Burlington Northern Santa Fe is pushing back on reports that the railroad has cut hundreds of jobs, in several states, including Montana.
News of BNSF job cuts have been circulating since the end of February when Warren Buffet, founder of BNSF owner Berkshire Hathaway cited declining profit margins at BNSF and lamented the cost of increased employee compensation in a labor contract that had to be approved by U.S. Senate to thwart striking unions.
The railroad this week told Lee Montana newspapers that BNSF needed more shopcraft workers, not fewer, and would have jobs for employees willing to relocate to high-demand areas. The railroad has announced furloughs in areas where there wasn’t enough work, said Kendal Kirkham Sloan, BNSF director of external communications. But affected workers were being encouraged to relocate.
“Location transfers with incentives are being offered to those affected employees, targeted to those locations where there are open positions. BNSF has also offered craft transfers for mechanical employees to be re-trained for other open positions, several of which are on the Montana Division,” said Kirkham Sloan. She noted there are several hundred open mechanical and engineering positions along BNSF’s 32,500-mile network.
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Buffet had indicated in his annual letter that there was shortage of rail workers in North America, not just BNSF, but he also indicated that profit margins had been shrinking since Berkshire bought the company 15 years ago.
“Last year BNSF’s earnings declined more than I expected, as revenues fell,” Buffet said in his annual letter to Berkshire shareholders. “Though fuel costs also fell, wage increases, promulgated in Washington, were far beyond the country’s inflation goals. This differential may recur in future negotiations.”
Buffet singled out BNSF workers in Montana and North Dakota, working sub-zero outdoor jobs, as employees of whom he was particularly proud.
Soon after Buffet’s remarks, issued in Berkshire Hathaway’s annual letter to shareholders, unions began reporting job cuts among BNSF’s mechanical employees. The AFL-CIO Transportation and Trades Department reported that hundreds of jobs were at risk in Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, and Texas.
The AFL-CIO called on the Federal Railroad Administration to conduct unannounced focus inspections on BNSF locomotives and railcars owned and leased by BNSF. The union’s point was that job cuts at BNSF “pose serious safety risks to railroad operations and personnel.”
“BNSF has recently admitted in public filings that they would not be in compliance with federally mandated safety inspections, and we continue to be informed that BNSF has numerous FRA defects on their locomotives and rail cars,” AFL-CIO’s shop craft unions said in their letter to FRA. “There is no shortage of profits for BNSF, and there is no shortage of work to be performed on BNSF equipment. There is simply an obscene shortage of workers and disregard for people at BNSF.”
In Montana, BNSF has just completed its takeover of the southern short line previously controlled by Montana Rail link. March 8 is the anniversary of the Surface and Transportation Board’s approval of MRL’s petition to end its 937 miles of short-line operations between Laurel and Sandpoint, Idaho.
BNSF at the time the transfer was approved indicated that it was committed to keeping all union and non-union employees of MRL in their current jobs with similar pay, benefits, seniority, and other terms of employment. MRL’s payroll was $127.8 million.
“BNSF resuming operations in January of what is now the MRL Subdivision has no connection with these furloughs, and all MRL employees became employees of BNSF at that time,” said Kirkham Sloan. “In fact, BNSF currently is offering temporary transfers to Missoula and Laurel for train crew employees to increase the employee base in those locations.”
The Montana AFL-CIO said Thursday that so far furloughs have been limited to six pipefitters in Havre, which wasn’t part of the MRL footprint.
News of BNSF job cuts have been circulating since the end of February when Warren Buffet, founder of BNSF owner Berkshire Hathaway cited declining profit margins at BNSF and lamented the cost of increased employee compensation in a labor contract that had to be approved by U.S. Senate to thwart striking unions.