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Trains Magazine 1967 November PRR vs car plane bus KCS & its passengers
Trains Magazine 1967 November
November 1967Volume 28 Number 1
NEWS - -3
PROFESSIONAL ICONOCLAST -5
RAILROAD NEWS PHOTOS8
TEAM NEWS PHOTOS -10
PRR VS. CAR, PLANE, BUS18
A PA POSTLUDE- -29
KCS AND ITS PASSENGERS - 40
Railway post office 50Running extra 56
Second section54Interchange57
COVER: Southern Pacific Alcos in twilight high in the Sierra. Photo tribute by. R. Steinheimer.
BOSSES VS. BROTHERHOODS
READERS and/or critics of our Professional Iconoclast [page 5] are in for a surprise this month, for the imperturbable Mr. Kneiling cites a problem for which he has no solution. Granted, it is the difficult, elusive, and emotional type of problem: a people problem -specifically, the import and consequences of those protection/attrition agreements between railroads and their employees which guarantee either crafts or employment until an individual's resignation, retirement, death, or dismissal for cause. Kneiling argues that this "attrition trap" implies a labor force that will not or cannot learn new skills and, in turn, an equivalently lackluster, up-from-the-ranks management.
If our columnist is not cynical, he is patently pessimistic about the availability of a solution short of industry insolvency.
Suppose for a starter we seek to determine the cause of the problem instead of disclaiming it.
First and perhaps foremost, railroads are an old industry, anything but space-age or glamorous, and moreover a business that has been in a decline since 1915 by one reputable estimate. Not a circumstance conducive to good morale.
Second, the railroad is by its very nature a far-flung, fragmentized operation - anything but an under-one-roof business. How does a Chicago HQ talk to and motivate the car clerk in Sioux City, the brakeman in Port Angeles, the agent in West Duluth, the section foreman in Harlowton?
Third, the rank and file remember that they and their fathers had to fight and fight hard for work safeguards and amenities, from Federal safety laws to automatic couplers to power reverse gears to water coolers. They're jealously protective about these gains and keenly aware of how they were acquired.
Fourth, employees suffer as much as, if not more than, anyone (and vice versa, ironically) from management's reluctance or inability to communicate. In person or by the printed page. Exception that proves the rule: Illinois Central Magazine's unique, without-rancor, picture-and-text report of the recent shoperafts strike from cause to pickets to settlement.
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