This is a bit of a read, but it is very well put together and explains some of the biggest issues with current Railroad employment. https://www.railwayage.com/regulatory/the-game-has-changed/
There are several posts from employees and spouses highlighting issues. This article appends a bit of history related to the Wreck of Ol' 97. https://www.railwayage.com/regulatory/unvarnished-feedback-from-the-front-lines/
Thank you Tom and Nancy. Excellent reading. Those two submissions are very well composed. My impression of mega-corporate America these days is they, (almost all), treat employees much like the value of soiled toilet paper. Used, so just flush- there's always a new roll coming along.
Today's economy is in the hands of and run by 'bean counters'. People that know the price of everything and the value of nothing - especially nothing about the value of employees to a company. Bean Counters view all employees as avoidable expenses, in fact they viewed as avoidable expenses to be avoided no matter the ultimate cost.
Bullseye. It was when this happened that businesses in the USA began their decline. Instead of having people running the operations, who actually known how, it's pencil jockeys who couldn't bolt together two items to save their own lives. Instead of learning and working up the corporate ladder from the bottom rungs, jumping directly onto the ladder from "college", barely more than children, who have been led to believe they know it all, yet with zero work experience in any company that hires them. Moving production overseas. Cutting themselves so closely to the bone they are barely functional. JIT inventories. Merging for the sake of destroying competitors, instead of strengthening themselves to better compete. Etc, etc. Today they look great, superficially. A nice facade created. But the slightest hiccup and things easily fall apart. (Note what happened to the Chinese model RR supply chain a few years back- we still cannot get many of the simple wheelsets we need, after YEARS of waiting.) Still they persist. We have one of these fools where I work. A total blithering idiot who comes in with idiotic commands that fail, one after the other- the only purpose being advancing their career, upward. (Greed, power, and uncaring about who and what they wreck, achieving their goals.) But this is the dreck our post-high school system is dumping on us...
Case in point was GE's CEO Jeff Immelt, who directed multiple business divestitures and ill-advised investments in his 17-year reign, resulting in GE shares losing 30% of their worth and $150 billion in market value. The dividend was chopped to nearly nothing to conserve cash. He defines his legacy as "controversial". The company was so thoroughly ruined that shares fell another 50% after he departed and it remains a distained pile by most investors today. Once a global colossus, GE was destroyed by a knothead. Remember too that it also takes a Board of Directors to support this kind of idiocy. I read a Boardmember's account that "Jeff was always an optimist", as if to deflect blame from the Board too. The Board was just as culpable, having never put a halt to the inferno until it was too late.
And he walked away a very rich person, atop his bloated paycheck, pocketing several hundred million more for his "work".
Excellent read. It reinforces why I have no desire to be a railroader, despite my love for trains. Tragic.
When I graduated from college, Southern, Chessie, C&NW, Family Lines and N&W came to the campus to recruit and I interviewed with them all, along with Santa Fe that I'd worked a summer with. Most were looking for Trainmasters and other Operating positions. The compensation was excellent. I was starry-eyed with excitement, but then afterward began to think seriously about the realm of these jobs. I then decided it'd be wise to interview with Shippers with heavy railroad traffic and see what they might have. It ended up that their salary offers were a small bit less, but the work in transportation analysis was much more in keeping with my interests. I went with a Shipper and retired from there 35+ years later after a good career. Interestingly, none of my friends who chose railroading stayed for long and none ever returned. My story is 40+ years old. I can't imagine the stress and impossible nature of railroad jobs today.
They've lost some folks the past couple of months, up my way. A conductor friend is very close to walking away right now. Used to love railroading, but now they can't stand the job and have grown to loathe it. Really a sad change in their life path.
GE, until 1970-71, was the second largest, second most profitable, and most respected corporation in the world. Until that time share holders, both individual common and corporate preferred, were happy with one of the highest valued stocks in the world that paid (almost) guaranteed high dividends every quarter. Then Baby Boomer newbie MBAs started preaching higher dividends by lowering overhead, reducing personnel, "streamlining" production, reducing R&D spending on concepts with no immediate visible return, etc., etc. 1971, in walks Jack Welch who reacts to this rhetoric which has as much credibility as social media today. The downfall of this technological giant was now guaranteed. This same scenario has been true for all of America's healthy stable corporations over the next 20-40 years. Sadly, the well-run old line railroads are no exception. Hunter Harrison was nothing more than a reincarnated Jack Welch, just 40-50 years later. Greed, with well placed power and media support in any democracy will bring its downfall by destroying its economy with flashy hollow promises.
I got into contact with several 'hot shots' that my company had hired. Their modus operandi was to propose some 'outlandish' project or undertaking - getting approved with their mastery of BS and after implementation of their project work as fast and hard as possible to get promoted away from the project before it came to its inescapable failure. Getting promoted gave them 'plausible deniability' for the failure of the project and put them in a position to run the scam again at a higher level of the organization.
