(The following story by Patrick Lester appeared on The Morning Call website on March 16.)
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — It’s a classified ad that would make Alex Berisha drool: 12-hour work days; heavy lifting in all weather; required weekend, holiday and on-call shifts; up to 18 months of intense training required.
The 24-year-old Phillipsburg, N.J. man’s dream job: ”I want to operate a train. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”
Berisha is holding out for a locomotive engineering job rather than making use of the television production degree he earned from Northampton County Community College in 2005.
He could have his pick of positions in an industry in urgent need of new workers in Pennsylvania and beyond amid a rail line revival that began earlier this decade.
Nationally, freight-hauling railroad companies are expected to hire 80,000 new employees — many of them engineers and conductors — over the next six years as they try to replenish an aging workforce depleted by retirements. Demand for freight-hauling is expected to increase 67 percent over the next 20 years because of rising fuel prices that make train transport more economical and because of a rise in international trade, according to the Association of American Railroads.
The prize awaiting aspiring locomotive engineers: a starting hourly wage in the neighborhood of $30 to $35 and a $23,000 per-year benefit package.
Railroad workers at the nation’s largest companies earn an average salary of $61,895, the railroad association says. Engineers earn $75,162 on average and conductors $67,128.
Despite the good pay and benefits, there hasn’t been a mad rush to fill those spots, which are notorious for their long work days and demanding labor.
”A lot of people would like to have a straight 9 to 5 job and the railroad is not 9 to 5,” said Tom White, an Association of American Railroads spokesman. ”We’re a 24-7 assembly line. The hours are irregular. Snow is not going to stop us.”
Mark Mattis, 45, a training specialist for New Jersey Transit, said his company has been getting ”a lot of 20-somethings” in its training program. He said the program also attracts many retired firefighters, police officers, airline pilots and truck drivers.
”You’re not going to go out there and get a job that will pay you what they will pay you here,” Mattis said.
An introductory railroad training course that was scheduled to start at Bucks County Community College this month was scrapped because only one student — Berisha — signed up.
A video introducing prospective employees to the job on Norfolk Southern Corp.’s Web site doesn’t sugarcoat things. A conductor on the video warns that workers have to be prepared to go to work on 90 minutes’ notice, regardless of the weather conditions. They can work away from home days at a time and can expect a crimp in their social life. Some jobs require six to 18 months of training.
”There’s a lot of responsibility,” Mattis said. ”When you drive a car, you have stop signs and speed limit signs. When you operate trains, there are no signs out there. It’s a $50 million piece of equipment you’re operating at 125 mph and 1,000 people on board. And you have to be on time.”
Mattis, a 14-year engineer, said recruits are in a classroom for eight to 10 hours a day during seven months or more and studying as many as three hours nightly.
Nearly 700 people have enrolled in the company’s training program since 1987 and about half of them dropped out, he said.
”Because our workforce is 87 percent unionized, seniority plays a role,” said Rudy Husband, a spokesman for Norfolk Southern, which has key terminals in Allentown and Bethlehem. ”When people start out, they’re not working the best assignments.”
About half of Norfolk Southern’s 30,000 employees will be eligible for retirement within the next five to seven years. The company had nearly 300 job openings listed on its Web site last week.
”We’ve been in hiring mode for the last four to five years,” Husband said. ”We certainly spend a lot of time on college campuses. We work with just about any job placement firm that’s available. We’re really leaving no stone unturned in getting people.”
Norfolk Southern, which has a 22-state railroad network, isn’t unique.
An industry that reached its peak of nearly 1.7 million employees in 1944 and had a half-million workers in 1980 was down to about 237,000 in 2006, according to the Association of American Railroads. In 2006, the railroad had more retirees collecting benefits from the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board (279,500) than active workers (236,900) according to the retirement board.
But it’s not only the aging workforce that’s driving up the demand.
Last year was one of the busiest years for freight-hauling railroad companies, second only to 2006, White said. Class I Railroads, the seven largest freight haulers in the nation, saw their combined net income increase from $2.9 billion in 2004 to $6.5 billion in 2006, the Association of American Railroads says.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that railroads have spent $10 billion to expand tracks and operations since 2000 and are planning $12 billion more in upgrades.
”You also have a run-up in fuel costs,” White said. ”Rail is three or more times more fuel-efficient than a truck. The increase in fuel costs hits trucks harder than it hits rail. Also, a factor in all of this is the increase in international trade, particularly imports coming from Asia.”
Berisha, now a part-timer on the New Hope & Ivyland Railroad, hopes he’ll be able to take a railroad course this fall to help him get accepted into a railroad company’s training program. Bucks County Community College plans to offer a course in the fall.
Berisha, who acknowledges railroad jobs probably don’t appeal to most people, doesn’t understand why he was the only person willing to pay for a semester course.
”I guess a lot of people don’t realize how vital the industry is to the country these days,” he said.