Every department running scared super secret meetings, just like the Hangover. Oh God we Effed Up!!
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The railroad unions are weak and powerless, or Vena wouldn’t have the power and ability to abuse and mistreat employees.
How does this keep happening in this industry? SP did this with "deferred maintenance", a Canadian railroad had management office desk jockeys working as conductors and engineers and here we are again? The greedy id--ts in upper management practically hand over control of railroads to govt officials who know even less about railroading than they do bcuz you FORCE govt to act w/ regulations. Its become a wasteful cycle. Just push it past the limit one more time, a few retire wealthy, blame the employees who were never listened too, rinse and repeat.
Yep frozen all the new hiring. Looks like more layoffs. All the new hires get ready, as well as long time employees.
Debt of Up in 2012 was $8.8 billion .The debt ratio is too high also.
The debt issue is a real problem, borrowing money for stock buy backs used to be "cheap", but with interest rate hikes it's not cheap anymore...
He also is in the top seat now and has to answer for everything, he can no longer be just the Hatchet Man "following orders" especially with the regulatory focus that he and others of his type have brought on the industry since he was last here.
I think vena will have a hard job ahead of him. We don’t have the manpower to cut to make a significant difference like the last time he was here and we are much further in debt with the stock buybacks. In 2017 we were 15 billion in debt, Now we are almost 30 billion.
Fritz took what Jim Young had built and ran it right into the ground. Now he gets a golden parachute whilst those of us left behind suffer the wrath of Vena.
Soroban Capital Partners owns over 8 million shares of UNP is who pushed for Jim Vena. You can thank Soroban's Eric Mandelblatt, Managing Partner and Chief Investing Officer for his input. He's another prior Goldman Sachs dirtbag who makes fortunes off of gutting corporations and ki-ling middle class jobs. May karma quickly find him and the rest of the robber barons.
@1xor You are correct in everything you stated. Let me clarify, Fritz did a good job for the SHAREHOLDERS. I cant prove this at all, but I have a hunch Fritz did what the conditions made him do and he was handsomely rewarded for it. Yes he could of refused, he would have been ran off, and he would have missed out on fortune. From my layman perspective he had good timing in regards to how he grew the value of the shareholders investment. But UP as a railroad, and its employees suffered as the ultimate result. In short the system has to change, the companys long term wellbeing has to be separated / insulated from the shareholders. Every time the “you work then I’ll eat” is practiced, tyranny is the end result. I am not against individuals storing their wealth in assets like company stocks, but when the people who dont see, care, or are affected in their short term cash grabs get to make all the decisions the stakeholders suffer unjustly.
@sdz While I agree with most of what you posted, I do strongly disagree with the part where you said Fritz did a good job time-line wise. Very shortly after taking the CEO spot, he started doing layoffs. I don't want to argue this, but he didn't do a good job at all in many peoples eyes. The UP isn't in the position it's in because of the good decisions he made. The UP is in the position it's in because of the ONE bad decision he made. Fritz was told by many people not to go with PSR. He even said before he did it he wasn't going to do it. He clearly lied, and he did so publicly during a townhall meeting. Okay well he did it anyways, and this was the result. The insult to injury was when Vena showed up the first time. I remember when Fritz said he needed someone with first-hand experience with PSR. Okay he's the CEO, and he doesn't know how to run the company? If any CEO needs to bring in outside help to run a company, then what's the need for CEO's? If the board of directors gets to make the operational decisions, then why does the UP need executives? Like I said, I agree with most of what you posted. I just can't agree with anyone saying that Fritz did a good job. There was a lot of people that predicted these problems a few years ago. The warnings and prior stories from foreign rail companies and their PSR disasters just fell on deaf ears. The executives could've chosen to listen to its employees, but it chose to listen to its shareholders instead. The employees are the ones that paid the biggest price, and it was quite literally for nothing except personal wealth to the shareholders. I'd love to know what good decisions he made that actually helped the company.
Its all doom and gloom, Vena is identified as the reason UP got to be an even worse company to work for than before. For absolutely no reason the announcing of him becoming the next ceo UP’s stock went up. This is the problem, Vena has done nothing yet (or probably ever will) to make UP more profitable. If he cuts more jobs the service to UP’s customers will get even worse and derailments / injuries will increase, profits will drop. If he hires the needed additional people to lower ‘accidents’ (how is it an accident when people / equip are knowingly overworked?) but car loadings dont go up the company’s profits will drop or at best stay stagnant. If “they” dont come up w/ some distraction like a merger or a govt intervention of some kind (tax payer money) as an excuse to invest and improve UP, at best us employees can hope for is more of the same cr-p. What bugs me the most is guys like Vena being aggressive and rude to other employees, in my opinion they use fear to avoid having discussions about fixing things they absolutely have the authority to fix but out of their own fear of the shareholders firing them for spending money they dont fix anything. They dont have the courage to just out right be honest that they arent gonna improve anything. Look at Fritz, he squeezed every dime he could out of UP for the shareholders. Fritz did an amazing job time line wise continually making shareholders more money (but now UP is stuck w/ the long term consequences) Employees and the infrastructure are over extended and as Fritz was forced to answer for UP’s diminished service and at the same time UP’s front line employees getting a raise and a few sick days he was quickly confronted to step down. These monstrous vampires w/ insatiable demands while they dont know nor care about a company needing to reinvest / maintain itself (buying back stocks is not reinvesting) The shareholders are supposed to take a risk with their money. Not ruin companies and other peoples lives to ensure they always profit while not doing any actual work.
I can tell you something that isn't a secret. NO ONE CARES! The company is in the toilet. The reason it's in the toilet is because of Vena. So the brilliant minds on the board decided to rehire the very person that caused all of the problems, to turn the company around. Yeah what could possibly go wrong with that?
Who cares this company is already garbage. Thanks share holders your the best.