Why does this company have two managers for 14 employees at Pocatello Locomotive but won’t hire more employees so they can get the work done?
8 replies (most recent on top)
Pocatello location is an absolute joke. Now they are fueling locomotives without a drip pan or drain in order to "get trains moving through Pocatello quicker". I'm sure the EPA approved that, right? It takes 10-15 minutes to fuel locomotives after adding to a train, hardly a meaningful "delay". Meanwhile outbound crews spend hours rebuilding trains inside the terminal because this company doesn't want to hire enough yard crews to get the trains ready before an outbound crew is called. Then re-crew before destination causing more delay. Customer service is a priority though! But yeah, fueling is definitely the problem :eye roll:
Horrible communication from the yardmaster to the locomotive department causes significant delays almost every day. But the superintendent won't even lift a finger to address that issue. Every department has their own "goals" to meet which often directly conflict with each other so this company will never be a team. Operational excellence is a priority though!
Locomotive managers write up/discipline employees for "safety issues" that managers themselves don't even follow. Safety is a priority though! Managers leave in the middle of their shift to go spend time with family, then when employees notify them of locomotive issues they refuse to help. Call the yard yourself and figure it out. Then the yard says call the locomotive manager and figure it out.
Every day locomotives show up in Pocatello with issues/inspections that should have been corrected in either Hinkle (4x the manpower as Poc) or North Platte (20x the manpower as Poc). But yet it's the responsibility of Pocatello to fix it or else face discipline from management.
And they wonder why so many employees have a bad attitude.
Don't forget to fill out your employee engagement survey though so that absolutely nothing will change!
I don’t know what resources Hinkle is getting that no one else is. It’s like pulling teeth to get anything we need. We run at bare minimum. All part of the company’s financial model. I think we should all be enraged by the forced overtime and the unions being neutered. Why do we even pay dues if they have no power to even enforce our contracts? On the flip side, fat paychecks lol
They don't do jack other than report yesterday's news, and violate union agreements by doing union work.
Upper and middle management need / want layers between themselves and the actual work being done. Insulates them from being responsible and liable for their decisions.
i.e. lack of man power
“it wasnt my fault, so and so didnt communicate that to me”
“we would have done something different had that been brought to our attention”
“there was a breakdown in the chain of communication”
Why 2? To back each other up. That way they will always have a “witness” that will back up their story, even it’s not true. It’s your word against 2. Guess who wins.
Where is Pocatello? They do work there?
Probably because the UP deems it necessary to have an over-abundance of management for absolutely no reason at all. The amount of management the UP has is unreal. Those managers are walking around crashing into each other, while they're micro-managing the lower employees and slowing everything down. They DON'T have enough employees to do the actual work, but they sure have enough managers complaining about what employees they have left not getting the work done. They need to cut the management team in half, realistically save millions of dollars in the process, and actual increase their profits by not having to pay exorbitant amounts of money on managers that do almost nothing anyways.
Because all the resources are being sent to Hinkle. Someone there has built the place up to be more important than it is to justify having the place open.