SEPTA Union opposes 14 hour workdays

Yes, that would have been a better example to cite. It's exactly what can happen from engineer fatigue. The fact that it was transit rather than commuter rail is immaterial to the effect of fatigue.

Checkout the SYSTEM STATUS on SEPTA's web page.

Over a dozen train annulments due to "manpower shortage" according to the web site.

Is this opposition to the 6-day work weeks, or just normal engineer shortage problems?

NorthPennLimited wrote:Another article from the Inky:

http://www.philly.com/philly/business/l ... rules.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So the cost of an engineer is $150,000.00 annually between wages and benefits.

SEPTA needs 213 engineers to be fully staffed. They operate with 192 engineers.

They are saving $3.15 million dollars annually by compressing more work onto the existing manpower pool.

so for $3 million per year SEPTA is degrading service for customers and potentially putting people at risk? In the scheme of things (total budget), $3 million is not an insurmountable number

Mismanagement at its best with no consequences to SEPTA brass I'm sure.

SEPTA knew of many engineers reaching retirement age. It's set by the Railroad Retirement Board. 60 years of age with 30 years of service. They have every employees birth date and hire date. Simple math. I hear about a dozen engineers are eligible and could retire at any time if they decided to.

Many did work beyond 60 but are now leaving. Some because of the increased work hours. Record ridership added service where trains were extended, new service such as the airport separation created more trains, expanded late night service and new express or limited trains have been added over the past few years but the same number or less engineers on the roster.

I don't know how many new engineers are in the pipeline but I expect it to get worse with many more annulments this summer. There have been manpower annulments for a few months now.

It's been over a year since this thread started. What has SEPTA done to fix the shortage ?

It would be interesting to know how many prospective engineers and trainmen (train-crew personnel?) flunk either the training program or a drug test compared with the number that started out. Also, I believe that at one time, because of differing wage scales, SEPTA was training people who left for other rail operators as soon as they could. Is that still happening, I wonder?

ExCon90 wrote:It would be interesting to know how many prospective engineers and trainmen (train-crew personnel?) flunk either the training program or a drug test compared with the number that started out. Also, I believe that at one time, because of differing wage scales, SEPTA was training people who left for other rail operators as soon as they could. Is that still happening, I wonder?

Yes, people still leave for other RR's.