(The following story by John R. Pulliam appeared on the Galesburg Register-Mail website on January 31, 2009.)
GALESBURG, Ill. — Although the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. reported Jan. 21 plans to reduce its workforce by about 2,500 employees during the first quarter of 2009 — across its entire system — a BNSF spokesman said Friday that most of the layoffs have already taken place. The railroad has about 41,000 employees.
Steve Forsberg said about 2,000 employees have been laid off, leaving about 500 to be furloughed by the end of the first quarter. He said layoffs began late last year. He said the company has “been reluctant to give specific local numbers” because of the seniority system within the union crafts.
What makes breaking the numbers down difficult, Forsberg said, is that an employee in another area given a lay-off notice can “bump” an employee with less seniority. For instance, an employee based in Nebraska could bump someone in Galesburg, meaning a local employee would be out of work, but the total employment numbers would not change.
By the same token, a Galesburg employee who is laid off could take the same action and could end up continuing to work somewhere else on the BNSF system.
“Theoretically, if we furloughed 10 in one local and 10 employees from another local came in and bumped 10 less-senior employees, you would have 20” (local employees out of work),” Forsberg said.
BNSF had a little more than 1,100 employees in Galesburg at the end of 2008. The operations here are part of the Chicago Division. Five percent of 1,100 is 55, but Galesburg could attract more outside employees because, along with Kansas City, Kan., and Barstow, Calif., it has one of the three largest classification yards on the BNSF system.
“The most accurate thing for us to do is talk about those (laid off) within the whole system,” Forsberg said, because the unions, rather than the railroad, control the bumping of one employee by another. “For the most part, the numbers have been fairly uniform across our network. Five percent is on a network basis. The actual number from one terminal to the next will vary.”
Forsberg said the railroad did not attempt to provide a projection of 2009 freight volume in the fourth quarter report, because of the uncertainty of the economy.
“I think everyone is focused on what Congress and governments around the world are trying to do to deal with the credit issue,” Forsberg said.
In the November/December issue of BNSF’s Railway magazine, Matthew K. Rose, the railroad’s president and CEO, wrote “Looking ahead to 2009, we know we will see continued economic decline, though we are still uncertain about how severe it may be.”
Rose said BNSF is continuing to reduce expenses, capital spending and hiring “while continuing to make the investments necessary to run a strong and well-maintained railroad.”
He wrote that there will be no merit increases in 2009 for salaried employees, with the exception of certain first-line supervisors.
“Given business levels, we also will be forced to furlough some of our scheduled employees,” Rose wrote.
Forsberg also talked about the investments that will be made this year.
“The good news is our company announced a very strong maintenance capital budget that they continue to institute to maintain tracks and right-of-way and buy new locomotives,” he said.
On Jan. 21, BNSF announced a capital commitment program of $2.7 billion; $1.9 billion to “refresh track, signal systems, structures and freight cars, and to upgrade technologies.”
The company plans to buy about 350 locomotives at a cost of about $675 million. The new locomotives are expected to be about 15 percent more fuel efficient than those they are replacing.