re: Somebody Explain The Potential Rail Strike

"Perhaps I am more mentally challenged than you anticipated because I still don’t understand most of what you just wrote."

We get this a lot, lingo and sayings that don't translate.

Road jobs, moving trains cross country are called "pool turns", and almost always work on call, with no scheduled days off. My example, I will take a train from Argentine Yard, KS to Galesburg, IL, that 281 miles. It's a great trip if I actually make it under that 12 hours, if not, we either secure the train, or a relief crew comes out to relieve us... Then ot the "Away from Home Terminal", the RR puts us up in a local hotel and we federal rest out, so we can perform service back to home terminal, this rest must be 10 hours undisturbed... my last trip i laid at the hotel 25.5 hours, we do go on held asaw pay after 16 hours. I had a 1130 trip home, So I was gone away from home for ~48 hours... The RR provides lodging and we get around $18 for a meal allowance after the 16th hour...

"60-70 guys on these two boards, only 4 a day are allowed to layoff with a single VAC or PLD day. So, if you need off for any reason, only recourse is to layoff "non-compensated" which eats into those points"

Here is the problem with this, those 4 days go to the seniority, you need the weekend to go johney baseball tourny, or your Daughters wedding and you weren't able to get pre-approved compensated time off, you had 30 points, a Fri/SAT/SUN just ate up 11 points, it will take you 6 weeks straight, of NO layoffs to earn those points back.

There are dozens of combinations on how to get dismissed with this policy, after 28 years of being in no trouble of any kind, one goofed up, unlucky week could find me terminated...

What we want, i predictable time off, more effort into running trains during windows or time frames so we can be rested...

I 100% guarantee you, half the trains running across this country tonight, have one or both crew members get a Suprise call for that train, not thinking they were going to work for 6-10 hour.... we've had several derailments in last couple of years were head ends of trains missed eash other by a few car lengths, statically, it's eventually going swing the other way...