Boardman: Amtrak Commits to End Food and Beverage Losses

[AlanB]

To make matters worse at Amtrak, your union will defend them at hearings, even if they have been accused of illegal actions which they have been caught red handed doing. That means management has a pretty high burden of proof to meet in dealing with such employees.

Don't be too hard on the union for this, and I used to think the same way. But as my good friend Eric (GG-1), who was at one time the treasurer of his local in Hawaii for several years, explained to me a while back; they have no choice. If the union fails to put up a proper defense, even when one is accused of egregious behavior, under Federal law the union can lose its right to remain a union. So an Amtrak employee caught stealing from a passenger or a teacher caught doing the worst possible thing to a student must still be defended in any termination hearing. And if the employer failed to properly dot the i's and cross the t's, the union is likely to win and the employee will keep their job unless they land in prison via the regular court system.

Put simply; the union must defend the employee, without regard to what morals or even common sense might otherwise dictate.

 

[haolerider]

All told, I could imagine very significant improvements in the diner "bottom line" if the dining car staff spent all their time (except for their breaks) serving customers, rather than closing the dining car more than half the day in order to do paperwork and inventory. I don't know whether that would be enough to break even, but it might be enough that the cafe car profits would cancel it out.

The dining car is not closed half the day. On most LD trains the hours of service are as follows;

breakfast - 6:30am - 10:00am

lunch - 11:30am-3:00pm

dinner - 5:00pm - 9:30pm

So that's open for 11.5 hours during the day and closed for cleanup, setup and breaks only 3.5 hours.

That's close enough to half. There are 24 hours in a day.There are people who want to have a snack at midnight before they get off or after they board; there are those who usually have brunch about 10:30; there are 4 time zones where peoples normal dinner time may be anywhere from 6:00 to 9:00 pm, meaning an Oklahoman may want to sit down in California about 11:00 pm.

Amtrak marketing consultant Bruce Richardson ran a test on the Sunset Limited in 1999-2000. Certain dining cars were staffed and open 24 hours a day. The customers liked it because they could grab a meal whenever they wanted, the crews liked it because they didn't have the panic rush at meal times and the unions liked it because it meant two more workers per train. And the extra revenue and reduced overtime brought the average losses down from 9 dollars to 66 cents per meal.

The only ones who didn't like it were management. Amtrak accounting makes no connetion between costs and revenues, so the extra workers didn't equate to increased sales on the books.

Electronic ordering and modern bookkeeping on the train would help, but if you want Amtrak to become self sufficient, Amtrak needs an accounting system that accurately measures costs and revenues of each service.

I beg to differ with you, but the experiment did not work and the sales revenue vs the employee costs did not workout. Also, it was not popular with the employees and resulted in a need for more staff = more salaries. The idea sounds good on paper, but a passenger boarding at 11 pm really wants to get to their seat/sleeper and relax, not eat a piece of cake and coffee or a full meal. Passengers on long haul trains for the majority ofmthemtime, adjust to the time zones and are not ready to eat outside the normal hours of operation of the dining car. You need a lot of,people eating during the night time hours to justify having employees on shift and it just did not work, although Bruce Richardson continues to claim is did!

 

[Bob Dylan]

Bruce Richardson huh? It's not like he hasn't made a Fortune being a Rail Consultant and yet doesnt have much except Discredited Schemes and Reports to Show for it! He used to be a Favorite on Train Blogs but since NARP quit Touting his Talents You Don't see his Name as Much anymore!

I place his Credibility as a Rail Consultant on the Same Level as Sarah Palin's on Geography, Foreign Relations and Economics!

 

[jis]

Didn't Bruce go off to start his own passenger service somewhere about four years back. The world is still waiting with baited breath I bet.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

... nice dining is a PERK for the first class passengers who pay ridiculously

high rates for the sleeping cars. ...

One doesn't buy new dining cars and new sleepers if one wants to eliminate them.

And also, too. iiuc The diners on the East Coast are a collection of

one-of or few-of-a-kind Heritage cars. They are to be replaced by 25

new diners from the CAF order. Famously, the Heritage diners,

40 years old and more, demand costly maintenance.

Presumably, the new diners will have much lower costs in this way.

