Eastern Railroad Discussion > Oberman Says RRs Need to Pay Crews More

 U.S. Surface Transportation Board Chairman Martin J. Oberman appears to be putting his thumb on the scales in favor of labor unions in their negotiations for a new contract with the nation’s major railroads.
In an interview with Trains magazine, Oberman said rail freight service is suffering because BNSF, CSX, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific are not paying enough to retain and recruit train crews.

“There is a price that will get you enough workers,” Oberman told Trains during the interview, which was conducted before a congressional hearing. “I don’t know what that price is. But everything has a price.”
Oberman said during the interview that federal regulators have no plans to mandate crew levels even though he linked those to the quality of service that railroads provide.
However, he made it clear his belief that paying crews more money would alleviate the crew shortages that the carriers say are the root cause of their service issues.

“If you need another 400 crews to move those trains that are sitting out there, pay whatever price you need to get them,” Oberman told Trains. “Don’t come in and tell me it’s hard to hire. And it’s not like they can’t afford it. They’re paying out billions and billions every year in stock buybacks. You could use some of that to get the workforce you need.”

During hearings held by the STB last spring to investigate the ongoing rail freight service issues, Class 1 railroad executives argued the crew shortages are due to factors that are largely out of their control.
Specifically, the executives said, workers who were furloughed during a recession triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t return to work once recalled. The railroad executives also cited higher than normal attrition rates among its work force and a tight labor market.

Some executives even talked about it being tough to hire conductors due to the nature of the job involving working outdoors at all hours in all kinds of weather, and being away from home a lot.
Wages and benefits have been a major sticking point in labor negotiations over the past three years with unions reportedly seeking more money than the carriers are willing to pay.
By some reports, the unions are seeking a 31 percent wage increase while the railroads have offered 17 percent over a five-year period.

The dispute is now being reviewed by a presidential emergency board that will make non-binding recommendations for a settlement.
If either side rejects those recommendations, they would be free to engage in a strike or lockout a month after the PEB issues its findings.
Although railroads have raised the wages of their new conductors and offered signing bonuses to new hires and retention bonuses to existing train operating personnel, Oberman told Trains those financial incentives are falling short and that railroad employment has yet to reach pre-pandemic levels.

“The railroads are not offering sufficient rewards – a combination of quality of life and compensation – to keep people there,” he said. “There’s a price at which people will stay.”
The story can be read at https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/stb-chairman-says-higher-pay-would-help-solve-railroad-crew-shortages/by csanders429

Besides the pay they also treat you like hell, try to run every moment of your life that you are not on undistribed rest, try to fire you pretty much every time you take a call to go to work etc etc, yeah there's a whole extremely toxic culture and pay that needs to be addressed to make people want to hire out and stay around. 

not offering sufficient rewards – a combination of quality of life and compensation 

Nuff said.  It's a combination of quality of life and pay.

Coming from thirty one years working on the railroad, personally, I see no problem with the actual pay. Like real estate is location location location, on the railroad it's conditions conditions conditions.
JB

Ditto. Ditto. After 25 years my quality of life AND pay are worse, and so is my home life and health.

I feel like I really did make a deal with the Devil when I hired on.

Railroad life has never been great, but at least back in the old days you made decent money, could layoff pretty much when you needed and had regular jobs to look forward to when your seniority allowed.
Now it’s all gone. Work a pool (glorified Xtra board) until you retire or die, and if you layoff ONCE a month you are on your way to dismissal.

And the Carrier’s have the balls to say we’re just overpaid complainers.

A pox on them.

Regards

Posted from iPhone

Many skilled crafts in south Florida pay workers to stand by and be available to respond to night and weekend service calls.  It's not a novel idea, railroads should try it.  If you want me to be available, pay me to be available.

Labor practices that made sense in the 1800s have been abandoned in most other industries.

Drknow Wrote:
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> And the Carrier’s have the balls to say we’re
> just overpaid complainers.
>

Some time after Al Haynes & crew managed to land their plane that shouldn't have been able to fly at all mostly intact in Sioux City in 1989, there was labor negotiation with the pilots and it was not too pretty. UAL had to run a full page newspaper ad talking about pilots demanding too much, they're nothing but machine operators and should be paid like one.

Then there was Reagan firing all the striking ATC and telling the public that they were greedy and and they want ridiculously more than you folks. The major issue was workload and safety. My neighbor was hauled away from home  to the state hospital one day. Yeah, he wasn't going to be so greedy any more.

