juniata guy posted:I suspect UP is doing this the same way my employer and most others do it; dump the work that was handled by these 500 former managers on those who are left.
Or maybe they were working in a business segment that has seen a drop in income and there wasn't enough work to keep them busy. Or, maybe they were there in anticipation of a need that didn't materialize. Or, maybe some aspects of their jobs has now been automated. Hard to say.
Kent in SD
During good times most businesses have a habit of adding employees then when times get lean they cut back. When the steel industry collapsed (remember that ??) my employer cut the payroll in half. The shop was down to one guy from 20.
Well, the real question is: How many managers were comfortable and spent at least part of each day in practices which, at least in part, were designed to perpetuate job comfort?
New technology affects the job activities of train and engine crews, Mechanical Department employees, and Communications & Signal employees, and we can easily understand how that is happening -- longer trains, computerized locomotives, improved wayside detectors, solid state signal apparatus, satellite communication, etc. However, in Operations Management, fewer can do more of the current work, if the Departments are reorganized to focus responsibilities and make them less general. Support groups are always subject to reduction and elimination, and this is not new. Departments are composed of bureaus, and bureaucracies tend to come into existence for a valid reason, and, after solving the main problem that caused their existence, grow by extending their influence, not unlike cancer. They periodically require surgery, and that is undoubtedly part of the mass layoffs at UPRR. BNSF did it last year. They all do it once in a while. It would not be newsworthy if there was a larger story to cover.
I have observed in the past that slowing rail shipping or shipping in general is usually a leading indicator of a slowing economy. Perhaps shippers and cargo companies see a slow down first and react.
Wouldn't that be a slowing economy that is based on manufacturing and/or harvesting natural resources?
Don't need a train to develop and sell intellectual property.
Rusty Traque posted:SDIV Tim posted:UP will not cut the steam heritage program because it is the UP's legacy running their Locos on their railroad and with their own rolling stock. If UP wanted to cut their Steam program, wouldn't they have done it in 2013 before getting 4014 back?
All it would take is a change in management or management philosophy, regardless of financial investment in the program.
Rusty
I would like to see the agreement with the rail giants museum to see if the big boy goes back if it never goes live on the rails.
WOW. This post really seems to make capitalism look bad. Maybe it would be better to follow the examples set by the PRR and NYC to name a couple of RR lines. It will only be a few years until trucks won't have drivers. How will the UP (and others) compete with that? Will they need to lower shipping costs?
I fully support the right to free speech. But if you're so unhappy in your job that you have to go onto social media, etc. to badmouth your employer, why don't you try to do something positive to make yourself happier? Try looking within.
Gerry
gmorlitz posted:I fully support the right to free speech. But if you're so unhappy in your job that you have to go onto social media, etc. to badmouth your employer, why don't you try to do something positive to make yourself happier? Try looking within.
Gerry
I assume you have a Doctorate in the field of Physiotherapy to back up your last sentence?
Hot Water posted:gmorlitz posted:I fully support the right to free speech. But if you're so unhappy in your job that you have to go onto social media, etc. to badmouth your employer, why don't you try to do something positive to make yourself happier? Try looking within.
Gerry
I assume you have a Doctorate in the field of Physiotherapy to back up your last sentence?
Don't we all to go with our doctorate in Ferroequinology? 
With several jobs I had I liked my customers and the work more than my employer so I hung on.
From my iPhone:
Literally "the study of the iron horse." (ferros = iron, equine = horse, -ology = study of)
1. The study of the history of railroads and railroad trains, especially for the purpose of model railroading.
2. What a railfan practices.
A railroad museum may be thought of as an institute of ferroequinology.
#train#railroad#iron#horse#railfan
Gary: Rail-fan
gmorlitz posted:WOW. This post really seems to make capitalism look bad. Maybe it would be better to follow the examples set by the PRR and NYC to name a couple of RR lines. It will only be a few years until trucks won't have drivers. How will the UP (and others) compete with that? Will they need to lower shipping costs?
I fully support the right to free speech. But if you're so unhappy in your job that you have to go onto social media, etc. to badmouth your employer, why don't you try to do something positive to make yourself happier? Try looking within.
