BEECH GROVE, Ind. — According to the Indianapolis Star, workers at the nation’s largest Amtrak repair yard are being called back to work, but their employer faces an uncertain future.
The Republican takeover of Congress doesn’t bode well for Amtrak, a quasi-governmental company that hasn’t turned a profit in its 31-year history.
Its fate will lie in the hands of Republicans such as U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who want to cut off federal subsidies to the nearly $3 billion-a-year passenger rail enterprise — or privatize the entire system, even though Amtrak was created in the wake of private rail company failures.
McCain, who takes over in January as chairman of the Senate committee that oversees Amtrak, particularly wants to do away with long-distance lines that can lose as much as $200 per passenger.
Amtrak’s local work force says its employer finally may be turning itself around. If so, that could help it find support in Congress.
The company’s spring reorganization, the second major corporate restructuring in less than a year, freed up more money to do what Amtrak’s central Indiana workers do best: overhaul worn or wrecked rail cars and diesel locomotives.
Forty-six of 228 workers laid off in February from the Beech Grove maintenance shops have been called back in recent weeks, bringing total employment there to about 560.
“Our financial situation gets better week to week,” said Lew Wood, the sprawling rail yard’s superintendent.
Each week, workers at the Beech Grove yard overhaul a diesel locomotive and refurbish 17 train cars. And they do it with an annual budget that could hit $130 million this year, with Congress’ approval.
Workers no longer worry that their next shift could be their last, but Amtrak officials say getting shortchanged by Congress on this year’s $1.2 billion subsidy request could lead to a shutdown as early as spring.
In the meantime, Amtrak is slowly recalling laid-off workers in central Indiana to rehab damaged sleepers, its most profitable rail car. Each accommodates up to 45 people and can generate $1 million a year in revenue.
And, if Midwestern states and other regions can jump-start passenger rail service through efforts already under way, the work force’s skills could be in even higher demand, according to state transportation officials.
That would suit Mike Jeffries just fine.
“I want to retire from here,” the 42-year-old supervisor said as he gestured toward workers repairing locomotive and car wheel assemblies.
Laboring in turn-of-the-century buildings on a 106-acre campus, these $16- to $20-an-hour workers have adjusted to Amtrak’s ups and downs — mostly putting up with downs.
“In the railroad industry, you cannot find a more talented group of employees,” said Wood, who was impressed by how skilled his workers were after he arrived here from California 11/2 years ago.
Half of the out-of-commission coach, dining and sleeper cars that pass through were built in 1978 by the Budd Co. in Chicago. Budd went belly-up not long after the cars were delivered, forcing workers in Beech Grove to fashion replacement metal, plastic and wood parts from scratch.
The average worker’s age is 50; the oldest is 82. Those laid off are mostly in their 40s. Amtrak’s almost yearly budget woes have given younger trade workers — electricians, sheet metal workers, pipe fitters, machinists, boilermakers and blacksmiths — few incentives or opportunities to break into the ranks.
In November, veteran workers were relieved when 16 employees were called back. Thirty more came back this month.
“There weren’t a lot of jobs out there,” said Jim Troxell, 56, the yard’s assistant superintendent.
Mike Lawrence, 50, has been on the job a week after nearly 10 months of unemployment. He was laid off once before during his 15-year career in the yard’s dirty, dusty, smoky buildings.
To him, layoffs have been a part of life with Amtrak, a life he loves.
“The possibility you might get laid off is always in the wind out here if you’re an hourly employee,” said Lawrence, a pipe fitter and sheet metal worker.
Lawrence said he cast about for different work while he was off. But he couldn’t really imagine doing anything else.
He said the Beech Grove yard has been fortunate to have political supporters who include U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh and Rep. Julia Carson, both Democrats.
But Bayh and Carson will be in the minority next year, when Congress takes up legislation that will chart the passenger line’s future.
The debate over reauthorizing Amtrak was supposed to have taken place this year, after Amtrak failed to meet a mandate to break even. But federal lawmakers opted not to tackle a potential reduction in rail service during an election year.
Only a last-minute government bailout prevented the system from shutting down entirely this summer.
The Amtrak system carries an average of 65,000 passengers a day, half of whom travel the Northeast corridor between Washington and Boston.
Amtrak’s $1.2 billion budget request for 2003, which Congress will take up in early January, includes about $20 million to repair damaged trains, said Kathleen Cantillon, a Chicago-based Amtrak spokeswoman.
That’s about $150 million more than last year’s subsidy — and twice what the Bush administration has proposed. Amtrak has used more than $25 billion in federal subsidies since its creation in 1971.
If Amtrak’s latest budget request is approved, 130 more workers could be called back at Beech Grove. Amtrak will need them to repair 21 damaged double-decker Superliner cars during the next 18 months; the first have been promised for delivery in April.
“Beech Grove has always been important to Amtrak,” Cantillon said. “It’s our major repair shop, and we’re at a point where we can’t defer maintenance any more.”
Thanks to Congress, the Beech Grove repair facility no longer pays property taxes; its final payment came last year.
That cost-cutting move meant local taxpayers had to come up with about $1 million more a year for city services and public schools. Nonetheless, local officials say the union jobs and rail yard’s impact on the economy are worth preserving.
Beech Grove grew up around the yard Amtrak now owns, said Mayor J. Warner Wiley. And Wiley doesn’t want the maintenance facility shuttered.
At its height, in the 1940s, the yard employed about 5,000 workers under different ownership. Three or four years ago, there were 1,200 Amtrak employees. Today, there are half that number.