That was the same president who tried to gut railroad retirement, saying that we were greedy, getting more than all you folks who get Social Security.

Now, back to your statement...I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell ya.

TAW

pt199 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>  U.S. Surface Transportation Board Chairman
> Martin J. Oberman appears to be putting his thumb
> on the scales in favor of labor unions in their
> negotiations for a new contract with the
> nation’s major railroads.
> In an interview with Trains magazine, Oberman said
> rail freight service is suffering because BNSF,
> CSX, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific are not
> paying enough to retain and recruit train crews.
>
> “There is a price that will get you enough
> workers,” Oberman told Trains during the
> interview, which was conducted before a
> congressional hearing. “I don’t know what that
> price is. But everything has a price.”
> Oberman said during the interview that federal
> regulators have no plans to mandate crew levels
> even though he linked those to the quality of
> service that railroads provide.
> However, he made it clear his belief that paying
> crews more money would alleviate the crew
> shortages that the carriers say are the root cause
> of their service issues.
>
> “If you need another 400 crews to move those
> trains that are sitting out there, pay whatever
> price you need to get them,” Oberman told
> Trains. “Don’t come in and tell me it’s hard
> to hire. And it’s not like they can’t afford
> it. They’re paying out billions and billions
> every year in stock buybacks. You could use some
> of that to get the workforce you need.”

I was wondering what that very loud, screaming sound was that I heard earlier today. Now I know. It was the shouting, screaming and cussing from the executive suites of the carriers...and their hedge fund owners. Maybe even Uncle Warren, too (the sound did seem to be particularly loud coming from the direction of Omaha).

Not a rail, but 100% on labor's side on this one.

MC

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Many skilled crafts in south Florida pay workers
> to stand by and be available to respond to night
> and weekend service calls.  It's not a novel
> idea, railroads should try it.  If you want me to
> be available, pay me to be available.
>
> Labor practices that made sense in the 1800s have
> been abandoned in most other industries.

There's that, but a substantial (as in the biggest) part is management that is not qualified to run a railroad.

60 years ago, there was often a base set of scheduled freight trains and often with assigned crews.and often assigned on duty times. Pool service ran the rest to avoid the problem of everything is scheduled and assigned, then there is an extra to run and no return work for the crew.

However, the pool assignments were generally known well in advance. Chief Dispatchers (and night/assistant) spent a considerable part of their time assembling information and developing a detailed 24-36 hour plan. There were no surprise trains or surprise deadheads unless there was a wreck, or a surprise flood, avalanche, or some such. Potential effects of severe weather were generally integrated into the process. If that happened and the need to run an unplanned train, there were no repercussions if someone missed a call.

(somewhere in a box in storage) I have Chief Dispatcher telegrams from the GN Seattle office in the 1940s. The Chief would stick out a wire on an extra to be run...a day or more in advance (not hours or minutes). Back in the 80s, as I was going through my daily research (working Pacific Division BN Chief-Wenatchee-Seattle and the Coast Line) I found a 2/103 (Seattle merchandise) out of Northtown (MN) with something like 125 Everetts. There had been some sort of service interruption somewhere east of there and they built a solid Seattle and solid Everett train instead of two trains with an Everett setout. Not only did I figure 2/103 into the crews and power, I called the Delta (Everett) yard master and told him he would need an extra engine on 2d trick in three days. We both told the caller. No surprise, 2/103 left his entire train at Everett and there was an extra goat there to handle the setout.

Years later, I sat in on morning conference calls while I was working on service scheduling and design. The marketing department had come up with a way to run wood chip cars back with a load. From the paper mills in Everett, Bellingham, and Longview, the cars would go to Vancouver BC to load ore for Nelson BC (branch line north of Spokane), This is a no-brainer. To Everett today, tomorrow's Spokane train needs two extra units, day after tomorrow's Nelson local needs extra units or an extra section. The amusing series of morning conference calls went something like this:

• Monday: They're loading ore today, there will be (___) cars tomorrow.
• Tuesday: I have (___) cars of ore but last night's train didn't bring power for it.
• Wednesday: Today's train has the ore.
• Thursday: Everett has (___) cars of ore, but doesn't have enough power.
• Friday: 130 (Spokane train) is too big to take everything (over maximum helper tonnage). The rest can go tomorrow.
• Monday: There is ore in the Nelson train and we don't have power for it.

