Particularly amusing how UP leadership has confused mid-level management to the point they're actually making decisions that increase expenses, not lower them. Consider the elimination of college interns. UP is getting rid of the cheapest skilled labor in areas like HR, marketing, IT. They pay interns $12-$15/hour with no health care and benefits. You cannot purchase labor in these categories anywhere else as cheaply.
Instead, they continue to eliminate interns and replace with third party contractors. IT services usually start no less than $120/hour blended for general IT work and run up to $325/hour or more for highly specialized work. Dumping an intern at $12 for $120/hour work is insanity financially. Never mind it also destroys the pipeline of quality candidates for the future workforce.
As an academic that was recommending students for internship programs, there's no loss for the students nor our programs. There's more demand than supply in Omaha for young, cheap talent looking for careers to explore with our firms. It's baffling seeing UP make one bizarre, irrational decision after another but that seems to be the norm these days there. May those of you trying to ride out your current leadership team hang in there or find another company that will bring you the opportunities you deserve. Some of suspect that Wall Street may find out eventually that the folks pretending to run UP really don't know at all what they're doing.
Excellent point by @XirUIZw-emt.