BNSF Railway reviews

3.1

44% would recommend to a friend

(2,427 total reviews)
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Kathryn Farmer

42% approve of CEO

46% positive business outlook

BNSF Railway has an employee rating of 3.1 out of 5 stars, based on 2,427 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The BNSF Railway employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Transportation & Logistics industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

2K reviews
3.0
Jun 5, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good pay, good benefits, most people I work with are great. Machinist Union always trying to better are wages and benefits.

Cons

Upper Management likes to bounce apprentices around from 1st shift to 2nd and 3rd, with different days off. No Vacation until after 1 year of employment . And no sick days until after 7 years of employment, then your allowed 1 day a year. (What a joke) during my apprenticeship we are suppose to have weekends off and be trained by experienced employees on 1st shift, but almost all apprentices are on different shifts with week days off. The shop is ran poorly.

2.0
Jun 2, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Excellent Benefits and stability of 200+ year old company

Cons

Acrimonious relationship between management and TYE, (people building and running the trains). The system of management and Op's Testing requirements reinforce the "Us against Them" attitude that prevails at most of the terminals. They claim to be about families... but unless a TYE employee has FMLA, they will spend very little time of quality -weekends, holidays- with their families and their is very little thought or willingness to accommodate this kind of time off. Divorce in TYE in the RR is epidemic.

2.0
Mar 8, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great pay, unless you count the time away from your family. You will have money to buy all the nice toys that your wife and friends can use on the weekends while youre working.

Cons

-No schedule whatsoever -On call 24/7 -Company doesnt care about you, your family or your health as long as they have a warm body to run a train. -No time off, they have a 75% availability policy, which means you can be unavailable 25% of the time, which sounds great, but say you have a family and get sick one month and use 4 weekend days, not weekends mind you..weekend days. What counts as a weekend, if you miss a friday and it goes past 1230 saturday morning by 1 minute, theres your weekend so guess what, you get to work the next 2 months with only 2 weekend days off. And yes, any paid days or vacation days count against you so the week of vacation you take one month affects you for the next 2 months. -Managers are now college kids, no clue what its like to be train service. Expect no leniency if you miss a call to go to work or lay off an extra weekend day in a 3 month period. - Seniority gets you NOTHING, it will get you off of the extra board, once in a pool you get the same job as a new hire that a guy with 45 years has. **Here's my advice to anyone who decides to try this..if you hire on as a conductor, stay a conductor and work the yard, lower pay but still good, set days off, set hours, easy work. Or transfer to be a carman or to the roundhouse right away, if you do it later you lose too much seniority. DO NOT go into the engineer program, once you do that you lose all your options. - Look up the divorce rate of railroaders. If you're looking to never see your wife or kids or any of their activities, this may be the perfect career for you.

Viewing 97 - 99 of 2,427 Reviews

Glassdoor has 2,634 BNSF Railway reviews submitted anonymously by BNSF Railway employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if BNSF Railway is right for you.