Gerry
But even with driverless trucks, they still have to get through places like.....Houston!
I was surprised yesterday afternoon to see five UP stack trains and one very long mixed freight within a couple of hours, all heading east on the Sunset Route at Mescal, AZ. The stack trains presumably originated at Long Beach and carried imported Asian goods. Three in succession were following on flashing yellow, and one fast stack train ran eastbound on the former EP&SW main (second main track) that normally handles only westbound traffic (it has a stiffer grade going downhill into Tucson). That's a lot more traffic than I normally encounter on a Sunday afternoon, and it was the first time in many years of watching from this location that I have seen an eastbound train on the old EP&SW track. On the other hand, there are still hundreds of UP engines parked on the long spur (former SP mainline) south of Interstate 10. In that same period of time, Amtrak was the only west-bound train.
Hot Water posted:gmorlitz posted:I fully support the right to free speech. But if you're so unhappy in your job that you have to go onto social media, etc. to badmouth your employer, why don't you try to do something positive to make yourself happier? Try looking within.
Gerry
I assume you have a Doctorate in the field of Physiotherapy to back up your last sentence?
Of course I don't. Aside from the fact that Physiotherapy is the wrong field, the idea is to do what you need to do to make yourself feel better. If you need a Doctorate to figure that out, so be it. Try reading "What Color is my Parachute". Consider an alternative position, a different type of job, or something that will make you happier. Blaming your unhappiness on someone else (particularly a large organization) isn't likely to get you very far.
Will trucks be able to drive through Houston without drivers? I don't know, but whoever thought we would have forums like this 20 years ago?
Gerry
C W Burfle posted:I have observed in the past that slowing rail shipping or shipping in general is usually a leading indicator of a slowing economy. Perhaps shippers and cargo companies see a slow down first and react.
Wouldn't that be a slowing economy that is based on manufacturing and/or harvesting natural resources?
Don't need a train to develop and sell intellectual property.
That is true for intellectual property. However, people who develop intellectual property buy houses, cars, computers, and many other things made from bulk commodities such as lumber, steel, cement, chemicals, plastics, etc. Trains, boats, trucks, and to a lessor extent airplanes transport the big things that make the economy go and provide it with power. Even solar panels and windmills need to be shipped to their destinations.
NH Joe
Will trucks be able to drive through Houston without drivers? I don't know, but whoever thought we would have forums like this 20 years ago?
Gerry
Yes, trucks will be able to drive through Houston and everywhere else without drivers. We will probably see this within 20 or 30 years and given the pace of technology it may be a lot sooner. I believe that by 2050 all vehicles operating on public roads will be driverless. The only exception will be "classic" vehicles which will need to be trucked to shows because only driverless vehicles will be allowed on public roads.
This photo was taken at the recently completed NMRA National Train Show in Orlando:
It gets complicated with layoffs, and companies don't operate the way they once did, because even though stock price was a big deal 'back in the day', these days due to the nature of the financial markets and the nature of income to certain percent of the population, 'shareholder management' is the king. Yes, in one way or the other most people have ties to stock, through individual holdings or through things like IRA's and 401k's, and even standard pensions are generally based around stock holdings. On the other hand a major change from the past is that executive compensation these days is roughly 90+% stock driven, cash payments to executives are a small part of their compensation, so they are even more aware of stock price, for obvious reasons. Likewise, while most people have exposure to stocks in one way or the other, there is a class of well off investor who make up most stock ownership, and a large percentage of their income is from investment income (and I am not going to put words like good or bad here, it is what it is, there are good aspects to this and not so good one).
Stock price isn't based the way people think, where if a company is profitable, they will be rewarded with a higher stock price, it doesn't work like that, and often stock prices work against what some would see as the common good. For example, laying off 10,000 employees is not great for the employees, their family or for the economy to a certain extent, for obvious reasons, but the stock analysts who are the ones responsible for how stock prices go, see that as a positive because they are cutting costs. Most people hear about hiring and think that is a good thing, people have jobs, etc, stock analysts hear that and worry about it and can downgrade a stock because of 'the cost' of hiring people. Companies return great results and get slammed, because stock analysts think they have too many workers, it happens. Yes, there is a tie between profits and stock price, but then look at companies like Amazon that lost money for years, Tesla that is still losing money but their stock is in the stratosphere (meanwhile the CEO of Ford got canned, despite having taken the company through the financial straits the car industry went through, and being profitable, because the stock price didn't soar, for whatever reasons).
