Pros
The pay is decent if you choose to live out here. The retirement, assuming of course that it's still there in the future.
Cons
Management is encouraged by the executive level to create a hostile work environment for the agreement personnel. It is literally us versus them. Safety is preached, but not practiced. Even when they are notified of an issue, management waits until after someone is injured or after something derails to fix things. Everything is a calculated risk to them. They won't spend money on routine track maintenance, but will spend thousands of dollars on a drone to fly around and record employees, then use the footage to fire them. They are now forcing thousands of employees to get a vaccine, against their wishes. During the height of the pandemic the executives enacted a new attendance policy and maliciously enforced it. If you got sick and missed 4 days out of 90, you could be terminated, even with medical documentation. We were healthy enough to be forced to work 70 or more hours per week during the pandemic, and now can be "medically disqualified" for not getting the injection. If you hire out as an agreement employee be prepared to spend the majority of your first several years furloughed, often as soon as your training is complete. If you have a steady job, stay there. Zero stability here. If you enjoy constantly looking over your shoulder and fearing for your job, then an agreement job with UP is the right place for you. If you enjoy being the reason that someone is constantly looking over their shoulder, and taking their job away is jolly good fun for you, then a management job with UP is the right place for you. I would not recommend this company to ANYONE. The only reason that I'm still here is that I'm too close to retirement, and now too old to get hired anywhere else.
