Working for the RR must not be any picnic. A young friend went to a hiring seminar put on by Union Pacific a couple years back.
First thing the UP man holding the seminar said, "Look around here guys, 22 men looking for a good paying steady job, 18 of you will walk out of here today without filling out an application". And then he went on to explain the why, there are no holidays, days off you can plan for, live by the phone, everything in your life will be ruled by the phone. Most of UP openings at that time were in Maintenance of Way, but there were a couple train crew jobs too. Anyway the guy was right, only 5 guys filled out apps, my friend walked, all he could see was a high risk of divorce.
My grandson was recently hired by BNSF in their Tech Support Group. His schedule is a constant one of moving between locations with days off few and far between. He’s single so it fits his lifestyle just fine for now and he’s making excellent money and getting himself a good jump start on his finances.
His schedule would be very hard on any family man.
His other grandad retired from the R.R. And two of his uncles are still with the R.R. but have worked themselves into 5 day/week positions so not so bad for them.
As far as the strike goes, my grandson says what he hears is pretty much equally split between yeas and nays at this point whereas as before the talk was mostly in favor of the strike to prove a point.
I guess we’ll know by Friday.
