Foremen and FG’s did their dirty work to make everything go under the promise that they were safe while shredding the boots on the ground. Then the one’s that survived and were “promoted” now get an “awesome amount of forced vacation”. If the place will still function after the next 4 months, why would they not cut 25% of non-agreement. Side benefit to think about. How much money is 25% of every non-agreement employee company wide for the next 4 months?
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Town hall they were laughing and mucking it up. They are and will be total unaffected by this pay cut.
You’re not poor railroaders you’ve got free hot dogs
Proud for you all that are making $200k a year at your new job with 5 day weekends and 4 hour days. Please go your own way and leave us poor railroad losers room to vent our frustrations.
@1dej Agree 100%. I used to get lectured about how great the pay and benefits were at UP, and at my current job I work 8-5/Mon-Fri with every holiday/weekend off, getting paid $30k more per year. Plus I don't have to baby-sit grown men, which was never something that I enjoyed.
For the hours spent on the job, workload, travel, and level of responsibility, the pay at UP is way below average. They can keep it.
It just seems like an easy way to test run a non-agreement reduction, and with a vacation every month during the summer, they will be proud to participate.
Not enough to offset the lost business, lawsuits against the company starting to pop up, and continued equipment failures causing delays in what deliveries we still have. Cutting management from the top down is what’s needed not some bull$hit take a week off unpaid for the next few months and we should be fine. There was a light at the end of the tunnel but not anymore because this new idea is just going to cause more issues long term because they’re still not addressing the worker shortage in the shops and yards that they are spending tons of money in overtime on which negates the new plan one would think.
Vacation for field managers was never paid. A scam. You don’t get 3 weeks off a year. You make it up when other people go on vacation like they do when you’re on it. At a regular company people don’t work extra days when someone goes on vacation. Even at UP that is only the nonagreement employees. You think a conductor is going to work 30 days in a row because some dude on the board is on vacation? And if it were legal for him to do so did he’d get paid the extra day’s.
I guess there’s no longer such a thing as a full time management job on the UPRR. Part time positions only! Now the management gets to full on experience PSR!
Railroad wages are not as good as you think. I left and make $50,000 More. I also have better benefits and less workdays. I still check this site once a week to make remind myself that UP s—s.
Field Managers are supposedly exempt from the unpaid vacation. Although with everyone else gone on rotating shifts, I imagine they will end up doing some of that work as well. What a sh*t show.
Clunky as this website may be at times, it provides some great food for thought. Here is some more.
Mr. Vena's playbook is right from Canadian National Railway Company (CN). CN has no unionized managers ARASA style. Now UP does not have this either. This is great for the company because non-agreement employees have no rights and can be laid off at will.
Mr. Vena, like Mr. Harrison, is a former blue collar, agreement employee. Ironically, he treats the unionized workforce like an interchangeable part on a machine.
Mr. Vena was known as a man who screamed and bullied his way at CN. Everyone was glad to see him gone from CN.
Look for a future where stranger things happen. One may be that some day, certain managers will be forced or incentivized to learn how to be train operators. When strikes occur, or even on a daily basis, these "management" employees can then be used to plug gaps in manning.
To this day, at CN, the workforce is severely constrained and overworked. But that environment reflects the personality and mindset of a Vena or Harrison. They pay the remaining workers fairly well, i.e. the same as now, which is better than the rest of the country, but expect that life is all about money. They don't care about family, friends, free time, your soul, and I venture, there isn't much of a care about Jesus Christ...though that's another discussion.
I wish the railroads paid less, but treated people better and laid them off less. That's not the Vena way. His way is make lots of money, make more money, destroy people and lives for even more money...then hit your 60s, get cancer, and croak in your McMansion.
Rant out.
They were looking to cut 30% of management. The executives balked and didn’t go through with it. This is a trial run to see how it goes. Make no mistake the plan is to eventually cut a significant amount of managers.
North Platte has way to many managers.
25% of 1/3 year is 1/12 year or roughly a month.
Let’s say management has an average of 115,000 a year salary. 9,500 month x roughly 4000 managers. That’s 38,000,000. Which is still a small amount to a major corporation. This is just to see how they can function with less management.