There are probably other efficiencies from having a standard design,

perhaps more seats, better workspace for the chefs, and all-new

technologically modern equipment. (Certainly home refrigerators

with new design and better insulation etc are much more energy

efficient and not as heavy.)

I have no idea how Amtrak allocates the high maintenance costs

of the Heritage cars, but I could see the new cars helping to cut

the cost of food service.

 

[The Davy Crockett]

To make matters worse at Amtrak, your union will defend them at hearings, even if they have been accused of illegal actions which they have been caught red handed doing. That means management has a pretty high burden of proof to meet in dealing with such employees.

Don't be too hard on the union for this, and I used to think the same way. But as my good friend Eric (GG-1), who was at one time the treasurer of his local in Hawaii for several years, explained to me a while back; they have no choice. If the union fails to put up a proper defense, even when one is accused of egregious behavior, under Federal law the union can lose its right to remain a union. So an Amtrak employee caught stealing from a passenger or a teacher caught doing the worst possible thing to a student must still be defended in any termination hearing. And if the employer failed to properly dot the i's and cross the t's, the union is likely to win and the employee will keep their job unless they land in prison via the regular court system.

Put simply; the union must defend the employee, without regard to what morals or even common sense might otherwise dictate.

I hear you. I'm not trying to single out Amtrak. IMHO, the problem is when unions are required to defend defenseless conduct.

I've gotten the impression (anyone with more insight on this PLEASE weigh in) from a labour lawyer in Canada that even in that 'socialistic' (by American standards) country, a union is not required to defend gross misconduct in many circumstances.

 

[OBS]

I stated this several months back, and it continues to be true to this day, I have seen more OBS people and, to a lesser degree but also true, Conductors, fired in the last two years, than I think I have seen in my 20+ year history with Amtrak.

 

[guest]

I stated this several months back, and it continues to be true to this day, I have seen more OBS people and, to a lesser degree but also true, Conductors, fired in the last two years, than I think I have seen in my 20+ year history with Amtrak.

What are the main reasons they were fired?

 

[Big Iron]

Has anyone at Amtrak ever tried coming up with some reasonable incentive scheme to incentivise the Diner/Cafe crew to try to sell as much as they can? Or would that be something that is highly looked down upon by the Unions or some such?

There was a sentence in the original post stating that Amtrak would establish metrics to measure sales effectiveness of the service attendants. To me that means that there will be some sort of "sales goals" that the Diner staff will need to meet which could lead to monetary incentives or punitive measures if the goals are met/not met. Just my read of that sentence.
I'm in a sales/production role and metrics is just another term for measuring against some performance goal.

The challenge, as I see it, will be to get the union to go along with such a scheme. The only way I see that happening is if its all 'carrots' and no 'sticks.' Which means the good employees will make more money and the employees who have a bad attitude will just get a worse attitude. And the program wil fall short of its goals. Just MHO...

(Un)Fortunately, you are giving our union a little too much credit...I think many of the good, hard working employees would appreciate an incentive (reward) for their hard work.

Agreed, sometimes an "at a boy" just don't cut it. In my world when the company wants to promote a certain product then we are required to sell a certain amount and then get a percentage of every sale above that. The solid producers rake in a little extra cash, the company makes more money and the less productive employees pretty much stay where they are. Some of the lower producers see the monetary success of their peers and step it up.

Oftentimes the incentive plan devolves into a situation where you have to sell X amount of product or get shown the door. That might be more difficult in a Union shop but not having worked in one I can't speak to that.

 

[Anderson]

I don't think it would make sense to run the diners all night. On the other hand, I think you could at least make a case for doing something with the cafe as an experiment...you don't have to sell too many cups of coffee to cover most of that expense. If paired with something along the lines of a diner-club, you might also be able to speed turnover as well.

 

[Anderson]

Has anyone at Amtrak ever tried coming up with some reasonable incentive scheme to incentivise the Diner/Cafe crew to try to sell as much as they can? Or would that be something that is highly looked down upon by the Unions or some such?

There was a sentence in the original post stating that Amtrak would establish metrics to measure sales effectiveness of the service attendants. To me that means that there will be some sort of "sales goals" that the Diner staff will need to meet which could lead to monetary incentives or punitive measures if the goals are met/not met. Just my read of that sentence.
I'm in a sales/production role and metrics is just another term for measuring against some performance goal.

