Thanks for the feedback, Adam, It's always interesting to get the viewpoints
of people higher on the totem pole. The problem always is with expressing
opinions such as my own is that it comes across as though there was nothing
good or no good people. Obviously that is not the case. There were some
mates and some managers and even a CEO like the late Mac Norris whom I
thought were as good people as humanity is capable of producing. However,
when it comes to my railway experiences, I'm reminded that it's been said
that one gallon of oil can pollute a million gallons of water and that this
truism holds for a corporate body too. Not even the best of managers could
remove the stains caused by certain types of scum.
Adam, I think it's fair to say that you work in a pretty different 'space'
than I did on any number of fronts. Mental horizons are so much broader at
your level and more about that in a minute. Human nature hasn't changed one
lick, that's for sure, but man, the regulations sure have. Likewise has the
workplace culture. Younger men in the business today generally have little
genuine appreciation of just how much the workplace culture has changed
since 1971. We can start with the presence of women in so many more parts
of the formerly male workforce. There are about five generations of
railroaders spinning in their graves at the thought of women hoggers.
The major point to be made here, Adam, is that while you represent the high
calibre of individual that keeps any organisation viable and functional,
there are so many things you do now as a matter of course which somebody
fought bloody awful fights to make sure you will do.
As a manager, you think in terms of environmental laws, human-rights laws
and a host of other considerations that hardly made the radar 25 years ago,
if at all. You are right in one sense, that life is what you make it. BUT
... in another sense, that statement betrays a terrible ignorance of what it
means for people who can't always or never can quite measure up to the mark.
Managements reflect the realities of the times. Unfortunately for humanity,
the prevailing corporate attitude of today reflects a fundamentalist
American capitalism that puts no value on anything but the quarterly
financial statement. In my father's time, management reflected the
attitudes of the British aristocracy. Neither gives or gave a fig about the
well-being of the lower orders. The best managers and supervisors in the
world couldn't and can't change those underlying realities. In some ways,
the railway industry here in Canada is a much better place than it was even
as recently as 20 years ago. In other ways, it has lost ground. You
rightfully acknowledged these points in your own way. If I were able to
regain my youth and come back to the CPR as an employee just starting out, I
really am not sure just what I'd think about what I'd find these days. It
is a different world in so many ways. However, judging by some of the
feedback I'm getting from this latest rant, some things haven't changed at
all.
I think that we all tend to forget that the further down the food chain you
go, whether on the railway or in broader society, the fewer options people
have. Lack of education, physical and mental handicaps, lack of
opportunity, these things and more all have their influences, some times
much more profoundly so than we realise. One of the things about living
with family members who suffer mental difficulties is that one comes to
appreciate the capriciousness of life for such unfortunate people. This was
certainly manifest in my railway workplace experience. My teeth always
grind when I hear these a**h*** American (and Canadian) conservative-minded
business types going on about the 'nanny state.' What doesn't always show
through in my rants is that upon becoming a union representative, I soon
discovered a taste of what managers were up against when it came to
employee's foibles. When you have a work force comprised of about 15-25%
whose heads aren't firing on all their cylinders, one comes to reluctantly
acknowledge that a lot of people really do need to have their hands held
most of the time. For a lot of people, just getting through the next eight
hours is an all-consuming endeavour. Pride and a sense of accomplishment
don't enter the picture.
I've said this before and you'll hear it many times to come, I think that
what I hated about the railroad was the inherent dishonesty of the system.
In some ways, I think the system today is a tiny bit more up to date and at
least on the score of safety, the CPR genuinely is dead-serious about
workplace safety. That is a real change.
As for pride, I think that a lot of people on the bottom rungs of the
organisation are still in survival mode, just as I was.
Joe Smuin
1. - "Joey, the secret to telling a good railway story is to always try to
stick just as close to the facts as possible." --- (the late) Cliff
Inkster; CPR Engineman, raconteur and philosopher.
2. - The secret to contacting Joe by email is to be sure to insert "Joe" or
"Smuin" into the main text portion of any message you send to him, and thus
your message should percolate through his spam filters.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Adam Meeks" <Matchless@xxxxxxx>
To: <cpsig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, August 23, 2009 4:25 PM
Subject: Re: [cpsig] Rant of the week: was Consolidated stencil block
Don, you hit the nail on the head in so many ways with this. Well said.
