Its only been a couple of years since UP started their second chance program where they hired people with a criminal record. The railroad touted this as a great way to help those who had been rehabilitated from their past mistakes. With that said, most of the employees in the second chance program are near the bottom of the seniority rosters. Now that Vena is here, I guess we can count on the "empathetic" UP furloughing these folks just as they were starting to put their lives back together. What Vena and the executives are doing to this company, its employees, the customers, and the communities is far more criminal than any past mistakes any of the second chance employees made. May karma quickly find the Vena and the hedge fund leaders who put him in this position.
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So did any of the “second chance” employees become managers, or were they only allowed to fill agreement jobs?
They had a second chance to do things right and they chose to work for UP?
Some people never learn.
Beth will save them.... Walk around and have a Cup of Coffee.
Everyone has been down the same path with PSR. What makes UP special is that not only did they do it and failed so badly that it got them in front of the STB but then they brought back the guy that took them down this path as CEO. No one else was this bad at failing, Now he has started cutting again and I’m sure all the executives and board think it will be different this time around. This is How We Win Together.
They started that program because they didn't want to admit they cut too deep the first time and had an employee shortage. The really funny part is that the non-violent felons/criminals weren't even applying. The UP was warned many times about the issues they would have if they went down the one-way PSR path. There was no turning back once they started down that path. Every class 1 had major issues with it. It just proves how badly disconnected the executives are in the industry. Every single executive thought they could do it better than their competitor, but not one of them planned for having the exact same issues their competitors had. He-l, even congress was sounding alarms over the business model. Some of them even called the business model out for what it was, and nothing got done. It was never meant to be a long term sustainable model! Vena comes back and somewhere in Omaha, someone still believes it can be sustainable. It's been a few years now and the UP is the worst it's ever been. NOTE TO VENA! Listen to your employees, and not the dam shareholders. We're the ones that run this company, not them! If your employees tell you something is a bad idea, it's a good idea to listen to them or you'll end up like Fritz!
It’s somewhat similar to the huge agreement sign on bonuses from a few years ago. Remember when UP was offering nice sign on bonuses to new hires, only to be paid though after the employee had been there about a year if I recall. Those employees never made it to that point because they were furloughed and therefore few if any actually received the payout. UP knew this and just used them to fill temporary vacancies. Same thing with the second chance program because, just as the OP said, most are near the bottom of a roster and once again UP never planned on keeping them from the beginning, just used them to fill temporary vacancies.