UP likely did this because investors and management are not happy about the stock price, this is especially true if you have activist investors like hedge funds that are in business to give yields of 20% or more to their investors (who legally are very well off people, hence my original point, ordinary investors can't get into these). It is the world we live in, and cutting labor costs is a quick way to boost stock prices, to please analysts and do that, your price will go up, pure and simple. Without getting into an economic discussion, this isn't about capitalism per se, it is the type of it, and capitalism has changed over the years, once upon a time they actually taught in management school something called stakeholder management, and it was the way many companies were run, wasn't a panacea, greed existed, badly run companies existed, but there was some idea of how/where the company operated. These days it is very different, and most companies it is all about the stock price (if public). It is why some companies choose to stay private, one of the reasons Bose has refused to go public is because they don't want to be beholden to stock price and want to have the freedom to innovate, spend money on long term research, something public companies have a hard time with since stock analysts hate R and D or other costs like that.
Like I said, there are pluses and minuses, but the idea that stock prices or the Gordon Gecko line that stock price pressure makes companies more efficient is debatable, because what he was talking about often makes company cut muscle and bone and in the long run end up gutted, it all depends. I think the railroads are facing pressure, with energy prices in the gutter there isn't the demand for tanker traffic there was when Oil was soaring, pipelines also cut into traffic, and railroads have to face the future where coal is dying in favor of natural gas that is delivered via barge or pipeline mostly. I agree with another poster, usually they go after managers because they tend to be more expensive workers, so if you are gonna cut cost managers give you more bang for the buck, though it can backfire, but in quarterly world view of wall street they don't see that *shrug*. What form of capitalism is best I leave to others, but what you see with UP is more than likely a reflection of how capitalism works today.
Sure seems like it would be easier to make driverless trains, then trucks on a public road
Clem
juniata guy posted:I suspect UP is doing this the same way my employer and most others do it; dump the work that was handled by these 500 former managers on those who are left.
Kind of standard operating practice for companies these days. Have to increase that value for the shareholders you know.
Curt
Rail traffic peaked in 2015 and has slowly eroded since although this year the trend is up a little it is still about 7% off the peak. Housing and automotive sales have also been sagging the last several months. With stocks in la-la land it would appear that a correction is on the way I expect it should be very apparent by Thanksgiving. Ron Paul today came out with he expects the stock market to see a 50% correction, I'm thinking 33% but either is going to be a big hit to the economy.
Bogie
Any exempt (non-union) employee is subject to job termination at any time. Except when terminated for improperly performing work defined in Company Rules -- such as being in the locomotive of a train which exceeds its track warrant authority or some similar thing -- the Railway Labor Act does not apply to an exempt employee.
My view is this: having an office is a temptation to over-use it. Being in the field often will lessen the odds of your job being eliminated in one of these mass purges.
Source: Omaha World-Herald
Gary: Rail-fan and Ferroequinologist, I think this is a word............. 
Maybe they do go over to CSX!
Dominic Mazoch posted:gmorlitz posted:WOW. This post really seems to make capitalism look bad. Maybe it would be better to follow the examples set by the PRR and NYC to name a couple of RR lines. It will only be a few years until trucks won't have drivers. How will the UP (and others) compete with that? Will they need to lower shipping costs?
I fully support the right to free speech. But if you're so unhappy in your job that you have to go onto social media, etc. to badmouth your employer, why don't you try to do something positive to make yourself happier? Try looking within.
Gerry
But even with driverless trucks, they still have to get through places like.....Houston!
WOW, Dominic, how did you ever pick Houston? I'm in the NYC area, and we had superstorm Sandy a few years ago. Feel so sorry for those people and hope you don't live there.
Gerry
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