The challenge, as I see it, will be to get the union to go along with such a scheme. The only way I see that happening is if its all 'carrots' and no 'sticks.' Which means the good employees will make more money and the employees who have a bad attitude will just get a worse attitude. And the program wil fall short of its goals. Just MHO...

(Un)Fortunately, you are giving our union a little too much credit...I think many of the good, hard working employees would appreciate an incentive (reward) for their hard work.

Agreed, sometimes an "at a boy" just don't cut it. In my world when the company wants to promote a certain product then we are required to sell a certain amount and then get a percentage of every sale above that. The solid producers rake in a little extra cash, the company makes more money and the less productive employees pretty much stay where they are. Some of the lower producers see the monetary success of their peers and step it up.

Oftentimes the incentive plan devolves into a situation where you have to sell X amount of product or get shown the door. That might be more difficult in a Union shop but not having worked in one I can't speak to that.

To play devil's advocate here, it's a bit too easy to get into a situation where employees get pressured to produce results in "unrelated areas" with respect to their job. I'll mention the case of a friend who was working at Lowe's and who walked out for several reasons, one of which was being pressured to push the company credit card on everyone. Whatever respect may be due to Lowe's, getting employees to press customers to get a card they probably neither want nor need is likely to annoy the customer at some point.

[And of course, on the other end of the spectrum, I know I've been asked whether I work for Amtrak or not based on the fact that I promote AGR at any chance I get.]

 

[Blackwolf]

[And of course, on the other end of the spectrum, I know I've been asked whether I work for Amtrak or not based on the fact that I promote AGR at any chance I get.]

Hah, I'm not alone! I cannot count how many times I've been asked, usually with a suspicious expression, if I'm really a reservation agent with Amtrak.

 

[Trogdor]

I don't think it would make sense to run the diners all night. On the other hand, I think you could at least make a case for doing something with the cafe as an experiment...you don't have to sell too many cups of coffee to cover most of that expense.

Yes, you do. To run a cafe car all night would require an additional employee, who's not going to be available during the day when most people are going to want to be served.

That extra employee's wages, plus benefits, plus meal expenses, plus hotel expenses at the far end of the route, plus one more sleeper room on the train that can't be sold to a revenue passenger (more and more dorm space is now being sold to the public to generate revenue), would be nowhere near covered by the dozen or so (at most) folks who want a hot dog and a drink between midnight and 6 am.

 

[GG-1]

To make matters worse at Amtrak, your union will defend them at hearings, even if they have been accused of illegal actions which they have been caught red handed doing. That means management has a pretty high burden of proof to meet in dealing with such employees.

Don't be too hard on the union for this, and I used to think the same way. But as my good friend Eric (GG-1), who was at one time the treasurer of his local in Hawaii for several years, explained to me a while back; they have no choice. If the union fails to put up a proper defense, even when one is accused of egregious behavior, under Federal law the union can lose its right to remain a union. So an Amtrak employee caught stealing from a passenger or a teacher caught doing the worst possible thing to a student must still be defended in any termination hearing. And if the employer failed to properly dot the i's and cross the t's, the union is likely to win and the employee will keep their job unless they land in prison via the regular court system.

Put simply; the union must defend the employee, without regard to what morals or even common sense might otherwise dictate.

I hear you. I'm not trying to single out Amtrak. IMHO, the problem is when unions are required to defend defenseless conduct.

I've gotten the impression (anyone with more insight on this PLEASE weigh in) from a labour lawyer in Canada that even in that 'socialistic' (by American standards) country, a union is not required to defend gross misconduct in many circumstances.

Aloha

A union is required to defend the employee from management action. This does not mean that the union canot accept an employer action, just defend the action to the poin of following all the rules that are spelled out in the contract.

A friend, that was the regional head of the pacific region of the NLRB, told me about a case that came before him. A worker was caught in the act by management of stealing. In the hearing with the union the employer offered to place the employee probation for 60 days. The Union accepted. A week later this worker was caught by police stealing. Again at the hearing he was offered a shortened probation of 30 days. The union agreed. To weeks later the police caught this worker trying to break into the company office. The union declined to do anything but to accept the employer termination. While this worker was in Jail he filed an action against the union for failing to represent. My friend upheld the decision of the union. So the worker filed an appeal with the Washington Office of the NLRB. The national office overturned my friends decision, and fined the union lost wages to the worker even though he was in jail. UN-officially the Washington Office attitude was at that time the was that the employee was always right, if possible rule against the union, if no cause, then file against the employer. My friend was so disgusted that he retired. He was a stanch believer in following the law. Everyone in town knew if you lost a hearing against him, you were wrong.

