Steam & Excursion > Santa Fe demerit questions

Hi. Just received 2 volumes of Santa Fe employee ledgers dating back to the 1920's. These are Middle div. records. Would anyone here know the demerit system and how it worked ? For instance John Raymond Avery received 5 demerits for flat spots on engine 3768 on 1 - 11 - 1951. Or that Leon Morris Olverson received special credit for helping put out a fire caused by a "skyrocket" on 9 - 1 - 1913. Or that Frank Little Newman received 5 demerits for running engine 4068 into wall of roundhouse Ark City, Kansas. Anyone be interested in a book of this type ? - - - Dwight.

Please contact the Sanat Fe Railway Historical and modeling Society at atsfrr.net if you are considering donating the material. Thanks.

The Brown Demerit system was a simple method of keeping score of employee performance over their career. The Demerits were also called Marks, Brownies or s**ters. It was discontinued some 10-15 years ago on the Santa Fe Railway. Accumulation of 60 demerits would mean the management would schedule an investigation and in almost all cases remove the employee from service, as in "your fired". The union would then appeal for the ex-employees re-instatement to service. I know of one person who was fired twice for Rule G and twice for accumulation. The last time the ex-employee lost his chance for re-instatement at Supreme Court of RR labor, a Public Law Board. He never did catch on.
The Brown system allowed for credits to the employees record but usually it was done in very rare cases and only if the employee had demerits against him. So there was very little positive re-enforcement of employee service. It was very common for a large number of employees on a division to working with at least some marks on their record depending on how the local management used the system.
In the hands of a local trainmaster who didn't go looking to fire employees it could be a tool to remind the employee that there was a standard which had to be upheld in order to ensure safe and efficient operation of trains. Five Brownies for running into the roundhouse wall was pretty good. On the Illinois Division on the Santa Fe in the 1970 era we had the hole in the wall gang. They were the ones unlucky enough to be low seniority and had to work an industry that unloaded lard & vegetable oils from tank cars. It would coat the rails and wheels making it hard to stop. Every once in a while they would shove thru the wall of the building. It might get the conductor 30 marks and the others 10 to 20 marks. It took 4 months clear record to work off 10 marks. So it would be a year to clean your record with 30 marks.
If the trainmaster knew if he fired the conductor on the local he would have to replace him with another green conductor and end up with another hole in the wall. So if the regular conductor started getting too close to the 60 marks the trainmaster might remove 5 marks just to keep the regular conductor on the job. That way it was possible for some employees to be "working up against the bumper post" of 60 marks. Hopefully they would gain a little seniority by newer employees getting promoted so they could bid in a brakeman's slot to work off their brownies. Then there would be a turn over on the local and the new crew would shove thru the wall and join the “Hole In the Wall Gang”.
The system was unfair as it could be used to stack up an unfair record against an employee that had RR officials that had personal grudge or prejudice against them, while letting others slide by. Therefore unions objected to it, as the system was not a uniform system by its nature of local decision and control. Hence the one industry job where they sell job insurance to pay you if the RR fires you. Of course you pay a monthly premium to the union or job insurance in order to have the insurance start paying you while the appeal process gets you back to work. I speak from first hand experience the job insurance was worth it.
Now under the new system the BNSF is a kinder & gentler bunch than the old Santa Fe management. They are still arbitrary and in a few cases unfair but we don’t see to many permanent firings like we used to have.
Inspector Gadget