Thread regarding Union Pacific Corp. layoffs

Why is the UP laying off so many employees? Why did they wait until now to implement the 2020 Plan? Easy the UP is playing with money that it didn't have to do anything to earn. The Company got a few hundred million in tax savings with the tax cuts dropping their 20% tax rate to 15%. They paid 800 million on a pre-tax profit margin of 5.7 billion dollars in the third quarter alone.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkobayashisolomon/2018/11/05/the-no-reform-tax-reform-union-pacific-case-study/#42b78cc571fa

That's Company wide profit – after paying every single one of us, and all of their bills they brought in $5.7 billion. But it's not enough. Wall Street wants more. That's where the Operating Ratio comes in and where they'll cut and cut and cut until it starts causing them to bleed Customers. Something they're already well on their way to doing by fining truckers with storage fees if they don't pick up intermodal shipments fast enough.

And because there's so many knocking at the door to get railroad jobs, and Customers in some locations that cannot have their products ship any other way than by rail UP has them by the balls. They'll go on their apology tour like CP and CSX did in the past and everything will be rosy for another decade before someone else tries PSR 2.0.

They hired a ton of people just before this b—s—. They Lured people away from better jobs even talked people into staying instead of taking higher paying jobs just to sh– can them weeks later. They offered bonuses that they knew they’d never pay to people and had people leave everything they know and moved states away for a better job just to get cut weeks later. Spiteful? Yeah you f—ing bet dipshit.

I agree. Layoffs vs seniority rosters don’t end in the best result. What they should do is disqualify employees based on their peer group. If a carman doesn’t cut the mustard against a group of his peers(5 year window) the railroad should disqualify them.

lance said it's because he has the courage to care and UP is a family

True. UP (and every other business incorporated in the US) is required by law to operate their business at a profit.

Why then would UP proceed with layoffs based on seniority? There is hard and soft evidence that there is a negative correlation between seniority and performance of agreement (union) employees. Why not make the layoffs performance based instead? Keeping the most complacent and least productive members of the UP workforce makes little sense.

The “company” has fiduciary responsibility under the law. They HAVE to make it as profitable as possible. They’re doing the right thing. Accept it.

Its because the employees can’t let go. Instead of going out and looking for other work they would rather complain and cry. Spiteful is an understatement.

@usz brings up a good point. This is possibly the most active board on this site, and UP has many more reviews than most other companies on sites like Glassdoor and Indeed.

Putting aside that most of what people have to say about UP falls under the "worst job for anyone ever" category, the sheer number of reviews and comments on all the sites mentioned makes it obvious that the company has issues.

Greed

We do

We also have more posts on this board than any other company

We also have the lowest employee satisfaction score on Glassdoor (out of 1000s of companies)

We dont.

Good question.

The short answer is greed.

The long answer in involves domestic and international trade, market forces, and many other things that can't be answered or explained within the confines of an internet comment box, although it all still comes back to greed.