Union Pacific reviews

Literal screaming and cursing from senior management. Innovation is truly not welcomed by local leadership, corporate claims its wanted. Company restructures often and silently. Stress. They say they have programs for it etc, but all of your bosses expect you to be on call, be there when they call, doesn’t matter if you are at a wedding, birthday party, doesn’t matter. You get called, you come or your fired. Want another opportunity or promotion? Prepare to move. Also if local leadership literally needs you to stay, you’ll never leave. They can make phone calls to their friends in other areas and will tell them not to take you, that you are too valuable to them in your current position. I have seen this happen to two of my colleagues. “Us vs Them” mentality by senior management when it comes to how we can interact with Union. We are forced to write up “failures” in Field Training Exercises that goes on the workers records. The workers are smart though and know that rules contradict themselves, and worse are left up to the manager doing the observations to say if they looked long enough before crossing tracks, or threw switches correctly. If we do not have enough “failures” we get an inordinate amount of pressure from local leadership as their bonuses are affected by it. 99.9 percent of railroad property is located in dangerous, impoverished areas of cities. We do not have enough police officers for the Union guys, and we are regularly called to investigate trespassing, accidents etc with little protection. Self insured company, one catastrophic incident totally outside of your control, anywhere in the system and we are out of business… the company lets you know this. One incident, and no matter how much of your life has been dedicated to the organization, its gone. If you want experience in management for your resume, do as 70% of my peers do, leave once you have the minimum time your next position requires. Don’t believe me? Don’t worry, they usually tell you about it at the introduction to management.

The goal of the mechanical department is not to repair and maintain locomotives, the goal is to make it look like they did. Pay close attention to the reviews of union pacific because the departments are drastically different. Managers and office people are in a whole different universe than the folks throwing switches and turning wrenches. The mechanical department employs craftspeople who work on the Locomotives: Electricians, Machinists (mechanics), Sheet metal workers (welders and pipefitters), and Laborers (MSO's or Fireman & Oilers). Unlike non-railroad union trades you pay for your healthcare and pension out of your check so subtract $5 an hour from whatever the current rates is and that's more realistic for calculating take home pay. The job training is laughable, most recently hired electricians have a construction background which doesn't translate well to locomotives. You will be put with a mentor who will teach you the wrong and quick way to do every task. The company has training instructors that hold official classes BUT they can only teach 3 to 5 people at a time for some unknown reason and all they do is show you a powerpoint. I received Locomotive familiarization class a few months after I had started working on locomotives which shows how much the company cares. You are going to be expected to do work you have no training for and then you will have to sign government documents saying you did it properly. Most of the tasks you do in the mechanical department are Federal Railroad Administration (government) required maintenance tasks. The company doesn't care about these things and the foreman and your fellow workers will encourage you to just sign off a lot of tasks without actually doing them. I have been yelled at by foreman for doing work properly because it was a waste of time. Following company and FRA rules is a waste of time to the mechanical department. Safety is stressed from day one but you will see by the pathetic facilities that it's just for show. The PPE is nice but locomotive blue flag lockout equipment is not adequate. Smoking and cell phones are not allowed even though people smoke everywhere and are always on their cell phones, in fact foreman and workers communicate exclusively with personal cellphones on the job even though it's against company policy to even have a phone on you at work. Working for UP is like a football game, the referees can call a penalty on every play if they really wanted to. The rule book is thick like a bible and open to managerial interpretation so no matter what you do you're probably doing something wrong. The company has completely incompetent leadership at every level. They claim to use the Toyota management model where every workers input and suggestions will be heard, but that is just not true. If you (the low level employee) sees a problem or an opportunity for improvement and you tell a manager or foreman the only response you will get is "put it in the solution center" (in a heavily condescending tone). Solution center is a computer program where you enter your suggestions and someone from management will get back to you. Do you know how many mechanics and electricians care enough to follow through this process? Not many, so things remain unpleasant. Tools and equipment remain broken for months because the system depends on the lowest level employee taking all the responsibility for improvement, it's not working UP.