re: Railroad Unions are ready to shut it all down

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So they will pay me extra to get me away from my wife? Is there a 200k for never going home option

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basically, yes. But there isn't an option to take less to go home.
For instance, they can force you to train and become an engineer and lose your conductor seniority once you're a marked up engineer. As a conductor you can work 5 minutes from home (-but- you're an engineer now) so the closest place is 3-4 hours away.

It's something they call the home rule. Which is not implemented in most places. That's part of the quality of life aspects that is repeated.

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So are the RRs the most awful, toxic. hateful, companies in the world to work for? The way some tell it here, they’re an abomination. But all I’ve ever heard from actual employees is the opposite- great pay, good job. You just have to earn your paycheck. Oh the horror.

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It’s a reason railroaders have job insurance. Managers will hide in bushes or set up dumb tests just to fire you because they don’t like you.

Engineers and conductors hate managers.
Managers hate conductors and engineers. Everybody hate dispatchers. That’s the culture. It’s been that way for a long time and these contract disputes only make it worse.

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It’s illegal for them to strike.

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I'd pay to watch this government force them to work at gunpoint. It'd be high value optics.

Long reply incoming.

Hired out in 2011 with Uncle Pete.. first time i moved for this job. Was able to work close to that home for about 7 years. Qualified as an engineer in 2013 but didn't get in the seat until 2015 for a total of 4 months. Had to travel from Gonzales, la to Bloomington, tx and Houston back and forth a few times those 4 months. In transportation, we don't get per diem for getting "forced" to an area our seniority allows us to hold(Avondale, la, Livonia, la, lake Charles, la, Beaumont, tx, Houston, tx, Bloomington, tx, kingsville, tx Brownsville, tx so you can see it's a very large area to travel). The only thing we get is up to 75 days in a hotel. If it last longer than that, then we are out of pocket. After those 4 months, i was back home as a conductor until 2018. From 2018 until 2020 i was all over in Texas. I would try to work my 6 days and hit federal rest(if you work 6 days in a row you get 2 days off) so i could go home. There was many times where i wouldn't get called to work for a 24 hour period and that would reset my starts. That's the frustrating part, when you have 5 starts and you think you'll get to go home and then you're off for longer than 24 hours in some hotel 4-6 hours away from your family and now you got to try to work 6 more days in a row to go home. 2020 COVID hit and we slowed down so i went back home to Louisiana for about 9 months. Then at the end of 2020 work started picking up and i got forced back to Texas. Finally, i decided to just sell my house in Gonzales and move (2nd time to move for this job in 10 years) closer to where i could hold for work. We've been here a year now and it's somewhat less stressful on me.

There's many different areas of the railroad that is negotiating in this contract from transportation, signal maintainers, track maintenance, dispatchers, yard masters and probably some I'm forgetting since there's 12 unions negotiating. 5 of the 12 unions have already reached an agreement.

We've been almost 3 years without a new contract. We usually negotiate a new contract for a 5 year term. When we reach this agreement, we should get back pay for the years we worked without a new contract.

I'm gonna touch on the work just on my side because that's what i know. You have conductors and engineers. Conductors, switch person's(use to be switch men but the company changed the terminology), brake person(brakemen) do all pretty much the same work but some work traveling with the train from point a to point b stay in a hotel and then take a train from point b back to point a(called on the road). Some work in the yard or local area plants. The road workers make more because they are on call only with an idea of getting called but not exact times. The yard workers make less because they have more of a schedule and set days off. Depending on where your working you can make between 65-90k maybe more if you really like to work. You also have road and yard engineers. Same with the pay, road makes more than yard. You can make between 80-120k depending the areas you work and how often. I make more in Texas than when i was in Louisiana. Average the last few years between 100-110k. Conductors work can get hard depending what you're called on, from the weather and the job itself. Engineers not so much because we go forwards and backwards and are always inside the locomotive. Sometimes we get one that the ac doesn't work and that sucks but we have rules in the summer time where we can bad order the locomotive and swap them out for one with a good ac.. but that's not always the case if it isn't an originating train.

Not everyone can just up and move like me or are willing to. That's on them. But i know many that have had to in the last year because they couldn't hold where their home was. Some service units have a home rule like another poster mentioned where they can't get forced to work over 100 miles from their home terminal but we don't have that here. The on call sucks because you only know a tentative call time which isn't set in stone. It could say 6am but get called for 430am or say 6am but not get called until 10am. So you can't really make plans. It's also hard to get single days off at the last minute, it has to be planned at least 4 days in advanced and it's not always guaranteed to be available if it's already filled up. Everything that we do as a family and I'm involved in is spur of the moment. The job isn't hard but personally think the pay should be more than what it is.

Another thing along with quality of life being negotiated is the insurance. There was a lot of things mentioned in the beginning for different things negotiated between the unions and carriers. Not really sure where they are other than what was recommended by the peb which was to take the cap off the amount we currently contribute to 15% but not make any changes to any of the policies. I would be ok with that as long as no changes were made to the current CO-pays and deductibles.

Some of the things that workers on transportation complain about is claims that we should be getting paid for but they deny at times. Some claims deal with meal periods or breaks in the yard or off assignments which is basically going beyond the location your supposed to swap crews at on the road. Also, being in a hotel at point b like i discussed earlier you get a lunch claim of $18. If you're there longer than 16 hours then you start getting an hourly rate called held away. Some people think the meal pay isn't enough and some think that held away should start when your rested which is between 10 and 12 hours depending on how long you were on duty. Only issue with that is say your on duty for 16 hours then you'll have 14 hours of rest so some think it should just start after 10 hours Just to make up for the lack of home life. We can choose sometimes where we work but other times we don't have any control and have to work where we can hold. And about not being happy with the job just find another one comments. It's not that easy. I deal with the work because it's not physically hard just mentally stressful not knowing when your going to work and dealing with management testing you. Also, because my wife is a stay at home mom who home schools our kids and provides enough for her to do that and that's what is important to her. As someone mentioned before she gets a percentage of retirement as well. The railroad takes out railroad retirement tier 1 and tier 2.

I think i covered a lot from most of the comments posted above and you may disagree with some but this was just my side of the railroad(transportation) and my opinions. I'll check back and see if you have any questions that i may can answer.

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Can you list all the other jobs that offer “fired insurance”?

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I sure could have used that coverage 2015-17.

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I'm good. The railroad doesn't deliver to my house

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That is an interesting way to say you don't know how a lot of things get to your house.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Out of town meal pay for a conductor at NS is $8 lol. I've worked there 22 years & no one I know has ever made $8k in one check unless it was some type of annual bonus.

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I've worked there 22 years

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They treat their own workers like slaves.

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So are you a contractor? Why do their employees stay if it sucks so bad?

Please just go on strike and spare us all the drama.

9 out of 10 the government will step in and you will get your raises.