> I remember when working for SP some crewman making really big bucks.


Which just might have something to do with why the SP don't exist anymore.

No business can just @#$%& that money. In order to pay its employees "really big bucks", any business would have to bring in even bigger bucks - per employee. And SP wasn't doing that! Never did! Not in over a hundred years!

Fact was (in hindsight of course), the SP was living off the fat of the land (land grants) for most of the last century - it never was a viable company once they lost their monopoly; having never learned to adapt in a competitive marketplace. So, when the fallout from the SPSF ("Shouldn't Paint So Fast") merger attempt, stripped the SP of its money making land grant holdings - down it went!

And so did all those "really big bucks" jobs they were paying for!

Of course, it really did not help much was that the few remaining railroad companies left, after the end of "merger mania"; were the strongest ones (natural selection here), who knew well how to squelch unions. Once there were very few games in town, they had a field day!

Of course, railroad union squabbling helped even less (UTU vs BLE - anyone). Are there still more squabbling railroad unions, than there are railroads !? So they (railroad unions) shot themselves in the foot - your foot actually!

Speaking as a former union member (no longer employed there), any union that permits its members to be so overworked, underpaid, and ABUSED, and just pussyfoots around, accomplishing a whole lot of nothing, as has been the case; AIN'T WORTH the paper their charters are printed on!

And don't give me this bullbleep that permitting upwards of 14 straight days of 12 hours on duty each (or 16 if a 4 hour rest in the middle is included); is anything other plain out an out BRUTALITY and ABUSE. Not even machinery can be abused in that manner, and still keep running!

Just "man up" eh? Don't you mean "just man up to needlessly killing someone" - when you inevitably drowse out. AND YOU WILL! So especially don't give me any bullbleep that this can be safely done by anyone, in any line of work. IT CAN'T - IT AIN'T SAFE - PERIOD. And no prostituted "scientist" can change that reality - he can only lie about it!

One might tolerate an occasional "Rush" period, or unforeseen unusual circumstance to cause such a schedule for a brief time. But for an every day - take it to the limit - day in and day out schedule; my copper-miner ancestors are rolling in their graves, that this sort of bullbleep is being tolerated by "unions" of our day - or even by our apparently useless government! Especially when the supposed party of unionism still controls the regulators. Maybe they are useless too!