Western Railroad Discussion > System-Wide Seniority...Pros and Cons...

Here's an idea that the UP needs to implement system-wide.

Why not do like the BNSF and establish a system-wide seniority date for everyone; you would recieve a prior-rights date in the SU you hired out in, to retain your seniority there, but at least it would give you an option of going somewhere else to work if they needed folks in other places. With all of the borrowouts that the UP has been using all over the place in recent months, I don't see how it couldn't work, but that's why I'm doing this post - to hear from others on whether or not they think something like that would be feasible or not.

Would especially like to hear from the BNSF folks who are familiar with it as to how the system-wide seniority works on that railroad. Also, from former SPers, as I understand that they also had that system in place for trainmen before the UP took over, although El Paso was the cutoff point between east/west districts.

It's a win win situation for the carriers. A conductor I know did the midwest seniroity thing. 9 states, 19 cities, and 21 terminals in a little over a year. NO THANKS!!! He had a few guys who would sit back and wait for him to make a move and then they would bump him out of the terminal he was working.

On the BNSF, "system seniority" is only for the trainmen, and does not include the former BN territory in the Northwest...they opted out. However I am restricted by my engineer seniority. If I take my trainman seniority somewhere else, I either have to leave my engineer seniority at my original territory or take it to the new location and go to the bottom again, ie yard, which is sometimes not desireable. The engineers on the former ATSF just voted on former ATSF system seniority and rejected it by a large margin. Mostly out of fear of losing the current position they now hold, to someone with more seniority...I thought that was rather short sighted. Seniority is good when you have it and sucks when you don't.
-Rip

Hi!


> On the BNSF, "system seniority" is only for the
> trainmen

Why not just go on a capability system, where
the best get the jobs instead of the oldest?

Tony Burzio
San Diego, CA

System seniority is good because it gives you options when things slow down, it's bad because it gives other people options when things slow down, usually forcing a younger man out of his home terminal to find somewhere else to work. We have a new midwest engineers seniority agreement that covers galesburg, ft madison, chicago, lacrosse, west quincy, beardstown and kansas city east, it combined former santa fe and bn engineers seniority in this area. Its a bad deal for newly promoted engineers because they fall to the bottom of all the rosters subjecting themselves to being forced anywhere and everywhere.

I appreciate the comments from everybody. A question: doesn't the BNSF give every trainmen a prior-rights date in his home terminal/district to at least give him a little protection or is everything fair game for the bumpers?

boomer, you ought to ask the young Amtrak guys where I work what they think of system seniority!

There's currently 21 engineers working at the PDX crew base and only part of them (who came from the 1987 freight crew application pools) have any prior rights, and that only within the four Oregon, Washington and Montana crew bases of Zone 10, no longer in individual crew bases since the 1997 Pendleton Golden Parachute.

The young guys have absolutely no hope of any stability for many years to come. In particular I think of one system-seriority-only hoghead who has remained at or near the bottom of the PDX list for several years and always being threatened to be cut off with train-offs and as other hogheads move in from around the country. The latest two to come in were from Maine. Now while some families may consider constantly moving around the country following employment (or the constant threat of it) to be the "spice of life", I certainly don't and I believe you'll find that the majority of people prefer to put down roots. Amtrak's system-only seniority simply won't allow that for probably half of one's working career in many areas of the country. IMHO Amtrak new hires should at least have prior rights to the zone in which they hire out.

tburzio Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi!
>
> Why not just go on a capability system, where
> the best get the jobs instead of the oldest?
>
> Tony Burzio
> San Diego, CA
>


I'm curious, Tony, how would you propose to implement the "capability rating" for thousand and thousands of hogheads on a single system-wide seniority roster of a large carrier. How could one person possibly know the capabilities of each of those thousands of people in order to rate them? You could not have multiple raters to create one seniority list due to varying judgments created by the opinions of various raters.

Running a train is not rocket science. It is getting a given consist from one point to another according to the rules published by the carrier and the government. You either learn to do it or you don't and if you don't do it properly the carrier and/or government will see to it, through a process spelled out in the working contract, that you will no longer be doing it. Don't get me wrong, obviously there are differences in the finesse with which various hogheads many operate but, in the end, they all accomplish the assigned task of getting the train from one point to another. This is a job that is perfectly suited to a seniority system. Seniority systems, before the days of no-prior-rights mega-rosters, allowed a great degree of stability in one's employment after serving the initial period of seasonal layoffs due to low seniority.