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> What the freight railroads are doing here is forcing the employees to use their vacation pay when they are sick to discourage them from calling out sick at al

by adolph 4y ago

> What the freight railroads are doing here is forcing the employees to use their vacation pay when they are sick to discourage them from calling out sick at all, in effect penalizing them for calling out sick. That vacation you had planned with the family? Either lose a day (which may require you to cancel altogether), or come to work sick. If they have paid sick leave, they'd use it when sick rather than showing up to work. This is how many (most) jobs work. There is a bank of "Paid Time Off" (PTO) which can be used flexibly for sickness or vacation. The term bank is used purposefully to describe it, since it can be paid out as pay at separation. Many employers also limit the total amount of PTO an employee can accumulate. This is done to control potential liabilities from the bank. While I don't call for the elimination of sick/PTO/etc, I also recognize that they are essentially irrational, similar to employer sponsored health care as an artifact of tax privileged "fringe benefits" that come with working in a large org. Funds paid to a worker for not working come from funds withheld from the worker when working. Sick/PTO benefit just makes a complicated system on top of the work/pay transaction.

bombcar 4y ago
The problem is the scheduling side of things, not the PTO side. For "knowledge workers" as most of HN is, they can just not show up today and then do today's work tomorrow. But something like a railroad ceases to function at some point and that has severe repercussions. Now likely the "railroad" problem could be solved with some work, imagine a nation-wide company that handles railroad staffing emergencies, with on-duty employees available to go to a stranded train at a moment's notice. There's some dollar amount this would cost (even if you utilized jets and helicopters, those are just a cost) and it'd work. But that cost is what the railroads don't want to pay, as they could also do the same thing by hiring more employees (and have some percentage of them "idling" at any given time).
- Throwawayaerlei 4y ago
  I'm not sure your staffing problem can solve the whole problem, because there's domain knowledge in how to handle trains in particular sections of track. Speed maximums are probably easy although they do get screwed up in notorious incidents, but there's also things like how to deal with inclines. Compare to knowledge workers like programmers needing to know the code base.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Yeah, you'd have specifics that would have to be worked out, but I bet you could do it (it'd just cost money or time and time is money). For example, you could run slower trains in general which could help with flattening out domain knowledge. Or you'd pay for engineers to be trained in some large area, etc. (This all goes to show that the real underlying problem is running at 99% of capacity with no slack at all available.)
- ragingrobot 4y ago
  > But that cost is what the railroads don't want to pay, as they could also do the same thing by hiring more employees (and have some percentage of them "idling" at any given time). At one point the article mentions "on call" (the correct term is "Extra List") and that's exactly what you describe. You'd have say an engineer, who may be new and has no regular assignment - he'd put in his early months or years "on call." The company can call him at any time, and say "get to XXX, your train will be there." The whole issue is having enough to cover shortages.
  - Throwawayaerlei 4y ago
    "The company can call him at any time, and say 'get to XXX, your train will be there.'" That another part of the problem with bombcar's concept from the viewpoint of the railroad companies, they'd need a lot more people than you might think so a spare could be close enough to "XXX" to get there without throwing off the Orwellian "Precision Scheduling" of this PSR concept. The train goes when it's built up to an arbitrary number of cars like 150, not at any set time. Since the system is not even designed for trains that long, it would probably generally back up in any give location if a train was too long delayed in leaving. The companies obviously also wouldn't want to pay for "jets and helicopters" to get a spare to XXX really quickly.
davidgay 4y ago
> This is how many (most) jobs work. US jobs, really. The concept of sick days / requiring taking time off from some pool always struck me as a) horribly abusive, b) ripe for employee abuse (sick days when not sick), c) bad for everyone (workers work when sick). I grew up in Switzerland which doesn't have those. And (to prevent abuse...) you are required to have a doctor's note when sick for more than 3 days. Of course, a bunch of commenters find this kind of requirement abusive... (There is no system that pleases everyone?)
- adolph 4y ago
  At a base level, what is the source for funds paid to a worker when not working (either by choice or illness) other than funds withheld from the worker when working? The question is the same in Switzerland unless there is cave of sick pay gnomes next to the chocolate making ones. One might say the funding can come out of a different source, a popular go-to is "profit" or government, but all those are downstream from the value created by the worker.

by adolph 4y ago

bombcar 4y ago

The problem is the scheduling side of things, not the PTO side. For "knowledge workers" as most of HN is, they can just not show up today and then do today's work tomorrow. But something like a railroad ceases to function at some point and that has severe repercussions. Now likely the "railroad" problem could be solved with some work, imagine a nation-wide company that handles railroad staffing emergencies, with on-duty employees available to go to a stranded train at a moment's notice. There's some dollar amount this would cost (even if you utilized jets and helicopters, those are just a cost) and it'd work. But that cost is what the railroads don't want to pay, as they could also do the same thing by hiring more employees (and have some percentage of them "idling" at any given time).

Throwawayaerlei 4y ago
I'm not sure your staffing problem can solve the whole problem, because there's domain knowledge in how to handle trains in particular sections of track. Speed maximums are probably easy although they do get screwed up in notorious incidents, but there's also things like how to deal with inclines. Compare to knowledge workers like programmers needing to know the code base.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Yeah, you'd have specifics that would have to be worked out, but I bet you could do it (it'd just cost money or time and time is money). For example, you could run slower trains in general which could help with flattening out domain knowledge. Or you'd pay for engineers to be trained in some large area, etc. (This all goes to show that the real underlying problem is running at 99% of capacity with no slack at all available.)
ragingrobot 4y ago
> But that cost is what the railroads don't want to pay, as they could also do the same thing by hiring more employees (and have some percentage of them "idling" at any given time). At one point the article mentions "on call" (the correct term is "Extra List") and that's exactly what you describe. You'd have say an engineer, who may be new and has no regular assignment - he'd put in his early months or years "on call." The company can call him at any time, and say "get to XXX, your train will be there." The whole issue is having enough to cover shortages.
- Throwawayaerlei 4y ago
  "The company can call him at any time, and say 'get to XXX, your train will be there.'" That another part of the problem with bombcar's concept from the viewpoint of the railroad companies, they'd need a lot more people than you might think so a spare could be close enough to "XXX" to get there without throwing off the Orwellian "Precision Scheduling" of this PSR concept. The train goes when it's built up to an arbitrary number of cars like 150, not at any set time. Since the system is not even designed for trains that long, it would probably generally back up in any give location if a train was too long delayed in leaving. The companies obviously also wouldn't want to pay for "jets and helicopters" to get a spare to XXX really quickly.

davidgay 4y ago

> This is how many (most) jobs work. US jobs, really. The concept of sick days / requiring taking time off from some pool always struck me as a) horribly abusive, b) ripe for employee abuse (sick days when not sick), c) bad for everyone (workers work when sick). I grew up in Switzerland which doesn't have those. And (to prevent abuse...) you are required to have a doctor's note when sick for more than 3 days. Of course, a bunch of commenters find this kind of requirement abusive... (There is no system that pleases everyone?)

adolph 4y ago
At a base level, what is the source for funds paid to a worker when not working (either by choice or illness) other than funds withheld from the worker when working? The question is the same in Switzerland unless there is cave of sick pay gnomes next to the chocolate making ones. One might say the funding can come out of a different source, a popular go-to is "profit" or government, but all those are downstream from the value created by the worker.