Alaska Railroad hiring conductors

FYI, Alaska Railroad is hiring conductors/locomotive engineer trainees this winter for SEASONAL work. The "busy season" is generally May through October and you won't work any more than that until you have a significant amount of seniority. Right now that takes 15+ years.

I'll be honest, the economy there is pretty bad right now. The State's economy has a direct correlation to the price of crude oil, which is very low right now. Furthermore, export coal is effectively done there. But come May, when passenger trains start running for the tourist season, and aggregate trains start running for construction and road projects, it gets busy. There are a lot of guys retiring this winter and we were already short-handed last season so the company figured out they need to hire more conductors before the 2018 busy season begins.

You will be qualified for both freight and passenger service. This is a GCOR railroad. It's a complicated little railroad and the work can be physically demanding. Our terminal jobs in the summer are engineer-conductor only so the man on the ground will have his/her work cut out for them. Scheduled jobs predominately work four 10-hour shifts per week. The extra board is like any other extra board. You are on-call 24/7 and get 2 hours notice.

I work there as a conductor and I wouldn't mind having a few more seniority cushions so I'm just passing this on. This website keeps truncating the direct job listing page so you'll have to go here:

https://www.alaskarailroad.com/corporate/careers" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; then click on the link at the top that says "ARRC Job Vacancies – Workplace Alaska", then click on the link for the "Locomotive Engineer / Conductor Trainee" listing. Training is supposed to begin in January. Bring warm clothes.

We are represented by one collective bargaining unit, SMART TD (the union formerly known as UTU). You can get more information on the local's website and download a copy of the current CBA there as well. Any questions? Read the entire job posting and if it isn't answered there or in our CBA, feel free to ask here and I'll try to answer.

http://smartutu1626.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It was 7 to 8 years when I hired out. With the economy in free-fall there, and traffic levels what they are, there are simply fewer jobs in the winter so last year people with up to 17 years seniority got furloughed for at least a little while. But for people who want to take the winter off, it works. We have a lot of people who work there in the summer and snowbird down south, which is what I usually do. But I only worked 17 weeks last season so it's getting tough to make a living there even though our hourly wage is quite high at $40 to $50/hour depending on terminal or road service. I need to work at least 6 months a year to break even. Trainees and first year employees start at $24.87/hour though.