Eastern Railroad Discussion > CSX changes plans leaves dispatchers homeless

Link --> https://goo.gl/bnjjSD

Employed & Homeless: As CSX changes plans, dispatchers left in limbo during holidays.

Whoa! nice going CSX and Hunter.

KB5WK Wrote:
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> Link --> https://goo.gl/bnjjSD
>
> Employed & Homeless: As CSX changes plans,
> dispatchers left in limbo during holidays.
>
> Whoa! nice going CSX and Hunter.

“precision (un)scheduled screwing" Interesting observation on HHH in article. I'm sure the second paragraph is just another kick in the teeth for the uprooted dispatchers. But hey, the investors "still seem happy."

>>>>> At CSX, though, his tenure has been marked by a summer of service disruptions and customer complaints, leading Harrison to admit he overlooked "the people side of the ledger" when making operational changes. Several CSX terminals, including Jacksonville's, have been targeted by union picketers who are protesting health care cuts by all Class I railroads.

Investors, though, still seem happy: The company's stock price, which hit an all-time adjusted high when Harrison's interest in the company became known, reached another record in July — $55.19 — and is now trading at around $49 a share. <<<<<

If CSX moves to centralize dispatching in Jacksonville FL. Wouldnt that be a bad decision if a Cat 4 or 5 Hurricane hits Jacksonville. Could disrupt traffic if you can't dispatch trains when your dispatchers are under water or a very long power outage. Does seem like a good move to me. My 2 cents.

And CSX having their dispatchers sell their homes to move and then change the plan. That is so wrong on so many levels. If this is how tomorrow moves. OMG!

This is not the first time that CSX has been dispatched from Jacksonville, FL and a hurricane is also the reason that dispatching was taken away from Jacksonville, FL in the past. So I guess history will probably repeat it's self again when lessons are not learned.

Ed Ballard CSX Garrett Sub

They can say and think what they want about the old PC and CR but I never heard of any employees treated like that, even in bankruptcy. If you traveled and submitted an reasonable expense account for motel, meals, taxis, etc, it was paid and quickly.

The Baltimore dispatchers were moved mid-September. One I hear is happy with it and apparently he had no trouble with $$$ items and time to do it. This guy is rather vocal and preferred Jax over Balto. The Disp Center is about 3 miles west of HQ in Jax, a bit higher. Apparently it is a big enclosed (no windows) round building with, as he said, 52 dispatchers in it, rather crowded. So I thought all DS's had moved. But I've also been told that CSX did advance planning, and any of the Division Headquarters prior to EHH changes had the capability to dispatch the entire railroad at least for some time in case of a real disaster.

EHH will probably let them rent out a stall on the horse farm at
a reasonable rate. As long as payment is through payroll deduction.

There is a disaster waiting to happen there

This is so 'business as usual' for management that treat employees as 'expendable assets'. They're considered no different than a vehicle or a desk that can be bought and sold at will.

I think if I was one of the dispatchers, I'd have contacted the other big RRs to find an opportunity. If enough of the displaced dispatchers leave the company, it would be interesting to see the problems caused by insufficiently trained dispatchers taking their places. But then, EHH and gang would have already taken their big $$$ and been gone. No different than a robbery...grab the money and run!

The outcome is predictable. Any labor action will be quelled with the determination that it is a minor dispute.

Back in 1978, I worked the Spokane dispatchers extra board. I lived a seven hour drive away. I couldn't hold anything closer to home. During the week, I slept in the camper shell of my pickup truck in a space at a KOA. I went home on my days off, a 14 hour round trip. At least I had a home to go to for a few hours a week. On my Monday, I drove back and got some sleep in the truck in the parking lot before going to work. That was rough enough. I did it to avoid even worse conditions on the operators extra board. I only did it for about six months. It was exhausting (and dispatcher jobs were not terrible like they are now).

However, it is a stretch to say that one is rested for work while living in a car. I would consider telling the company that I'm not rested and lay off, since the company has a habit of looking for the smallest detail in an overloaded job to can someone for. Maybe that would push the situation beyond a minor dispute. Folks should ask FRA exactly that question and hopefully get them to do do the fighting.

TAW

BRAtkinson Wrote:
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> This is so 'business as usual' for management that
> treat employees as 'expendable assets'. They're
> considered no different than a vehicle or a desk
> that can be bought and sold at will.
>
> I think if I was one of the dispatchers, I'd have
> contacted the other big RRs to find an
> opportunity. If enough of the displaced
> dispatchers leave the company, it would be
> interesting to see the problems caused by
> insufficiently trained dispatchers taking their
> places. But then, EHH and gang would have already
> taken their big $$$ and been gone. No different
> than a robbery...grab the money and run!

The company will just round up some folks on the street, shoot them through the 28 week Instant Expert program, and go back to business as usual.

Read about what we called the Motley Meet https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/RAR8506.aspx

This was a direct result of BN wanting to dilute the train dispatching profession into a job that anybody could do. Actually, management told us exactly that...before the collision. In Seattle, we had a new dispatcher who stuck out a big fat lap. This person was also part of the new Instant Expert program. As in the case of Joe Caesar's (the dispatcher of the Motley Meet) first night, they didn't find each other and it turned out ok...except for the fact that they were going to can the dispatcher. It turns out that in dispatcher school, this person was not taught train orders. The instructor said that train orders were old school. Track Warrants were the new way and that's all you need to know. Those were the same folks who decreed that since operators and clerks were in the same union, clerks could handle train orders (without a rules test). This person was also a victim of that. Oh...since you're a clerk, not a real operator, Hours Of Service doesn't apply.

