Rail safety hindered by favoritism?

[ThoughtCriminal]

"For Railroads and the Safety Overseer, Close Ties"

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/national/07rail.html?ex=1100844305&ei=1&en=ed2de38379ac122f

<snip>
Federal inspectors were clearly troubled by what they had been seeing in recent years at Union Pacific. According to their written accounts, track defects repeatedly went uncorrected; passenger trains were sent down defective tracks at speeds more than four times faster than were deemed safe; and engines and rail cars were dispatched in substandard condition

Soon, the inspectors from the Federal Railroad Administration began talking tough: bigger fines and more of them. But as they began to crack down on the railroad, they found themselves under fire from an unexpected quarter: their boss, the agency's deputy administrator, Betty Monro.
<snip>

<snip>
Ms. Monro, who now runs the railroad agency, was in a position to know just how unhappy her inspectors were making officials at Union Pacific. She and the railroad's chief Washington lobbyist, Mary E. McAuliffe, are longtime friends and have vacationed together on Nantucket several times since Ms. Monro joined the agency in 2001.
<snip>

Article also mentions Union Pacific's generous contributions to GOP candidates and Dick Cheney's previous Union Pacific board membership.

[murielm99]

1. My brother works for UP.

My father worked for them when the were the Chicago and Northwestern. He is now retired.

Retired railroaders have excellent pensions.

My brother hates * and all the pukes with a passion. He hated it that Cheney was on their board. He said that Lynne Cheney took over her husband's position after he was selected as VP.

You would think that the Cheneys would be in an excellent position to understand the needs of the rail industry and its employees. Actually, they are nothing but robber barons.

My brother is convinced that they are going to de-fund Amtrak and allow even more deregulation. That would lead to more of the safety abuses mentioned in the article.

And, if this happens, my brother and father are in danger of losing their pensions. My father was a thirty-five year employee. My brother will have thirty years before he is sixty.

I don't know if anyone else here knows any details about this. We are looking at a lot more people in this country who have worked long years, only to be robbed in their old age.

[Gore1FL]

2. I did for almost 15 years

Then they abandoned St. Louis offices and moved everyone (not in operating or law) to Omaha, NE for tax breaks...

Cheney's stint with UP not only included a spot on the board (with Kissinger, no less) but he was also hired as a consultant during the post SP merger service crisis. (It reminded me of the criticism that the GOP was lobbing on Webb Hubble for taking paid consulting jobs and not doing anything. At a time when crews were needed, they hired Cheney...

Some of the article is a bit misleading. UP spends a lot on their tracks, replaces a lot of ties, and has reduced injuries and incidents year over year. Don;t get me wrong -- I am not saying the company isn't a fucked up mess -- in my opinion it is.

They have been a one-trick pony for years -- forgetting how to make money, and instead concentrating only on saving it -- at the expense of a lot of other things.

When I hired out, the company was run by Drew "Is my normal room at Betty Ford available" Lewis as CEO and Mike Walsh, who later went to Tennico and died of brain cancer. Dick Davidson replace Walsh and then Lewis. Ron Burns, the best president we had, was fired for not being an asshole. He was preplaced by failed SP president, Jerry Davis who managed to take a proifitable railroad, and degrade it to the levels of the failed SP. He was replaced by Ike evans (famed for transforming Emerson into a craphole) who then went on to cut jobs to the point of employee misery and service failure.

Anyways that being said -- UP does better than the article suggests in terms of safety. 95% of all railroad accidents are non-employees getting hit while trespassing, or trying to beat a crossing.

I haven;t heard about potential loss of pension. Railroadeers don;t pay into Social Security, but instead pay into railroad retirement -- which costs roughly 1.7 times that of FICA contributions.

There has been talk of that getting rolled into SS, which Bush is determined to bankrupt, so that may be where the loss of pension aspect came from.