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Thread: Antiwork
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12-03-2022, 11:59 AM #401
Pitting workers against workers while the literal railroad barons rake in record profits is not a battle I’m ever going to condone.
Unions (other than maybe police unions) are pretty critical for workers to have any semblance of security in today’s workforce. Just ask Twitter employees.
In a monopolistic industry, it might be the only leverage they have. It’s not like they can walk from Chipotle across the street to Panera for an extra $.50/hour. There’s only one game in town.
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12-03-2022, 12:02 PM #402
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12-03-2022, 12:05 PM #403
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12-03-2022, 12:06 PM #404
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12-03-2022, 12:15 PM #405
I don't know how usual that is, but it's certainly true in some places. I live in a hub where there are many rail companies that come through and use the same tracks to some places, so along those routes there would be a few options, I guess. But I'm not sure if the current arrangement leaves much incentive to change employers.
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12-03-2022, 12:21 PM #406Registered User
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exactly we don't need the economy to come to another grinding halt
but the problem is the different news media companies what are we down to about 3 who control what you hear and see these days?
they use this act of congress as a way to change the narrative spin it whatever way they can to get people upset and make politicians they don't like or unions look like idiots
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12-03-2022, 12:36 PM #407
Expanding on this: some workers are in a position to extract more of the economic value they create than others. Maybe even above what create individually.
As an example, a relative of a relative was co-lead actor on a moderately successful television series on a second tier network.
When the show took off the two lead actors had their contract renegotiated. Neither actor was known before the show, could have been replaced by any number of equally talented actors initially, but once the show gains traction it’s pretty hard to sub a different actor in, so they could demand some of those new unforeseen profits.
The writers were not able to extract the same concessions.
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12-03-2022, 01:19 PM #408User
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A million years ago when I was a college drop out-ski bum, I knocked up my girlfriend. She turned into my first wife. Her father was a long time engineer for Union Pacific. He got me an interview and I was pretty much a shoe in. I was basically in the hiring process when they started to explain the schedule details to me. Until you had seniority (10 years?) you were basically on call, all the time, unless you had prescheduled vacation. If memory serves, vacation was signed for once a year, and you didn’t get your pick without seniority. So on call meant, you need to be within 20 minutes of the rail yard when they call you.
My brain started to short out. No skiing, basically no anything? Ever? Except for a couple weeks vacation a year? Fuck that. I stepped out to make a call to my dad for advice. I never walked back in.
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12-03-2022, 01:43 PM #409Registered User
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I live in a rail road town, i know lots of old/ new/ retired train drivers and its pretty much this ^^
They make lots of money if you go by the rail yard which is 2 blocks away there are lots of nice PU's the problem is quality of life
In those first years its not so bad for a single guy but eventualy it gets old and its hard on marriages
one ski bud told me he had been sleep deprived for 20 yrsLee Lau - xxx-er is the laziest Asian canuck I know
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12-03-2022, 01:47 PM #410User
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I eventually became a firefighter and have been sleep deprived for the last twenty years. But the schedule kicks ass.
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12-03-2022, 01:50 PM #411
No shit. 100B in Class I revenue and plebes focused on other plebes.
Schedules can't suck when there are none. Railroads own freight crews who are perpetually on call with few exceptions.
Healthcare costs are not capped under the new agreement. The proportion of premiums paid are fixed (at a higher rate than previously paid). The result is a net increase in healthcare costs.
28 days off in a calendar year sounds great until realizing 2 days are needed to guarantee 1 full day off.
Made vacation plans that includes a flight on Tuesday? Sorry not sorry, your train leaves Monday with an overnight so you will not be back until Wednesday.
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12-03-2022, 01:58 PM #412
That's about my understanding of it. Plenty of guys have gotten fairly good at gaming the system so they get more leeway in their schedule, but it's still a lot of on call time.
The guys that seem harpy with the situation are either young and willing to deal with the schedule because they're making bank, or older and have switched into a lower paying (but still very good paying) position that has a more amenable schedule. Maintenance, yard work, etc.
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12-03-2022, 02:11 PM #413
there are 8 class 1 railways in the us(including amtrak) and 21 class 2 railways, there aren’t many options. Amusingly, this is the situation the rail barons of the late 19th/early 20th century wanted, but were blocked for decades in getting because of obvious market issues.
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12-03-2022, 02:18 PM #414Registered User
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I went out with a gal who worked the spare board at CN and she spent a good 2 hrs a day figuring out how to game the system and not work
A lot of fire fighters have extra trades like electrician/ DW/ carpenter which they do on their days off, I used a DW guy who did a real good job but more importantly showed up when he said he would which i have since learned not a given with trades so i am assuming they are better at scheduling becuz they can more easily fit it between the FF shiftsLee Lau - xxx-er is the laziest Asian canuck I know
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12-03-2022, 02:29 PM #415
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12-03-2022, 02:57 PM #416
When people point out how much better RR workers are paid relative to other jobs what they're really pointing out is how poorly paid so many American workers are paid. There was a time when blue collar workers could make a decent living, when American families could do ok on one income if they chose to, when we didn't have so many people with 12 figure net worth. We could go on and on about the causes.
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12-03-2022, 03:14 PM #417
Sure, but thats a far messier discussion. RR workers are a wage outlier. They're paid far more than other comparable occupations. I'm no economist, but if we raise the wages of all those other occupations to be on par with the outlier, I don't think that's going to work out very well.
But more to the point of the present discussion, the wage outlier is asking for a raise. I think that's a bit silly. Congress apparently agrees. But that's not too say there aren't bigger structural problems with the American labor force that need fixing.
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12-03-2022, 03:22 PM #418
That sick days are framed as a raise says everything.
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12-03-2022, 03:32 PM #419
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12-03-2022, 03:37 PM #420
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12-03-2022, 04:07 PM #421
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12-03-2022, 04:10 PM #422
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12-03-2022, 04:43 PM #423
Flying is the same. And unless Uncle Sam picked up the tab, you've invested five to six figures into education. And when you get your fist job, you'll likely qualify for food stamps. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't.
A friend did that exact same thing. Plus a commercial pilot's license. He characterized it as a revokable deal with the devil.
To the "not steering" comment above, my friend told me lots of stories about good and bad rail engineers. So there's definitely some skill involved. But really what they're paying them for is the responsibility.
Apparently there's a crazy amount of slack in the train from all of the couplings (IIRC typically over 100' on freights). He said the good guys could plan, manage, and finesse the slack so that the uninitiated wouldn't even notice, but the bad guys were fucking brutal. Like stopping bunched on an incline, and the back of the train starts rolling backwards, or pulling too hard from a stop, and breaking the back clean off. At that point the guys who don't drive have to get out and replace the coupler in the snow, while the guy who did it sips coffee in the heated engine.
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12-03-2022, 05:22 PM #424
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12-03-2022, 11:35 PM #425
RR workers salaries are comparable to what most blue collar salaries were like in the 50's and the economy did just fine. The marginal income tax rate was as high as 90% and the economy did just fine. Since then the corporations and their employees in Congress and the WH have engineered a stunning transrer of wealth from workers to the bosses, in the name of protecting us from "socialism".
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