SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — As corporate profits plunged amid last year’s recession, Union Pacific Corp. was riding its rails to record revenues and income, the Deseret News reports.
On Friday, at its annual shareholders meeting at Salt Lake’s Little America Hotel, Union Pacific executives reported a 15 percent gain in net income to $966 million in 2001 on nearly $12 billion of operating revenue, a 1 percent rise in total revenue over the previous year.
Both figures set all-time records for the 140-year-old company.
And the railroad’s bottom line outpaced what many other companies reported last year considering after-tax corporate profits across the nation fell nearly 16 percent, according to a report by the U.S. Commerce Department.
“The railroad did have an outstanding year,” said Ike Evans, Union Pacific president and chief operating officer, citing the company’s diversity of business units and improved customer service as reasons.
Despite the glowing report, some employees and shareholders at Friday’s meeting pointed to low morale among workers and objected to the company’s push to implement remote-control operations in switchyards, where rail cars can be moved with no one in the locomotive.
“What we are worried about is the safety of it. How reliable is the signal from the box to the engine?” asked Pat McDaniels, an engineer who has worked for the railroad for 30 years and is member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the union that opposes the shift.
McDaniels and other union members believe the remote-control devices will result in lost productivity as ground conductors direct locomotives during loading and unloading.
“It seems odd they would count the engineer out,” said Mark Bleckert, president of Division 222 of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.
But Richard Davidson, Union Pacific’s chairman and chief executive officer, said the technology has been in use in Canada for several years, enhancing safety records.
“I know it can be done safely and efficiently,” Davidson told shareholders.
Other shareholders questioned why the company was laying off employees amid record profits. The work force was reduced by 2,000 employees last year, and this year, Davidson said, the current work force of nearly 48,000 employees will be cut another 2 percent.
“We are trying to do it through attrition,” Davidson said.
The Omaha-based company (incorporated in Utah) is divided into two main operating units: rail and trucking. Its 33,000 miles of rail lines span 23 states, conveying everything from frozen fruits and vegetables to coal and lumber.
Shares of Union Pacific closed on Friday at $57.36, up 74 cents during the day. The price has ranged from $43.39 to $65.15 in the past year.