I won't name the year or politics at that time

btw: I was a member of that Local from 1972 to 2012 (40 years to the month), and an officer for about 25 years.

 

[Trogdor]

A union is required to defend the employee from management action. This does not mean that the union canot accept an employer action, just defend the action to the poin of following all the rules that are spelled out in the contract.

A friend, that was the regional head of the pacific region of the NLRB, told me about a case that came before him. A worker was caught in the act by management of stealing. In the hearing with the union the employer offered to place the employee probation for 60 days. The Union accepted. A week later this worker was caught by police stealing. Again at the hearing he was offered a shortened probation of 30 days. The union agreed. To weeks later the police caught this worker trying to break into the company office. The union declined to do anything but to accept the employer termination. While this worker was in Jail he filed an action against the union for failing to represent. My friend upheld the decision of the union. So the worker filed an appeal with the Washington Office of the NLRB. The national office overturned my friends decision, and fined the union lost wages to the worker even though he was in jail. UN-officially the Washington Office attitude was at that time the was that the employee was always right, if possible rule against the union, if no cause, then file against the employer. My friend was so disgusted that he retired. He was a stanch believer in following the law. Everyone in town knew if you lost a hearing against him, you were wrong.

I won't name the year or politics at that time

btw: I was a member of that Local from 1972 to 2012 (40 years to the month), and an officer for about 25 years.

I see the union's role in matters like this much the same as a public defender's role in a criminal trial. In a just society, even those caught in the act of a crime must go on trial and have evidence weighed against them. Why should the same standard not apply to workplace discipline?

The idea is to protect people from wrongful termination, the same as our justice system is supposed to protect people from wrongful imprisonment.

Quite often, the reason union folks get their jobs back is because the management itself doesn't bother to properly document infractions. It's akin to a criminal having charges dropped because the police didn't follow the proper procedures in gathering evidence.

 

[Anderson]

A union is required to defend the employee from management action. This does not mean that the union canot accept an employer action, just defend the action to the poin of following all the rules that are spelled out in the contract.

A friend, that was the regional head of the pacific region of the NLRB, told me about a case that came before him. A worker was caught in the act by management of stealing. In the hearing with the union the employer offered to place the employee probation for 60 days. The Union accepted. A week later this worker was caught by police stealing. Again at the hearing he was offered a shortened probation of 30 days. The union agreed. To weeks later the police caught this worker trying to break into the company office. The union declined to do anything but to accept the employer termination. While this worker was in Jail he filed an action against the union for failing to represent. My friend upheld the decision of the union. So the worker filed an appeal with the Washington Office of the NLRB. The national office overturned my friends decision, and fined the union lost wages to the worker even though he was in jail. UN-officially the Washington Office attitude was at that time the was that the employee was always right, if possible rule against the union, if no cause, then file against the employer. My friend was so disgusted that he retired. He was a stanch believer in following the law. Everyone in town knew if you lost a hearing against him, you were wrong.

I won't name the year or politics at that time

btw: I was a member of that Local from 1972 to 2012 (40 years to the month), and an officer for about 25 years.

I see the union's role in matters like this much the same as a public defender's role in a criminal trial. In a just society, even those caught in the act of a crime must go on trial and have evidence weighed against them. Why should the same standard not apply to workplace discipline?

The idea is to protect people from wrongful termination, the same as our justice system is supposed to protect people from wrongful imprisonment.

Quite often, the reason union folks get their jobs back is because the management itself doesn't bother to properly document infractions. It's akin to a criminal having charges dropped because the police didn't follow the proper procedures in gathering evidence.

And let's not go over all of the absurdity in New York City with the rubber rooms over the years, with the union resisting attempts to speed up the backlogged hearing process, as just one example of this process gone horridly wrong. To be fair, some of this is the fault of the contract negotiators (and/or the NRLB's processes, which probably ought to at least tend towards better contracts in this regard and/or permit unions to back out in cases of a criminal finding or plea)...but at the same time, I can't help but fault the unions for including those clauses.