(kind of a synopsis-I laid it out in detail from fresher memory in the book).

I have posted examples of 24+ hour lineups that were accurate to within a couple of hours or so 16 hours out.
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,987262,987262#msg-987262
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,1004899,1004899#msg-1004899

In the mid-80s, managers called the planning work redundant, A Superintendent of Transportation complained that I spent too much time planning and not enough reacting, I was threatened with discipline (read that time off without pay or being canned) for claiming that a board (crew lineup) should extend more than six hours...and having the audacity to actually do it. I was told to spend a few minutes several times a shift sticking out quick BS lineups to fulfill the need to publish a lineup instead of sticking out one good for 16 hours.

I was assigned to system scheduling and service design in 1991. The biggest complaint from managers is that what we (the team of train dispatchers trying to organize the clown show BN had become) wanted to do was way too much work and limited their ability to do what they wanted when they wanted to do it.

Of course, that was what put BN into the colossal mess that it was.

Now, the industry is way worse than I ever imagined.

I go into detail on how to do this in Managing Railroad Transportation, but it is not a terribly popular book. (I'm working on one about running a railroad on a (real) schedule, and how to determine the capacity needed to accomplish that. I'll probably have to give it away to have a slight chance that anyone looks at it.

Maybe it's management and work rules that need to be changed and not so much union agreements (except to actually honor instead of ignore).

Meanwhile, in other countries, crews are rostered. They have a specific on duty time and specific return trip. If management can't come up with a train, they deadhead or stay at home and get paid for the round trip.

TAW



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/22 18:43 by TAW.

I read Managing Railroad Transportation and would buy your new book in a heartbeat. Of course if you were giving away copies…..

Posted from iPhone

Anybody give me a good source for Tom’s books?
TIA.

Regards

Posted from iPhone

It's naive to think that just "paying them more" alone is going to make a difference.  If the industry can't take radical steps to improve work-life balance along with,  they are in big trouble. As a parent of two young adults in their 20's I know first hand how their generation places high importance on that - and I commend them for it.

Well, I come at this from a free market capitalist right to work point of view, but the fact is that a job is worth what it takes to attract and KEEP workers that are competent and reliable in their duties, and the class one railroads have CLEARLY failed miserably in this respect. If any of them would do an HONEST assessment of what their tripping over a dollar to save a dime practices is ACTUALLY costing them, I think a lot of people would have a lot of explaining to do. A motivated, committed, capable workforce has value, and it’s a value that is nearly always understated by the typical give them a diploma and make them a manager MBA types.

Posted from iPhone

The railroads are stubborn and arrogant.  This alone is a reason for the way things are.  They have created their own mess and are upset about it, and blaming everyone else.

Eng.Shadetree

Many organizations need an existential crisis every 15-20 years. Enough to say "we are all gonna die". Enough to rebuild and streamline and renew.

I've been through two as a manager with a lot of my financial net worth at risk.

Sacred stuff gets thrown out, New ways of doing things come in.

Railroads are in that sweet spot of duopoly, fat profits and minimal competition. That's not a normal place, and it confuses place with competence.

Posted from Android



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/09/22 07:28 by Lackawanna484.

Drknow Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Anybody give me a good source for Tom’s books?
> TIA.
>
> Regards
>

www.vtd.net

TAW

shadetree Wrote:
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> The railroads are stubborn and arrogant. 

...which brought about the Interstate Commerce Act and its enforcer, ICC.

That the government reaction was excessive is another subject.

TAW

It is really not about themoney it is about life.  Always on call.  Can not get time off to do silly things like weddings, graduations, funerals.  Treated like crap.  Trainmaster that is looking for ways to fire you.  Always a two man  crew even when making switching or large set-offs/pick-ups. No more yard jobs so when you are called you are eather in the yard or on a road job so more away from home time.  Remote control jobs, you run the engine, throw the switches, read the switch list all in some dark RR yard..  There are other jobs that pay a little less but you have some kind of life.

On treatment of employees, my seniority date is June 23, 1973. The SCL and subsequent names quit trying to fire me around Christman 2012. My last day under pay was January 1, 2013. I had the last week as vacation and 1/1/2013 as vacation. I would say ahng in there but I understand things have gotten worse.

Sam

"Railroads are in that sweet spot of duopoly, fat
profits and minimal competition. That's not  normal place, and it confuses place with
competence."

Perfectly stated.