BNSF in the News

Indeed. I have a nephew that works for UP, and it is the same. On call all the time. You get called, you may have to assemble the train yourself and then deliver it. There are a lot of employees in drug rehab programs because it pushes them too far, and there are a lot of divorces because of the stress and inability to plan. I used to think working with trains would be really cool, but not anymore. Unless you are single, planning to stay that way, and want to work all hours.

This is what happens when Railroaders quit running the railroad and Wall Street corporations start running them. It use to be that a person who went to work on the railroad knew that while his hours would be a bit of an issue early on but, they would be somewhat predictable once you got some seniority. the exchange for those terrible hours was that you were paid well for those hard hours. Today, there is no off time due to reductions in staff and a lack of understanding by management of how railroads operate. Less pay, few employees and we are looking at a very real possibility of Railroads running into real money troubles of their own making. How long are customers going to put up with the terrible service most major railroad companies are providing today before they say enough and move to trucking. Once they do, the railroads will likely never get them back.

mikeman said:

This is what happens when Railroaders quit running the railroad and Wall Street corporations start running them. It use to be that a person who went to work on the railroad knew that while his hours would be a bit of an issue early on but, they would be somewhat predictable once you got some seniority. the exchange for those terrible hours was that you were paid well for those hard hours. Today, there is no off time due to reductions in staff and a lack of understanding by management of how railroads operate. Less pay, few employees and we are looking at a very real possibility of Railroads running into real money troubles of their own making. How long are customers going to put up with the terrible service most major railroad companies are providing today before they say enough and move to trucking. Once they do, the railroads will likely never get them back.

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This is sadly how many industries work including information technology. I worked for Oracle for almost 3-years. I ended up leaving in September 2012 due to health issues including one long time health issue that I was able to manage until the stress undid it all. At Oracle, I was responsible for supporting nearly 700-users in-house in addition to 30-plus users outside the local office. It took a back injury and a plea for help, when I was supporting 350-users to finally get some help. I then had a ministroke from the stress and everything else unraveled. I The thing is I didn't just support the user-base, I was also involved with purchasing, inventory, asset management, and telecom as needed.

To add insult to injury, the CEO does not believe in giving bonuses or pay increases to the employees, but managed to afford boats, airplanes and islands, while the rest of management got their cut of quarterly sales off the top. The rest of the sales team had to fight for their commissions and there was always an excuse for not paying them out. I received three awards including a VIP award from the vice president of Sun sales for my outstanding work, but I guess that didn't matter because in the end, my boss came into my office and told me I wasn't keeping up and he was going to fire me. At the time, I was closing 350 support tickets per month, and I had 50 open tickets in my queue.