Quite frankly GRD, you are the one being deceived here.

Since there have been NO furloughs of UP Steam people since the mid 1960's until now. How in the world did that happen??

This is just another way of getting rid of people the boss disagrees with or is afraid of because they know too much, or at least more than the boss.

It's easy: You use them up, then you dump them: Force them to retire if they are old enough or onto the street if they aren't. Or both. In this case, only 1 or 2 of those kicked off the crew could "bump" onto other jobs. The rest didn't have anywhere near enough seniority to do that. Their choice is to sit around home until enough people die or retire that they can hold a job someplace else on the railroad, or get another job someplace else.

This all started with the one-by-one getting shed of the previous crew, then getting rid of the ones who replaced them when they wouldn't play the blame game.

Yeah, this will continue to go on, because nobody left at UP is any wiser. And in the PSR age, a "gone" body is a good body.