(The following article by Lori Rotenberk was posted on the Boston Globe website on February 20.)
CHICAGO — Jeff Lee was working in sales for a Kansas City health club until he felt the romance of the rails calling to him, like whistles echoing along the tracks that crisscross America.
“I wasn’t really happy in my career, and when I heard about the railroads hiring so many people it made me stop and think about my relatives who had worked the rails and how happy they had been,” said Lee, a 24-year-old who studied communications at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. “It seemed right for me.”
Lee, who lives with his wife in Lawrence, is among an estimated 80,000 new workers that the American Association of Railroads expects the nation’s seven top freight haulers to bring aboard over the next six years.
At a time when the nation’s job picture remains bleak, a surge in retirements under the amended Railroad Retirement Act, as well as sharp increase in business for the top railroads over the past five years, has created the industry’s largest hiring spree in more than two decades.
With the current economy and high unemployment numbers, the railways anticipate a deluge of applicants for positions as railyard workers, computer specialists, welders, executives, conductors, and engineers. Salaries start above $40,000, and the peak pay for engineers is about $110,000. Filling these positions, despite the attractive benefits, will be difficult, rail executives said.
For Lee, who graduates this week from a five-week training program at the National Academy of Railroad Science, a rail job means security. The academy, located in Overland Park, Kan., is financed by the Fort Worth-based Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Company and is used as a recruitment center for other US railroads. The academy boasts a 98.9 percent placement.
“I think it is fair to say that finding these people is getting more difficult,” said Kathryn Blackwell, spokeswoman for Union Pacific Railway, headquartered in Omaha. Blackwell said rail workers are often on call and required to spend long stretches of time away from home. “Younger people today are far more concerned about quality of life issues than previous generations.”
“We figure that we will have to screen at least 10 applicants to get one hire, and we are trying everything to get the word out about our openings,” Blackwell said. Union Pacific’s goal is to add at least 2,000 hires through June and another 1,200 during the last six months of this year.
The situation opened up positions in train service — setting up and putting the cars together and dismantling the trains.
Brakemen and conductors are needed, and the demand for licensed engineers has created a small bidding war. Engineers only receive their training from working their way up from the position of conductor.
Mike McKillip, a 32-year-old former farm worker in Washington state, is training in Salt Lake City to become a Union Pacific conductor.
“I was working as a manager on a wheat and green-pea farm and I read about the hiring in our local newspaper,” McKillip said. “I have a college education and a degree in criminal justice, and I just wanted to improve myself. I have a wife and two kids, and I did this because I think I will enjoy it, and I wanted to better our life.”
Large cities and major rail hubs such as Chicago and Kansas City have among the highest number of openings. Needs are great in Texas, Kansas City, and San Francisco, as well as in small towns throughout America.
Other major railroad companies that are hiring include Jacksonville, Fla.’s CXS Transportation, Virginia’s Norfolk Southern Railway Company, and Montreal’s Canadian National Railway Company, which runs throughout the United States.
“There aren’t that many engineers available. A licensed engineer from another company is welcome,” said Blackwell. “They will be hired outright.”
So dire is the need for locomotive engineers and conductors that earlier this month Union Pacific left some of its trains in Oregon sitting “dead” on the tracks awaiting replacement crews.
A targeted television, radio, and direct-mail campaign by the railroad academy is to begin next month. It will portray the rail industry as extremely high tech, with state-of-the-art engines similar to aircraft cockpits and fiber-optic computers that handle, for example, 33,000 miles of rail for 2,500 trains riding that system daily.
Criteria for hires and the type of person desired run the gamut. Applicants must be at least 18 years old. Most railroad companies prefer candidates who are accustomed to working outdoors — emergency responders, firefighters, or police officers, for example.
Two months ago, 42-year-old Jeffrey Jenkins of Monet, Mo., worked for a playground equipment manufacturer. There were no opportunities for advancement or better pay.
“I heard about the railroads hiring, and I decided to switch careers,” said Jenkins, who is also attending the railroad academy. “I have a wife and two kids, and right now we are living off of my savings. Why railroading? For the retirement benefits and the pay. Right now I’m studying to be a conductor, and in two months I’ve doubled my pay.”
The main question is how the railroads failed to prepare for the retirement fallout. Industry executives admit to being unprepared and cite the ever-changing nature of the business, and the national economy, among the culprits.
At one time one of the predominant US industries, railroads employed 1.8 million people in the 1940s. The arrival in the 1950s of the diesel engine led to job cuts. The birth of interstate highways and the success of commercial airlines “caused rail business to decline, and railroads became the sick man of American industry,” said William Poulos, spokesperson for the Railroad Retirement Board in Chicago.
Deregulation in the 1970s, followed by massive downsizing and the past decade’s mergers and acquisitions, strengthened those companies involved. Today’s increase of sales in autos, building materials, consumer goods, fuel, and a surge in freight trains now hauling truck trailers packed with merchandise has once again made railroading a profitable business.
“The ’70s were a low point for the industry as that is when 25 percent of the rail track mileage operated under bankruptcy protection,” said Steve Forsberg, a Burlington Northern Santa Fe spokesman. “It spent most of the 1980s rationalizing itself to fit what it still had in terms of a traffic base.”