Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Railroad strike Sept 16

Not until mid November, per BMWE's reported statement.

It's hard to say how much a BMWE strike will effect train movement. You can run trains without union track workers if you really want to. Depends a lot on where the BMWE places their pickets and for how long though. The other crafts, if called to work, will honor the pickets, but otherwise will report for duty. There are non-union contractors for track work, and the class ones have their contact info, guaranteed. Unless the class ones want to make a (costly) point by shutting down for the BMWE (which I don't recall ever happening before), I'd expect a rail slowdown rather than a shutdown.

Ironically, IIRC, the last go-round resulted in BMWE getting more gains than the operating crafts - without striking. They must think they're harder to replace than in the past. Perhaps they're right. Near as I can tell, pretty much all of the generic work has already been farmed out. What's left is the more specialized or critical work that maybe isn't contracted as easily.

Its already slow on the BNSF northern Line.



You have to wait a long time to see a train.

BTW - honoring pickets.....

I recall one time the BMWE was on strike or about to strike - the game plan was to make train crew changes at locations other than the terminals. That made it unlikely that there would be pickets that the crews would have to honor. Some added cost involved, but nothing beyond what the company could either absorb or weasel out of. My point being that if a BMWE strike stalls rail traffic entirely, that's the choice of the railroad companies.

Nobody's on strike right now, and according to reports, all of the unions have accepted agreements except the BMWE (track workers). So? ? That looks like a carrier issue.

Oh yeah. Didn't mean to imply it wasn't. More of a sign of a healthy economy thing.


Know a maintenance of way guy........massive turnover in that job. For good reason too.

Always been that way in the system gangs. Which is most of what's left. Not much remaining of the track jobs with normal hours and no travel. A lot of them are there only as a foot in the door, and move into the operating crafts and/or management.

How fast can you go in one of those pickups with the train wheels???

It's sad to see so many jobs going to contractors. perhaps Unions are partly to blame. Employees also because some of them tend to do shoddy work and fool around when they should be productive. Then there's the corporate lunacy chasing profits. It's expensive to keep up 401K's and increasing healthcare costs for employees. They have shut down almost all the car shops and contracted out the work. Contractors don't pay as much or offer the benefits. It's not just a RR thing. It's the current trend in corporate management.

One union strikes, they all strike... so far, its three unions that have voted NO...

Phil

Bull. That ain't how it works. Been through many of these, and sometimes they all strike, but sometimes not. They aren't monolithic. And the there is a natural division between the operating crafts and the maintenance crafts.

How fast can you go? Or how fast are you allowed to go. The pat answer for both is "it depends". It's different depending on what track you're on, and things may have changed since the last time I had anything to do with hi-rail vehicles, but the fastest I recall being allowed to go by rule was 40 mph. If you think the rules don't apply, then.....fast as you dare. Better not get too daring. It's pretty easy to derail those things.

Outsourcing to contractors.

Unions too expensive?
Contractors underlying?

Takes half a second to judge by how someone presents it.

Except rainshot.
Not often someone here presents the info straight up the middle
without shading it.


Kudos.

Kinda what i was figuring....

Couldn’t just shoot the fuel to it and haul a$s.

I always figured they would be squirrely on roads too with those reverse dish wheels

It's been done. You've likely even seen footage.

Nah.

All 12 unions are working in conjunction with one another. If one strikes, they all strike... and that has already been stated... just as the fact that they all have a Me-Too agreement up-front. Another words, any of them votes NO Agreement, (and so far, there has been 3), then all the others refuse to cross the picket lines, then when that or those unions that say no, reach an agreement. Then that agreement goes to all of the unions. And as it looks at the moment, none of them are too pleased with the suggested agreement that was reached last month. Not to mention that 700 have already walked off at BNSF back in the first few months of 2022 over working conditions.

Phil

I just wanted to say for the 4 th time (because I’m old and retarded)

I LOVE TRAINS


wabigoon…who’s with me???


wooooo trains…seen em a million times. Woooo trains. Lose your shît everybody….TRAINS!!!!!!!

Unions are now asking for 7 day's paid sick leave. An item apparently not even mentioned in the previous agreement with the presidential board. Pre-election hysteria should hide most railroad news until December. Merry Christmas....

Phil