Joe, although I sympathize with your experiences on the job, I have a very different viewpoint. I am one of those devil horn-wearing, stone-hearted managers that make such an easy target for every railroader's frustrations. I have been with CP for abut 9 years now, and in operations for six of those. Call me naive if you wish, but I still believe that the workplace (as with life) is much what you make of it. There are certainly a large number of employees at CP who would describe their feelings about the company and the job to be much the same as yours, and while I find that tragic, I can understand it. It is not just unionized employees either; sadly, many managers these days are just as bitter and jaded as the people they oversee. Thankfully, there are also individuals on both the management and union side who still do feel a sense of pride (and yes, I mean real pride) in a job well done and in the knowledge that their efforts have contributed to the success of a company with
The railway is far from perfect. There are many decisions made with regards to the way the company is run and the workforce managed that I may not agree with, but these problems are not unique to CP or to the railway industry. Twenty years of work experience prior to coming to the railway has taught me that no workplace is always ideal, and every company will look out for its own interests when push comes to shove. I think that attributing job losses or cutbacks to "ruthless management" is a gross oversimplification of some very complex issues. Certainly the railway has changed over the years, (and not always for the better) and this has resulted in some workforce casualties in both the union and management ranks. Believe me when I say that nobody wants to see anyone else lose their job. I have been part of the process surrounding layoff notices and have witnessed firsthand the effects of the sleepless nights and additional stresses endured by the men who have to make these dec
It is well documented that the railway has historically not been the safest place to work. It is definitely still not without its problems, but I would like to believe we are making progress. Last year CP posted some of its best numbers ever for personal injury frequency, and was the recipient of the AAR's E.H. Harriman silver award for outstanding safety achievements. (KCS won the gold, but we'll keep trying) I would say that is something to be very proud of, and most of the credit belongs to the guys in the field: the sectionmen, carmen, and running trades employees who brave the everyday pitfalls of a hazardous occupation and do their damndest to do their jobs safely and properly. This doesn't happen because "unscrupulous" managers try to intimidate or take advantage of their employees; it is the result of a changing work culture that is trying to correct 150 years worth of poor or dangerous work practices - and in order to work effectively, it requires that every employee tak
I don't expect to change anyone's opinions or feelings with this; hopefully just get people to look at things a little more objectively. As far as the whole pride in the workplace issue, I can think of a lot worse things than caring about the company I work for. I can honestly say I am a CP man through and through, and that does not mean that I willingly trample on people's feelings and livelihoods in the name of corporate priorities. It means that I work for a company founded on hard work, innovation, and frugal responsibility, and that I am part of a group of people who will do their best to ensure that the railway once referred to as "the wedding band of our nation" remains healthy and viable well into the future. Perhaps things have not always been sunshine and kittens on the railway, but I (and a great many others) choose to try to be part of the solution rather than focus on the problems.
Adam Meeks
----- Original Message -----
From: Don Thomas <thomasd@xxxxxxx>
Date: Saturday, August 22, 2009 11:56 pm
Subject: Re: [cpsig] Rant of the week: was Consolidated stencil block
To: cpsig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Joe, there are a number of ways you can define pride and it
looks like you and Rainer aren't using the same ones. Someone
can be proud to have worked for the railway, i.e. the fact alone
is satisfying to them. Others are proud of having put up with
something which was tough, perhaps needlessly so. Or you can
take pride in your own efforts and accomplishments,
notwithstanding what you may think about those around you or how
management behaved. You can be proud of what the company has
accomplished. You can like and appreciate the people you have
worked with, which can be incorrectly thought of as "pride".
Company management has been criticized for how it has treated
employees, or customers and communities; or how it has managed
it's own business compared to one's interpretation of its own
best interest. You can be critical of the company but still be
proud of your efforts. Personally I am proud of things I have
done, whether they were merely a good job done in a routine
matter or something which has an effect on the business as a
whole. I've worked on the tracks, and while I'm grateful not to
have made a career at it I was proud of what my co-workers were
able to learn and accomplish in a short time. I'm proud to have
been given responsibilities and taken intitatives which were
carried out successfully, sometimes due to my own efforts and
more often through working with a group. Not that there weren't
lots of mistakes which are hardly sources of pride, but at least
some of them were learning experiences!
It's largely a matter of how you approach it. I don't go to work
for the pride, but because I need to feed and house my family
just like everybody else. But you can be proud of what you do,
or how well you do it, or in the results of the work, or in how
the organization as a whole works or what it accomplishes.
There's nothing wrong with finding something related to your
work that you can be proud of. In fact it can help you put up
with the slings and arrows that working life, and life in
general, send your way. This doesn't mean being proud of putting
up with nonsense. Pride and pragmatism are not opposites, in
fact they have nothing to do with each other. You can be both
proud and pragmatic, or either one, or neither. You can also be
disaffected and still have some pride (and not just in having
endured). Just because some people are dull enough to be "proud"
of putting up with foolish practices or mistreatment doesn't
mean that you can't interpret and feel pride in something else -
Just don't adopt someone else's self-serving definition of
"pride" in being mistreated or ignorant. Those who take a macho
pride in putting up with indignities, and criticize anybody who
complains as a whining baby, can just as easily be categorized
as masochists and the complainers as the onnes who are actually
brave enough to stand up against it. It all depends on the
circumstances.
