New President of Amtrak

[user 14106]

It's important to note the staffing troubles at Amtrak are not exclusively related to the furloughs and retirement incentives that were done. They have had a lot of turnover since. It's a workers job market right now and if one has a bad day it's not hard to quit get a new job almost the same day. And Amtrak is competing in a job market where the typical worker has different expectations about a work-life balance than what was tolerated by previous generations and even more so since the pandemic. Given the amount of travel and time away required by Amtrak especially OBS on the Long distance trains it's not surprising that craft is struggling.

 

[rs9]

It's important to note the staffing troubles at Amtrak are not exclusively related to the furloughs and retirement incentives that were done. They have had a lot of turnover since. It's a workers job market right now and if one has a bad day it's not hard to quit get a new job almost the same day. And Amtrak is competing in a job market where the typical worker has different expectations about a work-life balance than what was tolerated by previous generations and even more so since the pandemic. Given the amount of travel and time away required by Amtrak especially OBS on the Long distance trains it's not surprising that craft is struggling.

Agreed, and I think we're losing sight of several other factors. In the lead-up to the pandemic, did the U.S. have a surplus of skilled mechanical workers? I think that's a very relevant question.

Imagine you worked in one of Amtrak's shops and were laid off at the start of the pandemic - at a time of high uncertainty and social instability, with no end in sight (or no one knowing what the end looks like). You probably would feel some animosity to Amtrak, or whoever your employer was. It doesn't strike me as likely that these skilled workers were just going to come right back when Amtrak decided it needed them again - even ignoring the fact they likely had secured other employment.

So was there/is there a pool of skilled mechanical workers that was already out there just waiting for a chance like this? It seems the answer is no.

In my opinion, this is simply a reality of the way our economy, government and general public treat labor versus capital. We could have made a choice as a society that our goal during the pandemic was to help companies meet payroll, aka help out the vast majority of Americans. Instead, we handed out huge sums of taxpayer-funded money to the capital side of things with essentially little directive and let the layoffs happen anyways. Notably, countries like the UK and France attempted to help companies meet their payroll to avoid the exact scenario that we are in now.

We reap what we sow, but perhaps we can learn some lessons for the next crisis this country encounters.

 

[Dakota 400]

but perhaps we can learn some lessons for the next crisis this country encounters.

You are an optimist!

 

[rs9]

You are an optimist!

Haha no, just trying to not be overly negative. Having lived through unemployment in the Recession and learning exactly what the government was willing to do besides give gobs of cash to the companies that caused the Recession, I have no reason to think we'll ever change as a society.

But to stay on topic, I think we all just need to be patient and see what Amtrak does over the next year or so. Of course many of us are traveling, or trying to travel, on Amtrak now. But, my life isn't really "normal" yet in this pandemic era, and it will never return to what normal was before. Let's keep that in mind for Amtrak, too.

If anything, hopefully Amtrak's order of another 50 Siemens Chargers will quell those convinced the long distance network is being phased out of business...

 

[west point]

Here is part of the problem with airlines. the shortages of pilots is not linear over all pieces of equipment. That is especialy true for pilots in larger aircraft that were near retirement and took a buy out. It takes 2 - 3 months to qualify a pilot on a an aircraft that he has no experience. As well the airlines have to keep present crews qualified.

Depending on qualified equipment class room recurrent training takes 2 - 3 days once a year. Emergency evacuation takes another day including a dip into the life raft pool. Then you have the simular session that keeps new hires and, upgrades, & recurrent. Every 6 months for Captains and every year for co-pilots.

Then you have 2 days transportation for outlying crew bases to facility for each type of training. When time is up then your crewman can easily loose 10 days availability. Anyone furloughed for a year or more might even have to take longer days Also class rooms are limited to amount of persons and 7 hours class room per day. Then sometimes no qualified persons to instruct with same problem of no personnel..

 

[Metra Electric Rider]

Things like infrastructure maintenance are often contracted out so Amtrak not having the staff should not be a main obstacle.

But everybody has had staffing issues: I can tell you that contracting (as in building/construction) is short staffed, especially skilled trades and there is still a lot of absenteeism from Covid diagnosis and quarantining.

A bigger problem we have is that we don't have a good vocation training network at the secondary level where we could get fresh apprentices and journeymen for skilled mechanical trades.

 

[Metra Electric Rider]

Here is part of the problem with airlines. the shortages of pilots is not linear over all pieces of equipment. That is especialy true for pilots in larger aircraft that were near retirement and took a buy out. It takes 2 - 3 months to qualify a pilot on a an aircraft that he has no experience. As well the airlines have to keep present crews qualified.

Depending on qualified equipment class room recurrent training takes 2 - 3 days once a year. Emergency evacuation takes another day including a dip into the life raft pool. Then you have the simular session that keeps new hires and, upgrades, & recurrent. Every 6 months for Captains and every year for co-pilots.

Then you have 2 days transportation for outlying crew bases to facility for each type of training. When time is up then your crewman can easily loose 10 days availability. Anyone furloughed for a year or more might even have to take longer days Also class rooms are limited to amount of persons and 7 hours class room per day. Then sometimes no qualified persons to instruct with same problem of no personnel..

So true - even FA's (Flight Attendants) need to be qualified on the various aircraft.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Here is part of the problem with airlines. the shortages of pilots is not linear over all pieces of equipment. That is especialy true for pilots in larger aircraft that were near retirement and took a buy out. It takes 2 - 3 months to qualify a pilot on a an aircraft that he has no experience. As well the airlines have to keep present crews qualified.

Depending on qualified equipment class room recurrent training takes 2 - 3 days once a year. Emergency evacuation takes another day including a dip into the life raft pool. Then you have the simular session that keeps new hires and, upgrades, & recurrent. Every 6 months for Captains and every year for co-pilots.

Then you have 2 days transportation for outlying crew bases to facility for each type of training. When time is up then your crewman can easily loose 10 days availability. Anyone furloughed for a year or more might even have to take longer days Also class rooms are limited to amount of persons and 7 hours class room per day. Then sometimes no qualified persons to instruct with same problem of no personnel..

And your point is, in relation to Amtrak?
It takes a whole lot longer than 2-3 months to qualify engineers on their portion of routes. And they, too, have to take classes and requalify.