The Fowler Meet (where they were supposed to meet but they found each other at Ledger MT) https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/RAR9301.pdf was another attempt at the same theme.

Those were just the big results of cheapening the train dispatcher profession into a job in order to eventually reduce the cost (and make management feel comfortable since they objected to us knowing things they didn't). EHH was part of the crowd and culture that came to BN in 1980 and created that mess. Don't expect anything different.

TAW

Same basic issues of laxity of the CSX wreck in Western New York in February 1987.

It takes a few fatalities to learn some lessons, and then sometimes they still are not learned.

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/RAR8803.pdf

Reading about this shows just how awful awful a railroad can treat its employees. At prior stop Harrison showed his don't give a damn attitude about employees. Just ask the people at CP , even lower management people who were made to run trains because CP would not hire enough crews.

That whole thing on the dispatchers is really disgusting.

CSX has made it very clear that its employees and the skills they have earned are worth very little.

A generation ago Stokely Carmichael channeled Chairman Mao's "power flows from the barrel of a gun". Today power flows from the board room, and from the desire to please share owners. Unless rail employees own a significant share of the company, they will always be seen as an obstacle. An expense to be minimized or driven off. Rail workers have given up billions in savings over the past 40 years. Staffing, work expansions, train offs, firemen, cabooses, run throughs, etc have all created wealth for share owners.

Bitching and moaning will not get more than another mile down the line. Owning 15% or 20% of the firm will. Mantle Ridge owned a whopping 2% of CSX when they took over.

precision

http://jacksonville.com/metro/business/2017-11-21/csx-cannot-explain-relocation-notice

JW

The EHHCSX has excelled at upsetting many customers since his ascendence to the throne. Employees too.
Evidently they are eclipsed in importance by the almighty stock price. Forget that you cannot have the one
without the other two.

The clock is ticking...UPS Peak Season begins in a few hours...I wonder if they are considered important...

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
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> CSX has made it very clear that its employees and
> the skills they have earned are worth very little.
>
>

...which is exactly what the Frisco folks (including EHH) did to everyone at BN, including management. Trainmasters were told that they were no different than a K-Mart warehouse foreman. The Pacific Division Assistant Superintendent was unceremoniously thrown off of a business car of operating and engineering senior management running over the division. He was told that We don't allow people like you on here. He was an old school ex-train dispatcher who forgot more yesterday afternoon than the car full of senior management would ever know. Train dispatchers were told that they were a secret society that used the rules to keep the management from doing what it wanted to do and a secret language to keep them from knowing what was going on. They told us that they were going to break up the secret society and dispose of the rules (FRA didn't allow that, but they did simplify them, but at the same time increase the number of them). That led directly to the Motley Meet and the Fowler Meet that I referred to as well as other such incidents. It got to be so bad that when the rules examiner came to the Seattle dispatchers office to give us some sort of worthless trinket for being the safest division, I asked Is that because we killed fewer guys than the others?

I guess this makes CSX Frisco 5.0.

TAW

The "round house" at the SAL's former West Jacksonville yard, was where the dispatchers were located. They had a massive generator set that was supposed to power the whole facility in case of a power outage. Each week, they did a test - each week it failed to crank and provide power. Each week for days on end, there were technician working on the generator. Never did hear if they got it working right.

A former boss of mine once said (of Amtrak at the time) "They have no Corporate memory, so they are destined to make the same mistakes over and over again!".

My guess is that when railroads moved into consolidation mode, they lost the competitive urge. It was easier to buy out the competition than to compete. So getting freight from A to D became a lot easier when you owned all the alternatives. Remove those now unnecessary duplicate lines. You don't have to rely on expertise, speed, reliability, etc anymore.

That made the bean counting and bean shuffling end of the business more valuable. You made more money by squeezing the shipper, squeezing the employees at all levels, etc. And, if the shipper didn't like the three days from A to D instead of 24 hours, then they could use another rail line. Oh, wait...


(It's not unique to railroads. Airlines do the same from fortress hubs, discontinuing outlying stations to a single major carrier. Cereal makers do the same, and so on.)

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My guess is that when railroads moved into
> consolidation mode, they lost the competitive
> urge. It was easier to buy out the competition
> than to compete. So getting freight from A to D
> became a lot easier when you owned all the
> alternatives. Remove those now unnecessary
> duplicate lines. You don't have to rely on
> expertise, speed, reliability, etc anymore.
>
> That made the bean counting and bean shuffling end
> of the business more valuable. You made more money
> by squeezing the shipper, squeezing the employees
> at all levels, etc. And, if the shipper didn't
> like the three days from A to D instead of 24
> hours, then they could use another rail line. Oh,
> wait...
>
>
> (It's not unique to railroads. Airlines do the
> same from fortress hubs, discontinuing outlying
> stations to a single major carrier. Cereal makers
> do the same, and so on.)

Very true I am afraid!

What is the code 'Jax' and 'Balto' and why are code words being used ??