Management’s obsession with hitting a rigid, daily efficiency percentage has created a completely broken, circular game of finger-pointing. What’s worse is that these impossible metrics are actively creating an unsafe working environment.
Here is the daily reality: local foreman gives the crew a specific job assignment. The crew completes the assignment exactly as directed, but because the work assigned doesn't automatically equal management's "magic number" for the day, the foreman gets chewed out by their boss.
Instead of pushing back up the chain and explaining that the crew did exactly what they were told to do, middle management tries to point the blame directly on the craft to save their own skin.
The absurdity is off the charts. We are talking about the exact same foremen who assigned the work in the first place, and the exact same foremen who are sitting behind multiple high-def cameras running ops tests and watching our every single move. They see exactly what we are doing every minute of the shift, yet they still look us in the eye and ask why the numbers are low.
What the system completely ignores is reality. Nowhere in these calculations are we allowed to add to our time for things that are completely out of our control.
Our guess? Higher management is trying to figure out how to navigate away from traditional, publicized layoffs. By making up completely unrealistic performance metrics, they can stress people out or manufacture failures.
When the only logical answer we can give a foreman is, "You gave us the job, you tell us," it shows just how detached the metric system is from actual field operations. If you're going to manage by a spreadsheet to squeeze the craft, at least look out the window to see the unsafe environment you are building on the ground.
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@m8 that’s what happens when morale is totally sh-t and won’t be getting better any time soon.
We used to work with initiative and determination, we now work just enough to not get fired.
BNSF has cut until there really isn’t much left to cut, they are now cutting people that now have the financial means or backing that is resulting in a tremendous amount of legal pressure including targeting disabled vets for FMLA and VA appointment attendance, females of whom they already were severely lacking in the crafts, and the targeting of people of color….creating a perfect storm for a legal jack kn--e in Human Resources, as a court already stated a month ago as a warning to BNSF to stop trying to utilize the courts to violate workers rights and union agreements. It’s creating a powder keg in the department of labor and the department of health and human services, as law firms are starting to see the cracks, and are taking cases on pro bono , as it only takes a huge millions of dollar case to create a rainman situation in the rail industry, forcing a private railroad into bankruptcy to set a precedent. UP knows this as a public company, so inching BNSF off that financial cliff with false metrics, while leaving no margin for error or expansion, ultimately is going to result in the inevitable. Courts should step in along with the NTSB to prevent BNSF from taking preliminary steps to filing bankruptcy and creating a windfall for corporate, and stiffing debt holders, but I highly doubt anyone is thinking that far ahead.
UP already got caught fudging numbers it gives to BNSF to trigger layoffs in areas it needs workers, as soon as BNSF layoffs occur, up post jobs to be filled in those locations.
Typical. Use havelock for example broke records on car counts two years in a row as well as safety records and still wasn’t good enough. It don’t matter how good a place does they will cut heads to make numbers match the ole UP. Won’t be surprised if mechanical is cut yet again this year or early next year.