3 ms·

Is there a particular reason they have to be so byzantine with sick time? Paid or not 30 days heads up seems useless. Is there that much of a logistical issue r

Is there a particular reason they have to be so byzantine with sick time? Paid or not 30 days heads up seems useless. Is there that much of a logistical issue replacing missing operators?

rtkwe 4y ago
Railways like the airlines need people in particular places at given times to drive their trains. Having any slack requires having slack and fast transport to get on call replacements into position. That costs money so they run as tight as inhumanly possible to squeeze more profitable work out of their employees at their expense.
- legitster 4y ago
  It doesn't seem that expensive to just always have an extra staffer scheduled on routes. Ocean shippers are just as profit-seeking as train companies and they don't mind keeping lots of extra crew around. Are there artificial barriers to hiring that train companies have to deal with?
  - rtkwe 4y ago
    The issue is you could need the spare people at a lot more locations that are far more geographically dispersed than a cargo ship and they're all better paid than your generic seaman, a lot of workers on ships are from much lower COL countries and get paid less accordingly.
  - mike50 4y ago
    That's because they can employ workers from various low income nations (especially if English speaking) for cheap. No pesky environmental regulations for the fuel quality and resulting pollution either. Compare the labor costs of shipping from one us port direct to another us port (requires a us crew) and a foreign port to a us port.
shagie 4y ago
As I understand it... they are the industry is trying to run as close to 100% workforce utilization as possible. There are about 115,000 people that are part of the freight rail unions. Additionally, a number of these systems require a certain number of people to be able to go. It doesn't do much good to have one person show up to move stock around if the other people needed are out for some reason. Picture the challenge of "ok, we want to go from 7 sick days a year to 14". That's 7 more days, which means that it needs to hire 4% more staff which amounts to hiring another 5000 people. In today's labor market, this is hard. Additionally, that's still running the 100% work utilization. Lets put some slack into that... now instead of 5000 more people you need, you need 15,000 more people. Parts of this industry are licensed - you can't just go hire people off the street to fill those spots. They need between three months and year of on the job training and then some spots are under the licensure of the Federal Railroad Administration.
- ct0 4y ago
  Im surprised they haven't loosed restrictions or threatened the union with more AI driving implementations. I have no idea how it works but for a majority of the route I could imagine that theyre "self-driving" in some places.
  - mike50 4y ago
    The unions were already complaining about the elimination of support personnel on the train due to safely.
  - shagie 4y ago
    They can't loosen the requirements for licensure or implement AI driving any more than you could do that for an airline today. Would you be ok with having having people who haven't been licensed as pilots flying? Or only having one pilot flying ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33937973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33937973 )? With a 'self driving' train that's a mile long... what happens when you have a train derailment that doesn't sever the cords and things go wrong? https://youtu.be/YQMZPB_rVJ0 https://youtu.be/YQMZPB_rVJ0 There is positive train control ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control ) but that represents a significant investment in rails that are owned by companies... but it doesn't remove the responsibility of a human - it just reduces the spots where human error can cause problems.

Is there a particular reason they have to be so byzantine with sick time? Paid or not 30 days heads up seems useless. Is there that much of a logistical issue replacing missing operators?

rtkwe 4y ago

Railways like the airlines need people in particular places at given times to drive their trains. Having any slack requires having slack and fast transport to get on call replacements into position. That costs money so they run as tight as inhumanly possible to squeeze more profitable work out of their employees at their expense.

legitster 4y ago
It doesn't seem that expensive to just always have an extra staffer scheduled on routes. Ocean shippers are just as profit-seeking as train companies and they don't mind keeping lots of extra crew around. Are there artificial barriers to hiring that train companies have to deal with?
- rtkwe 4y ago
  The issue is you could need the spare people at a lot more locations that are far more geographically dispersed than a cargo ship and they're all better paid than your generic seaman, a lot of workers on ships are from much lower COL countries and get paid less accordingly.
- mike50 4y ago
  That's because they can employ workers from various low income nations (especially if English speaking) for cheap. No pesky environmental regulations for the fuel quality and resulting pollution either. Compare the labor costs of shipping from one us port direct to another us port (requires a us crew) and a foreign port to a us port.

shagie 4y ago

As I understand it... they are the industry is trying to run as close to 100% workforce utilization as possible. There are about 115,000 people that are part of the freight rail unions. Additionally, a number of these systems require a certain number of people to be able to go. It doesn't do much good to have one person show up to move stock around if the other people needed are out for some reason. Picture the challenge of "ok, we want to go from 7 sick days a year to 14". That's 7 more days, which means that it needs to hire 4% more staff which amounts to hiring another 5000 people. In today's labor market, this is hard. Additionally, that's still running the 100% work utilization. Lets put some slack into that... now instead of 5000 more people you need, you need 15,000 more people. Parts of this industry are licensed - you can't just go hire people off the street to fill those spots. They need between three months and year of on the job training and then some spots are under the licensure of the Federal Railroad Administration.

ct0 4y ago
Im surprised they haven't loosed restrictions or threatened the union with more AI driving implementations. I have no idea how it works but for a majority of the route I could imagine that theyre "self-driving" in some places.
- mike50 4y ago
  The unions were already complaining about the elimination of support personnel on the train due to safely.
- shagie 4y ago
  They can't loosen the requirements for licensure or implement AI driving any more than you could do that for an airline today. Would you be ok with having having people who haven't been licensed as pilots flying? Or only having one pilot flying ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33937973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33937973 )? With a 'self driving' train that's a mile long... what happens when you have a train derailment that doesn't sever the cords and things go wrong? https://youtu.be/YQMZPB_rVJ0 https://youtu.be/YQMZPB_rVJ0 There is positive train control ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control ) but that represents a significant investment in rails that are owned by companies... but it doesn't remove the responsibility of a human - it just reduces the spots where human error can cause problems.