On the other hand, part of the problem is probably with the structure of the boards handling these matters. IIRC, they're generally not impartial third parties (which would validate the "public defender" comparison) and/or there's not a mechanism for the employee to contest something if they don't back them up. That's a problem.

 

[cirdan]

I don't think it would make sense to run the diners all night. On the other hand, I think you could at least make a case for doing something with the cafe as an experiment...you don't have to sell too many cups of coffee to cover most of that expense.

Yes, you do. To run a cafe car all night would require an additional employee, who's not going to be available during the day when most people are going to want to be served.

That extra employee's wages, plus benefits, plus meal expenses, plus hotel expenses at the far end of the route, plus one more sleeper room on the train that can't be sold to a revenue passenger (more and more dorm space is now being sold to the public to generate revenue), would be nowhere near covered by the dozen or so (at most) folks who want a hot dog and a drink between midnight and 6 am.

But couldn't that role be combined. I guess there has to be an Amtrak employe on duty during all times that passengers are on the train. You never know if there might be a medical emergency or whatever. Rather than that person sitting somewhere and looking rather bored 90% of the time, couldn't he or she offer a reduced set of services in a cafeteria or dining car, maybe a reduced set of menu options (the stuff that one person can fix by themselves without it taking too long). That way, even if you just get one passenger an hour walking in and asking for a coke and a cheese sandwich, they can have it, Amtrak makes revenue, the passenger appreciates the good service and extra costs are very small. Of course other responsibilities would take priority, but I guess passengers will understand if they can't place an order while the train is in or approaching a station and the conductor needs to attend to more pressing matters.

 

[Ryan]

That person is the Conductor, and there's no way they should be tasked with selling anything other than tickets, since they have a real job to do.

 

[cirdan]

That person is the Conductor, and there's no way they should be tasked with selling anything other than tickets, since they have a real job to do.

But was does the conductor do at night in between checking tickets and waiting for the next station?

Paperwork maybe? But surely that can be increasingly automated? Conductors could scan tickets for example, so avoiding the need to manually keep track and collect masses of tickets.

Dininig car waiters could scan the same tickets, and this would it make easier to ensure sleeping car passengers get their free meals and prevent the staff from selling the food of passengers who skip meals, while pocketing the money. All this manual administrative overhead could virtually be eliminated.

I've been served drinks by the senior train manager on a night train in Spain before. The train bar officially closed at 2am so they could kick all the drunks out, but we were told to come back 10 minutes later and they continued to serve us.

 

[haolerider]

That person is the Conductor, and there's no way they should be tasked with selling anything other than tickets, since they have a real job to do.

But was does the conductor do at night in between checking tickets and waiting for the next station?Paperwork maybe? But surely that can be increasingly automated? Conductors could scan tickets for example, so avoiding the need to manually keep track and collect masses of tickets.Dininig car waiters could scan the same tickets, and this would it make easier to ensure sleeping car passengers get their free meals and prevent the staff from selling the food of passengers who skip meals, while pocketing the money. All this manual administrative overhead could virtually be eliminated.I've been served drinks by the senior train manager on a night train in Spain before. The train bar officially closed at 2am so they could kick all the drunks out, but we were told to come back 10 minutes later and they continued to serve us.

The Conductor has responsibility for the entire train, especially safety and it would be absurd to,have them selling food and/or drinks. They also open and close the doors for the passengers to,get on and off as well as their paperwork. One reason the cafe car/lounge closes at night is to eliminate all night drinking. No matter what happened on a Spanish train, it will not happen on an Amtrak train. You would have to sell a lot of,stuff at night to make up the salary, benefits, etc of a lounge car attendant, plus, as already been noted, this,would require an additional staff member, which means an additional non-revenue room.

 

[jis]

Isn't the conductor also supposed to remind the engineer of slow orders and other TSRs and such? On some railroads also supposed to acknowledge receipt of signal indication calls and defect detector acknowledgements by the engineer. Believe me, they don't keep their radio on just because it is fun to hear what's going on. It's their job.

Technically, the Conductor is the Captain of the train, and has all duties that come with it, except driving the train, whcih is of course the Engineer's job.

