CSX crew callers butchering old Conrail agreements

[Anonymous]

Off topic but close, is NS more along the lines of employee owned/shared or in the least big on offering stock back to employees? What is the structure like with CSX? I ask because my brother works for a local paper that was ESOP and they whole building was pro-company and seemed to be a great place to work/retire. They got bought out and are now part of a mega corp and the whole morale theme is get in you 8 and go home. I think I remember reading how NS people actually enjoy their job, while CSX employees are on the other end of the spectrum.

[MP173]

This is a great example of a company which is MORE concerned about cutting or containing costs, rather than providing service to the customer.

jchoochoo...I didnt understand your concern in the original post. Could you lay it out a bit slower for me?

thanks,

ed

[Anonymous]

Yes, managers are encouraged to try to axe agreements and ignore union penalty claims. I may be entitled to two days pay because I worked on two trains in seperate directions, but good luck getting that claim paid. It's even hard to earn overtime out there without getting bird-dogged. I worked a remote job on 3rd shift regular all winter and if I wasn't off the property in 8 hours I'd questioned by the trainmaster and he'd complain about paying me overtime. It's not my fault there's more work than what I can handle in 8 hours! Not to mention my switchman and I had 2 yrs combined service, so we're not exactly going to be as efficient as an old head crew. I'd have to say there is pressure on the trainmasters, yardmasters, etc from somebody higer up trying to save a few bucks. All they end up doing is killing morale. Jobs that require a lot of work and switching will always have overtime, unfortuantely the company treats overtime like the plague.
So, I have a great example of a job that I dispatch that gets overtime daily. The trainmaster bird-dogged the regular crew so much they split. Now, there is an extraboard crew on there every day and the company wonders why the work doesn't get done!!! I thought it was all about the customers! As long as the customers are serviced properly I could care less about overtime. I think there is a major flaw in somebody's management style. Making your workforce the enemy and tyring to nickle and dime them to death is not the answer! Even as a dispatcher, I'm still getting into arguments with the assignement chief (scheduling dude) about what overtime I'm entilted to, etc. I know he doesn't want to argue with all of us for fun, there's gotta be somebody telling him to find ways to save money.

***THIS IS NOT THE ANSWER SENIOR MANAGEMENT!!! TRY FOCUSING ON THE CUSTOMER FOR ONCE!!!*****

Ahhh, I feel better now.

[soapbox][soapbox][soapbox][soapbox][#wstupid][#dots][:-^][swg][yeah]

[zapp]

Desprite times call for desprite measures. To me it sounds as though CSX is becoming extremely desprite to get their trains moving so they can stand in front of their stockholders and say "see how good we are doing now,that other bad stuff is all behind us!" Too bad they step on their employees to do it.

I'm sure the word came down from the very top. But it was probably really vague something like..."Get those *** trains running..." then some it rolls down hill to a Regional manager who drills the CMS managers who in turn drill the crew callers.Next thing you know ...

[JoeKoh]

Ive heard stories from both ns and csx that conrail people are being treated rough.its too bad to loose that much experience in running former conrail territory.I hope it works out for you.
stay safe
joe

[tree68]

I'm not defending anybody, and I don't deal with crew callers, but it's possible that some mini-god in the lower levels of management is driving this. Which is to say that it's not necessarily the corporate policy, and may truly be in violation of the agreements. Unless someone calls them down on it, they're probably chuckling over it and grousing about how those former Conrail crews are always screwing up their day.

[daveklepper]

And I thought that CSX was starting to get its act together!

[Anonymous]

I find this most interesting. It seems the main difference between CSX and NS in this regard is that the NS did this stuff right from the split. For one thing we lost the benefit of the Conrail Agreements on split day when we either got stuck with the lousy Southern Agreement or the worse Nickel Plate Agreement. Things have actually slowly improved since. Not without MANY arguments with crew callers, managers and others though...

LC

[Anonymous]

You're not alone. I had quite a few run ins myself with crew management. I was called to work a local that no one was really qualified on because the regular man never laid off. Well, I get called and ask for a pilot. The caller says he's skipping me and then I get called on another train a few hours later. I return home to notice I've been cut off the extra board, not qualified on all jobs per CSX crew manager. I didn't refuse the work, I just wanted a dang pilot! I had to get a TM, my local chariman, and then call a crew management supervisor and argue with him for a hour. I feel your pain!

[Anonymous]

I am an engineer on the former beloved Conrail territory, and it always seems like that the crew callers in Jacksonville FL. are just taking all our agreements and throwing them out the window. For example, last night was the day before my 1 rest day I get a week. My agreement states that if a rest day starts at 0001 hours, them employee going on their rest day is not to be called after 2000 hours. Well they called me at 2002 hours and i first ended up getting miscalled, which is a serious offense with CSX. I ended calling up the crew manager, and after a 20 minute argument with him they changed it to refused to work. This is now a permanent mark on my record removed only by appeal through local arbitration through my union rep. They had no right to give me a negative comment at all. This is happening on all former Conrail. And Jacksonville based management wonders why a lot of former Conrail employees hate CSX. It just goes to show that you can not run a northern railroad from Florida.