Maybe I'm not competent to talk about it, but I'm not the only one who thinks that there are too many managers at UP. Someone mentioned that the ratio of employees to managers here is 1: 1, but the real feeling is that there will soon be more managers than employees who actually do the real work here. Does UP really need all those managers while there is a shortage of employees everywhere?
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Where did you find the 1:1 stat? There are fewer than 6,000 non-agreement positions. There are 38,000ish total employees. With that said, about 50-55% of non-agreement positions have ANY direct reports. Less than that have agreement direct reports. I would guess that the real average is about 20 agreement for every manager with agreement reports. Also, all railroads are required to test and investigate to stay in regulatory compliance. This takes managers.
There is a lot of managers, who I've noticed do really much of nothing. I've asked before why managers aren't doing more besides bi-----g and blaming others when the ideas they came up with fail. The UP doesn't need nearly as many managers as they have right now. I'd say it's time to start thinning the herd.
It is a weird arrangement. In engineering & mechanical we'd much rather exchange a manager for another agreement employee that would be productive towards getting needed work done. But sometimes I think the multiple layers of managers also serve to isolate middle to top management from being held too accountable for accidents or falling short of meeting goals.
One to one manager to employee? Where did you get that crazy statistic? I work in train service and my manager has 70 trainmen assigned to him. When we had MOP’s they had 50 or more engineers assigned to them. I don’t know who the are assigned to since most of the MOP’s have been cut off. I don’t believe any company would keep a manager who only has a few employees assigned.