 

[SarahZ]

Isn't the conductor also supposed to remind the engineer of slow orders and other TSRs and such? On some railroads also supposed to acknowledge receipt of signal indication calls and defect detector acknowledgements by the engineer. Believe me, they don't keep their radio on just because it is fun to hear what's going on. It's their job.

Technically, the Conductor is the Captain of the train, and has all duties that come with it, except driving the train, whcih is of course the Engineer's job.

Bingo.

 

[cirdan]

Isn't the conductor also supposed to remind the engineer of slow orders and other TSRs and such? On some railroads also supposed to acknowledge receipt of signal indication calls and defect detector acknowledgements by the engineer. Believe me, they don't keep their radio on just because it is fun to hear what's going on. It's their job.

Technically, the Conductor is the Captain of the train, and has all duties that come with it, except driving the train, whcih is of course the Engineer's job.

Sure, I was thinking of this one in a more visionary way, as in what would theoretically be possible, and what can be done to strive towards that situation?

Or, suppose Amtrak didn't exist, and we were charged with setting up a passenger train service, how would we go about it? What would we do the same as Amtrak, and what would we do that's different? Would we use more technology, or would we rely on manual paperwork? What safety systems would we use and how far could we automate those? Of course we couldn't decide these thing single-handedly as the FRA and host railroads would need to approve. But you get my general meaning?

In an existing organization you can't change things that quickly, but if you never lose sight of the vision, you can get there eventually through a series of small steps taken one at a time.

 

[jis]

Yes. Changing the basic rules of the industry should be exciting. Have fun!

Typically the problems are not technical but organizational and political. I often wish I could wish away the current world and start afresh too from time to time, for much weightier things than just running passenger trains with food service at 3am.

 

[Guest Big Iron]

Has anyone at Amtrak ever tried coming up with some reasonable incentive scheme to incentivise the Diner/Cafe crew to try to sell as much as they can? Or would that be something that is highly looked down upon by the Unions or some such?

There was a sentence in the original post stating that Amtrak would establish metrics to measure sales effectiveness of the service attendants. To me that means that there will be some sort of "sales goals" that the Diner staff will need to meet which could lead to monetary incentives or punitive measures if the goals are met/not met. Just my read of that sentence.
I'm in a sales/production role and metrics is just another term for measuring against some performance goal.

The challenge, as I see it, will be to get the union to go along with such a scheme. The only way I see that happening is if its all 'carrots' and no 'sticks.' Which means the good employees will make more money and the employees who have a bad attitude will just get a worse attitude. And the program wil fall short of its goals. Just MHO...

(Un)Fortunately, you are giving our union a little too much credit...I think many of the good, hard working employees would appreciate an incentive (reward) for their hard work.

Agreed, sometimes an "at a boy" just don't cut it. In my world when the company wants to promote a certain product then we are required to sell a certain amount and then get a percentage of every sale above that. The solid producers rake in a little extra cash, the company makes more money and the less productive employees pretty much stay where they are. Some of the lower producers see the monetary success of their peers and step it up.

Oftentimes the incentive plan devolves into a situation where you have to sell X amount of product or get shown the door. That might be more difficult in a Union shop but not having worked in one I can't speak to that.

To play devil's advocate here, it's a bit too easy to get into a situation where employees get pressured to produce results in "unrelated areas" with respect to their job. I'll mention the case of a friend who was working at Lowe's and who walked out for several reasons, one of which was being pressured to push the company credit card on everyone. Whatever respect may be due to Lowe's, getting employees to press customers to get a card they probably neither want nor need is likely to annoy the customer at some point.

[And of course, on the other end of the spectrum, I know I've been asked whether I work for Amtrak or not based on the fact that I promote AGR at any chance I get.]

You speak the truth. Doing what's right for the company might not always jibe with what's right for the customer. I left my job of 29 years because of the same dynamic as your friend. Again, on the other end of the spectrum, my father was a commission salesman for 47 years and he always said that sales in 90% rejection but you can make a good living off the 10%. It's all a numbers game based on how many asks you make. The job is easier if you believe in your product.

Regarding your promotion of AGR, nothing in the world wrong with promoting something you believe in, use yourself and does offer pretty good benefits to those using Amtrak.