Congress, Unions Can Cure Rail Worker Shortage
Written by Frank N. Wilner, Capitol Hill Contributing Editor
Railroads, including Amtrak, are hiring, but applicants are scarce. The Washington Post reports Amtrak is short 1,500 workers, and may be forced to eliminate some service, trim some daily long-distance trains to three times weekly, and delay inauguration of new routes. Already, Amtrak is operating at 80% of its pre-pandemic schedule.
Although Amtrak has a help-wanted sign hanging nationwide, one doesn’t fall off a turnip wagon to work on an Amtrak passenger train, a maintenance-of-way gang or in a repair shop. Earning a federal locomotive engineer license requires training for up to 24 months; and at least six months of training before certification as a conductor. Both positions require a mastery of safety protocols, operating rules and route familiarization.
Compounding the labor shortage are Amtrak employees selfishly thumbing their noses at medical science and refusing—for a host of reasons including misinformation spread via social media—to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Aside from putting their own and their families’ lives in danger, they threaten the health and lives of fellow employees and Amtrak passengers. Amtrak CEO William J. Flynn says some 6% of Amtrak’s current 17,000 employees so far have failed to be vaccinated and will be terminated Jan. 4.
As for potential new hires, many resist accepting jobs requiring nights away from home, flexible work schedules and weekend assignments—even when compensation tops $100,000 annually and includes incomparable healthcare benefits. Other potential new hires sadly are unable to pass drug-screening tests. “If we were fully staffed, we would be able to offer more schedule, where right now we’re unable to do that,” Qiana Spain, Amtrak’s Executive Vice President of Human Resources, told the Washington Post.
Neither scrubbing a vaccination requirement nor reducing training time are solutions. The unvaccinated pose too great a health threat to those with whom they come in contact. Cutting short stringent training requirements, even were it lawful under provisions of federal engineer and conductor licensing requirements, similarly puts in danger others’ lives.
But there is a near immediate solution.
With favorable congressional legislation and rail labor union cooperation, Amtrak—and freight railroads—could coax out of retirement recent retirees still in good health who might leap at an opportunity to return to work temporarily while efforts continue to find and train new hires.
Retirees could be returned to service rather rapidly with refresher training as is provided recalled furloughed rail workers. These seasoned veterans and their families long ago learned to balance the downsides of railroad work with the positives, with many being second, third and fourth generation railroaders. Moreover, they would be an asset in helping train the new hires.
Indeed, there are retirees who likely are bored or miss the workplace comradery. Others may have miscalculated financial needs in retirement, or would use the additional earnings for a luxury not previously considered. Still others have taken non-railroad employment at a fraction of their previous railroad compensation because current law prevents a return to railroad employment.
Coaxing retirees back to work might not be so difficult were Congress to pass legislation temporarily allowing continuation of monthly Railroad Retirement benefits plus a separate paycheck reflecting current railroad wage scales.
Congress has to act—and it could act quickly, as the fix is relatively simple and straightforward—because the law currently provides that “a railroad annuity is not payable for any month in which you work for a railroad, regardless of age or amount of earnings.”
Without legislation temporarily lifting the prohibition on payment of Railroad Retirement benefits, a retiree returning to rail employment would forfeit Railroad Retirement benefits in any month he or she held railroad employment. Thus, legislation is the quid pro quo for coaxing rail retirees back to work.
A second snag relatively easy to undo is seniority. A rehiring bonus could be paid by Amtrak in exchange for the returning retiree going to the bottom of the seniority roster. Alternatively, temporary seniority roster adjustments could be made. In fact, the temporary rehires would not necessarily be bumping current Amtrak employees, but, in many cases, filling empty slots.
Unions would have incentive to facilitate a mutually acceptable answer to the seniority question as each union has been struggling financially from years of declining rail industry employment levels and would crave the near immediate workforce augmentation. Even under rail labor’s “union shop” agreements, there is a lag—sometimes of many months—in union dues payment by new hires; but returning retirees would immediately resume dues payment, while new hires eventually filling those slots would keep the dues money flowing
This combination remedy of legislation and union cooperation could be extended to freight railroads similarly experiencing labor shortages.
Frank N. Wilner
Railway Age Capitol Hill Contributing Editor Frank N. Wilner is author of “Amtrak: Past, Present, Future,” and “Understanding the Railway Labor Act.” Publication of his latest book, “Railroads & Economic Regulation,” is pending.
TTD to STB: ‘Expand Reporting Requirements to Address Self-Inflicted Service Cuts’
Written by William C. Vantuono, Editor-in-Chief
AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department President Greg Regan. TTD photo via Twitter.
The 37-union-affiliate Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD) on July 1 sent a letter to the Surface Transportation Board in response to the agency’s “information collection request” regarding Class I railroad reporting requirements. The letter, signed by TTD President Greg Regan, asks the STB to further increase the already stepped-up reporting requirements to include additional employment data.
Following is the letter’s full main text:
As discussed below, while TTD strongly supports the new reporting requirements set forth in the STB decision, TTD requests that additional information be required from Class I railroads to better understand the current rail service conditions and the impact employment decisions are having. Specifically, we request: a narrative description of employment data, employment data reported by craft in addition to job families, and data regarding specific causes for separation.