If you ever did anything at work that was worthwhile then you
should be proud of that. You should also be proud of the fact
that your railway experience and your willingness to share it
with others has contributed so much to other peoples' knowledge,
and correction of their misconceptions. Pride doesn't equate to
a Pollyanna attitude that everything was wonderful; in fact a
healthy dollop of pragmatism and cynicism are essential too. I'm
ruthlessly cynical in my work, but ultimately you can't
live like that.
Don Thomas
(and proud of it)
----- Original Message ----- From: KVRailway
To: cpsig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, August 22, 2009 9:10 PM
Subject: [cpsig] Rant of the week: was Consolidated
stencil block
Been awhile since I've had a good rant: Hit
the delete button now.
Rainer, to most old rails, guys like youse (sic) is rail-
nerds. There's
usually no malice intended by the use of the term. By
definition (of a
rail-nerd) you're interested in all sorts of arcane
details which bore the
pants off most rational people and which nobody but
certain employees care
about and even then, probably most of them don't know or
had long forgotten.
For that reason, to those of us who've had no choice but
suffer it on the
job for long years, you're nuts. Nothing wrong with that!
You can't be
interested in OR work for long periods on a railway and
not be at very least
a little bit strange somehow. :>)
However: It always irritates me when people talk to me
about being 'proud.'
I can assure you that I was not a proud employee, but
rather a pragmatic
one. I had a family to feed, period. My ego and identity
and sense of
self-worth had nothing to do with going to work. Any
pride I felt in
carknocking soon dissipated as I learned and saw how the
system really
worked. In my experience, 'proud' often meant the
willingness and ability
to put up with discomfort, inconvenience and mindless
routines that hadn't
changed in decades. I used to get this crap all the time
about 'pride in
the job' from management - most especially when they were
trying to avoid
acknowledging that improvements were feasible and worth
spending money on.
This crap could really get laid on sometimes when
managers were trying to
skirt the contradictions between what the rules said, the
realities of the
hazards and what they wanted done. The practical reality
of 'proud' too
often translated as the company playing on timid,
gullible and/or religious
employees in order to take advantage of such employees in
ways that were
certainly neither in the best interests of those
employees nor (usually)
very scrupulous when examined under a bright light.
In other cases, pride was a macho thing for a lot of the
men and the
companies took every advantage of that too. A surprising
percentage of guys
took pride in being 'tough enough' and actively resisted
attempts to improve
poor working conditions. More of a problem for
progressive-minded people
are those employees who have a real servant's mentality
and pleasing the
boss is everything to them. What is ironic is how many of
those same men
got a bitter surprise when cut-backs /downsizing came and
they were among
the first to be shown the door. I saw a lot of these guys
who just loved
their jobs - and who (whether promoted or not) didn't
have any use for the
union or unions - find out the hard way that loyalty to
the company and/or
length of service didn't count for squat when push came
to shove. Even now,
I'm watching certain, loyal, long-time (over 30-year)
railway employees
either get fired outright or forced to take their
pensions for infractions
that are often chicken-s*** on the Richter scale. Their
pride and
conscientiousness hasn't protected them in the slightest
from a ruthless
management that will drop them at the slightest pretext.
I'd say I'm disaffected, Rainer. A LOT of people on the
railroad (and
elsewhere) paid for their pride and loyalty with
dismissal the moment
corporate priorities changed - never mind those who paid
with their blood or
occupational health problems that corporations and health-
insurance
companies ignored or fiercely disputed at every turn of
the road. The good
thing about the job was a steady pay-cheque, a strong
union and a pension at
the end of it all.
Joe Smuin
1. - "Joey, the secret to telling a good railway story is
to always try to
stick just as close to the facts as possible." --- (the
late) Cliff
Inkster; CPR Engineman, raconteur and philosopher.
2. - The secret to contacting Joe by email is to be sure
to insert "Joe" or
"Smuin" into the main text portion of any message you
send to him, and thus
your message should percolate through his spam filters.
----- Original Message ----- From: "b4cprail" <rr_auer@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <cpsig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, August 22, 2009 2:56 PM
Subject: [cpsig] Re: Consolidated stencil block
> Joe I hardly think you're a disaffected former employee of
> BC Rail, disappointed perhaps, with government
subtrefuge etc.,
> but I expect you were a proud employee. Everyone has
had ups
> and downs, but when one sticks around for decades, the good
> usually outweighs the bad.
>
> I do hope the Nerd label wasn't cast too far afield as some
> seniors may resent the label, i.e. me. ;^(
>
> Rainer Auer
> Saskatoon, SK
>
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