Been with BNSF for a little over a year.
All of the old Grand Seniority Districts except the Northern Lines (OR, WA, MT, ID, ND, SD [I believe] and parts of MN) have been abolished with the advent of system wide seniority. Here is how it works:
You hire in at a specific terminal. Certain old Santa Fe terminals have Primary Recall. This means that for a period of 5 years, if you are needed, the crew manager can recall you to your primary recall terminal and if you do not report within 5 days, you are terminated. No appeal through the union. However, due to system wide seniority, you may not be able to hold at your home terminal after you complete training.
System wide seniority allows any trainman to transfer to any terminal with the above exception and work, so long as he has seniority and he/she will keep his seniority with him except for the Norther Lines.
The company has in the past year been willing to expend the boards to keep new hires working at their home terminal. However these expansions have a few problems. One is that they generally only expand the switchman's extra board so guarantee is very low. I think around $80-90 a day. On occassion they will expand a road board. With the expanded boards, you also don't work as much so the board turns slowly if at all.
Recently they expanded the two extra road boards at Winslow, AZ. One board now turns about every three days and the other about every 36-48 hours. Of course the company is on the hook for guarantee so if you can hold a road extra board the pay isn't too bad even if you dont work.
Depending on where you work, you may or may not have a lot of people coming in to your terminal to work. I live within 60 miles of three BNSF terminals so I can work locally if I choose. I am also familiarized in Needles, CA and Winslow, AZ if I want to return there to work.
System wide seniority is a double edged sword. On one side I can work anywhere my seniority will allow me to hold. On the other side, trainmen with more seniority can displace me from my home terminal where I would rather be. I honestly think that in the long run system wide seniority will cause so much instability in the work force BNSF may abandon it. However, for them to admit a mistake, hell would have to freeze over first!
Good luck.
