heard this and that from a "respectable" or "trusted" source, and yet not many of those rumors ever panned out. When has anyone on the executive team stated what they were going to do before they did it? Simple, NO ONE! Until I actually hear from the executive team about confirmed layoffs, it's just another story. Vena has to be VERY careful about what he does. He screws this up, he'll take Beth and Mark down with him. Remember Vena isn't president, chairman, and CEO. He's just the CEO. There's 3 individuals that'll have to answer for the problems that are most likely coming.
Wouldn’t surprise me if he takes the head count to 30%. Everyone I’ve talked to around the system is getting ready to be laid off.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he pushes the metra deal thru faster and takes credit for reducing the headcount