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I am not pontificating on causes of employee shortages. I am telling the facts in my recent and past experience as a railroad manager. You are correct that the potential employee pool is shallow to begin with but the drug test is a major issue at least where I am. Doing any kind of railway safety inspections including but not limited to cab signal and PTC requires employees including myself to submit to random drug tests and pre-employment drug screens. Many applicants reject the job when they are told about the random drug tests. This has been getting worse over the last few years. When I worked for the P&W in 2014, again as a department manager I was frustrated by this.
The growing complexity and specialization of the Late Bronze Age political, economic, and social organization in Carol Thomas and Craig Conant's phrase[53] together made the organization of civilization too intricate to reestablish piecewise when disrupted. That could explain why the collapse was so widespread and able to render the Bronze Age civilizations incapable of recovery. The critical flaws of the Late Bronze Age are its centralization, specialization, complexity, and top-heavy political structure.
Maybe we should drop the drug tests.https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/global-hr/pages/us-drug-testing-rules.aspx"Let’s start with the fact that the United States is virtually alone in the developed world in permitting employment-at-will. What this means is that in most other countries, employers may terminate for cause only, or risk penalties and even lawsuits. Consider that in much of the rest of the developed world employment agreements are not only commonly used, they may even be desirable for employers. These two concepts alone can be a big surprise for employers who previously have not operated outside of U.S. borders."snip"Although our neighbor to the north, Canada, may appear to be very similar to the U.S., the Supreme Court of Canada recently held that the implementation of random alcohol testing for employees in safety-sensitive positions was an invasion of privacy and an invalid exercise of management rights. The Court held that without “evidence of enhanced safety risks, such as evidence of a general problem with substance abuse in the workplace,” such testing was an “unjustified affront to the dignity and privacy of employees,” and therefore impermissible."In other words, just because the workplace might be inherently dangerous due to the nature of the work (for example, manufacturing or construction), this fact alone does not justify random testing. While “reasonable suspicion” testing may be permissible under certain circumstances, employers should be sure to carefully document unsafe behavior and verifiable examples of drug or alcohol-related incidents."Drug and alcohol testing in Europe can also be tricky, where employees generally have greater privacy rights than in the U.S., and drug and alcohol testing may be seen as a violation of the employee’s basic right to privacy. Although employers and employees can generally set out the parameters of acceptable drug and alcohol testing through employment contracts, some countries, such as Belgium and Finland, prohibit the contracting away of basic privacy rights and may hold such contractual provisions to be invalid. In Poland and the Czech Republic, drug and alcohol testing is generally prohibited."Pre-employment screening is permissible in some countries (the United Kingdom), but is strictly limited in others. In France, for example, pre-employment drug-screening is generally prohibited unless an occupational physician recognizes and recommends such testing. In fact, drug and alcohol testing is strictly limited in most European countries, as well as many other countries around the world, including countries as diverse as Chile, Colombia and South Africa. Unjustified testing can result in fines, and even criminal sanctions in several European countries. "Jim
That statement is a load of horse dung.
I beg to differ. A few years ago when I got laid off, the railroad was hiring so I went for an interview. I passed that and was told to attend a job 'seminar' to explain the positions that were available. The personnel lady gave about a half-hour long spiel explaining the various jobs and then said that after the coffee break, there would be drug tests administered. When the break was over, 6 out of the 28 people who were there previously returned to the meeting room. Horse dung? I don't think so. By the way, I wasn't hired because I wore glasses.Doug
Run longer trains.
It's really beneficial to have all the professional railroaders here - we learn a ton from you guys. And I want to see a 14,700 ft train - that exceeds the passing siding behind my house on CSX!That said - I'll ask an ill informed but necessary question - how many accidents on railroads or any other mode of surface transportation are caused by drug use (outside alcohol which has well known effects)? My take is we started pee testing everyone due to perception, and now with worker shortages that perception is having serious negative economic impacts. Being a data guy I'd say we need to haul out the actual numbers. Seems to me the unions would support such a revisit as they could gain some new members. Railroad CEO's might well hate it, but at some point the lack of people to move the freight will make enough customers angry they will go to Congress with another data poor request. And congress being Congress they will "do something" which like pee testing may well be useless in addressing actual problems.And I say all this as a federal bureaucrat who can't smoke weed even if my state allows it and is subject to random pee test rules (never enforced even at hiring).
and I'd say 99 out of 100 are negative for both... and 99 out of 100 of those incidents are caused by human error / not following the rules.
Thanks @learmoia.SO reading you right Would suggest that the heavy emphasis on testing and the threat of testing isn't actually getting railroads anywhere, and may be one of several complicated factors in keeping trains moving. Makes one wonder if we need to keep this up.
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Topic: "rail industry is trying to do too much with too little" (Read 3674 times)
