Title is self explanatory, please support our fellow railroad workers if/when they decide to go on strike, they have such a hard job that they must fulfill on a daily basis.
Most people don’t understand just how horrid it can get working for a railway as a conductor/engineer, being on call 24/7 and only have 2 hours or less to get to their assigned train can really take a toll on a human body, I don’t think most of us could handle having to be called at 2, 3, or 4am and being told they have to run a train to a certain destination, aside from that they can be working on moving a train for up to 12 hours, it they railways had it their way they would have them working for longer but it’s a maximum of 12 hours under federal law, with them needing at least 10 hours of rest after their work before they can be called again.
Most of these conductors/engineers have to work under these conditions for 4-5 days a week, aside from their upwards of 12 hours shifts, depending on the territory they’re in, they can be called almost immediately back in for another train or can spend upwards of 30-40 hours away from home because there isn’t a train for them to work with. Which means for conductors/engineers with families they can be missing very valuable time with their family due to them being stuck away from home for so long.
Another major issue that is going on within our private freight railway systems is that the infrastructure of the systems themselves is suffering, due to freight railway companies laying off thousands of maintenance workers across their system, the health of rail infrastructure has been slightly declining, rail cars are getting inspected less frequently which can lead to them breaking apart from a train while the train is moving, have seen this happen in real time just over a week ago. The rail lines that trains move on can and do deteriorate which can lead to issues with how fast trains can move, which leads to less efficient freight movement. Most of the money that railways make goes to bonus for investors or stock buy backs, BNSF, the largest shipper of intermodal (Amazon, UPS, FedEx packages) in the US is not a publicly traded company that rakes in billions of dollars a year is not publicly traded, meaning that only a certain amount of people profit very heavily from the railroad company.
Another major issue is the type of trains these conductors/engineers move, between all class 1 rail companies (BNSF, UP, CSX, NS, Ect..) they can be called to move trains upwards of 16,000 feet, that’s 3.03 miles of freight being moved all at once, granted 16,000 foot trains used to be very rare, but due to the implementation of PSR (Precision Scheduled Railroading) rail companies now combine trains so that they can move more with less crews which increases their profits, and these very, very long trains paired with aging rail infrastructure makes moving these trains very risky to move and more prone to a accident/derailment, through my hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, I’ve regularly caught trains at a length of 10, 11, & 12,000 feet+, on Friday I caught a train that was 11,000 feet long, then on Saturday morning (today) I caught another 11,000 foot train moving through the city today, the longer the train, the more risker it is to move it.
In conclusion, please support your fellow rail workers, from the conductors to the engineers to the track maintainers, they’re tired, exhausted, understaffed, and overworked, all due to the need that the owners of these railroad companies must continually expand their profits, they have a very hard work life, they must have the 15 days of paid sick leave they need, they deserve it 100%.