(The following story by George Pyle appeared on the Buffalo News website on April 27, 2009.)
BUFFALO, N.Y. — In what a local union leader calls the culmination of years of “lies and false hopes” – and a bet against Buffalo’s industrial future – CSX Transportation Monday announced plans to sharply curtail operations at its Frontier Yard switching operations and lay off some 250 workers.
A company spokesman would not confirm the number of workers to be laid off. CSX spokesman Robert Sullivan released a brief statement that said, “CSX expects significant reductions at Frontier, but that there are no plans to close the yard at this time. While a small number of reductions will begin immediately, the larger number is not yet determined.”
The statement from the Florida-based transportation giant said that daily traffic through the rail yard, now some 800 cars a day, will be cut in half, and half of those cars being moved from Buffalo will still be processed in New York State.
Dave Kellner is president of Local 2020 of the Transport Workers Union. He said the action is an abrupt reversal of what seemed to the be the rail operators plans as recently as six weeks ago, Kellner said, when machinery and crews to upgrade the rail yard’s tracks and switching equipment were moved into place, only to be pulled out again a few weeks later.
“We used to be one of the busiest terminals around,” Kellner said. But, he said, ever since CSX took over operations from Conrail in 1998, with announced plans to expand local operations and add an upgraded fueling facility, the company’s interest in the Frontier Yards has seemed only to deteriorate. The fuel plant was built in Ohio instead and other improvements never came to pass.
“It’s been nothing but lies and false hopes,” Kellner said. “Somebody needs to be held accountable.”
Frontier Yard now employees some 800 workers, Kellner said, and some 250 of them are expected to lose their jobs in the next few weeks. Another 125 workers had already been furloughed in recent weeks, he said.
The yard functions as a switching and sorting facility for the CSX, breaking up trains and recombining them according to their destination. Cars passing through the yard are also subjected to multiple safety checks during their transit there.
The plan to service fewer trains in Buffalo reflects a belief by CSX officials that Buffalo has little future as an industrial center, Kellner said, something already reflected in the reduced business at the General Motors plan in the Town of Tonawanda and at the local American Axle & Manufacturing plant.
Acknowledging that Monday’s announcement was not the complete closing of the yard, as had been feared in recent weeks, Kellner said, “Does that just mean they are keeping the night watchman on?”