The STB is proposing reporting requirements for Class I railroads that would include specific performance metrics as well as employment data. These requirements were included in the STB’s recent decision regarding Service Emergency Orders due to an alarming and unmitigated decline in service and working conditions caused by the railroads’ decisions since 2015 to lay off approximately 30% of their workforce in order to maximize short-term profits, instead of prioritizing workforce investments that would ensure the long-term viability of the railroad system. However, the deteriorating rail service conditions necessitate additional data collection in order to identify the root causes of the current service problems.
Despite the STB’s repeated efforts over the past few years to constructively work with the Class I railroads to overcome the challenges to this country’s rail network caused by the Class I railroads’ own decisions, we still face an ongoing crisis. As Vice-Chair Robert Primus indicated in the STB’s April 2022 “Urgent Issues in Freight Rail Service” hearing, it is important that “we don’t keep going on roller coaster rides every few years so we are riding high one time and then we cut and then next you know we are in a valley struggling to get out of it.”
Just last week, BNSF announced it was limiting inbound service to California until the end of July because of congestion issues. The Class I CEOs have admitted that their current level of service is not meeting their own standards despite years of opportunity and copious offers of help from the STB to fix things. The Class I railroads have not been able to fix the mess they have created and it is clear that more action is required from the STB. Proper data is the first step to inform these necessary actions.
In order to better understand deteriorating rail service and working conditions, TTD requests that the STB expand reporting requirements for the Class I railroads to include a narrative description of employment data, employment data reported by craft in addition to job families, and data regarding specific causes for separation. This information will provide a more holistic view of employment at each Class I railroad, allowing the STB, workers, and the public to better understand why service disruptions have occurred and will continue to occur until these problems are resolved.
TTD strongly supports the following monthly reporting requirements included in the STB’s decision:
(i) total employee count
(ii) how many employees were added.
iii) how many employees were separated (with a breakout of those employees who separated by voluntary resignation)
(iv) how many employees have been furloughed but are potentially available for recall
(v) the number of “extra-board employees.”
(vi) for categories 300, 400, 500, and 600, how many employees are working in active service (as opposed to completing training courses).”
Additional Data Collection
Further, the STB should require the Class I’s to also include in this monthly report:
1. The number of employees working in active service in each craft within categories 300, 400, 500, and 600.
2. Specific separation data (resignations, retirements, dismissals, etc.) to include breakouts by craft, work location, and specific reasons for separation.
3. Tenure at time of separation, broken out by craft and year hired.
4. A narrative description of the data and trends in the monthly reports.
This additional information will provide the STB with additional data that is necessary to understand the root causes of—and take the needed action to address—this continuing crisis. The expansion of reporting will also provide an additional level of public accountability that is necessary to ensure that workers and the public accurately understand what actions the Class I’s are taking to address the unprecedented workforce reductions they implemented. For example, in the five years prior to the pandemic the Class I’s enacted drastic reductions to their Train and Engine (T&E) workforces. Specifically, BNSF cut 27%, Norfolk Southern cut 24%, Union Pacific cut 32%, and CSX cut 43% of these workers during this time period.
Worker Retention
Another important issue the STB highlighted in its April hearing is worker retention. While the Class I railroads have been ironically complaining about their inability to hire workers after their widespread layoffs, they also have been implementing policies that worsen working conditions for existing workers and make these jobs less attractive for potential workers.
Many of the employees that the Class I’s eliminated had decades of institutional knowledge, skills, and experience that are not easily replaced. It is difficult to replace experienced workers when job conditions have worsened—the industry does itself no favors by imposing working conditions that make it much harder to retain new workers. Nothing is gained if the new workers that the Class I railroads hire leave within a short amount of time because of the unnecessary and draconian hardships of the job. In the past, many railroad workers stayed in the industry for decades, but we believe that there is notable worker attrition in the industry at the moment because of policies implemented by the Class I’s such as BNSF’s new Hi-Viz policy. Therefore, we urge the STB to require the railroads to report specific data on worker retention and attrition, especially for new hires. This data would allow the STB to understand the current extent of worker retention and attrition, the role that the Class I’s workplace policies are playing in that attrition, and the effect that worker attrition is having on the railroad network and freight rail service.
As we have stated before, there is no shortage of ready and willing workers in this country. That is a myth compounded by the reality that employers are driving working people away from jobs by constantly attacking wages and good benefits, requiring increasingly difficult and grueling work schedules, and—as is the case of the Class I’s—outright elimination of positions. Enhanced data reporting is necessary to allow the STB to correctly diagnose and address the problems that the Class I railroads’ decision to eliminate so many positions has caused. As STB has indicated, the current service challenges have existed for many years. The harm that these challenges have caused to the rail network and rail shippers that warranted this emergency action has the potential to continue beyond the six-month period that the STB has proposed these reporting requirements. As such, TTD urges STB to evaluate the usefulness of data gathered under this collection to be in a position to possibly extend reporting periods should the circumstances warrant such an extension.
We appreciate the opportunity to comment on this information collection and look forward to working with STB in the future on this matter.
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