Work hard, get paid decent for what it is. Better Not Start a Family (BNSF)
Pros
--You have decent (Expensive) health benefits as TY&E personnel (Trainmen/Engineers/Conductors/Brakemen). IT's best if you have like 2-5 kids where your employee benefits apply to them all equally as if it was you, so getting past the deductible and stuff is easy when you get 1-2 sick kids in a year. But if you're single or married but no kids it's expensive for the Health Insurance (which they recently tried increasing premiums and decreasing benefits for). -No day is ever the same as the last. One day you may get a really easy day, the next shift (Usually the same day you just worked) you get boned hard on what you have to do. -The work is "Easy" once you get to know your job (after 2 or so years of working a lot). -You like to work? Great, you can work as much as you want because there's no shortage of it ever here. -Enjoy seeing any time of day from 0000hrs to 2359hrs? You can here, your first few years will be any time, any place, any geographical location within 1hr to 8hrs away. -Enjoy working with union workers and blue collar types, here it is! Just be humble , ask questions, and know that everyone isn't the same! -The pay is pretty good for people who never went past high school educations. I've worked in several industries where a Bachelors is required and had a better work/life/personal experience with more pay than this (and decent benefits there too). This is a great paying job if you have nothing else, and you live in a small town--Big cities drain your wages from here as you have to pay Tier 1, Tier 2, State, Federal, Union Dues, and Health Insurance dues all in one check! You're looking at 40-45% taxes/deductions by the time you get your NET paycheck.
Cons
--The work/life/personal balance is literally the worst. I've worked in several other industries and they were pretty on board with (work hard, play hard) but this is insane. . . Example---I worked from 8pm to 9am (13 hrs shift), went on Federally Mandated rest for 10hrs at 9am after I got off work ... At 7PM I'm available to work again (THE SAME DAY), and at 8pm they call me to work, I show up around 11pm to work (again, the same day) from 11pm to 12 NOON the next day (13 hrs shift again btw)....That's basically it. And the management and industry has several ways of boning you over on "resting" longer than say 10 hrs, and the way they count "rest" is completely against rational thought process (example if you get called in to work, get in a van provided by them to go to a location and wait in a hotel --THAT VAN counts as rest while you sit in traffic for 2 hours and go to your destination.)........I've also lost 2 high earning, high end , high quality girlfriends to this job (because they couldn't handle the randomness, non-ability to plan even 1 day ahead LITERALLY, and the fact if you take ANY time off it's like dealing with the devil because they'll try to burn you there too). --Heavily taxed wages (40% around). Tier 1 pays for your retirement (if you work 30 years for BNSF, and retire at 60--maybe 65 in the coming years and don't get killed by a train or cancer) Tier 2 pays for all others who came before you (their retirement), State, Federal, Union dues (which is around 150-170$ , and they most likely won't return your texts/emails/phone calls, or fight for you when you were needing off for more than a week for sickness/injury etc and didn't have vacation days and now you're getting letters for investigations into why you're a POS for not being available to work despite legitimate claims (you have to qualify for that every year for the next year starting Jan 1 of the previous year). - Management for the most part doesn't give AF. They're in it for themselves (at least most) and usually don't have a pleasant demeanor beyond (heres this, go do that). A lot of them are corporate pawns anyways with no real power to help you out if you're in good with them. -BNSF literally has EVERY. SINGLE. ANGLE. COVERED. If you think you can get an extra day off, or claim a special pay code because management boned you over on a piece of work and you know how to angle the system (because you can't plan ahead remember? And you need an extra day to get your car looked at, or extra few bucks for doing extra stuff!) they're probably going to deny it (send you a letter saying "stop it", or cite some strange reason), and then cite some random rule saying you can't do it and move on. - The environement you work in normally is very hazardous to your respiratory system, and small joints/ligaments. That's why they send you to a pre-medical eval and hope they can jimmy 30 years of that out of you and hope you die before age 70 (so they only have to pay 10 years retirement but got 30 good ones outta you). -Work/life/personal balance sucks (I said that agin). Think- You can't plan a day ahead LITERALLY (unless you're in a different craft that has set days on/off, and then it's doable). TYE doesn't. -You're on call 24/7, 365, all days (and if you want holidays or popular times off its seniority based too). -Union system (good if the union leadership cares, and fights for you--Bad if they could give af about you--Pony up the dues because its REQUIRED you pay them). -Bargaining agreements for unions are slowly being cut and slowly being choked out. Every few years unions lose ground and lose their rights. The company always gets what it wants (it's not privately owned by Berkshire Hathaway--and Warren Buffet gets what he wants). So if the union agreed to NOT do something and the company agrees, well after the signing the company can (and does) usually go back on teh deal and revamps it in their favor--Citing it's our money (basically). - You won't see your family the first 1-5 years a lot, you're a low ranking union member in a 24/7 365 industry . You are up against guys who get set days off who have 20-30 years working. Good bye weekends to do stuff, good bye set days off, good bye. You're going to work very odd hours, have 0 circadian rhythm, and you'll stay in hotels a lot with bad cable (maybe) and questionable stains in carpets or patched up walls from fists slamming into them. Still--The pay is good if you don't mind this.