CSX Transportation Inc. freight trains sit parked in a railroad yard ahead of a potential freight rail workers union strike in Louisville, Kentucky on Sept. 14, 2022. Photo by Luke Sharrett for The Washington Post via Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bryan Mack is a second-generation railroad worker from Florence, South Carolina, with a Masters in Music Performance. Both Bryan and his father worked for CSX Transportation, each hiring out at times when there were statistically few Black employees or employees of color working on the railroads. For 17 years, Bryan has worked as a conductor for CSX; in that time, he has seen and experienced firsthand the worsening conditions as the industry has been taken over by greedy executives and upper-level managers hellbent on cutting costs and maximizing profits for their shareholders at the expense of workers, customers, and the public at large. As part of our continuing coverage of the crisis on the nation\u2019s railroad system, we talk with Bryan about his life and work on the railroads, and about the good, bad, and ugly parts of the industry that outsiders may not see, including the discriminatory treatment that Bryan and other workers of color have faced on the job\u2014up to CSX\u2019s recent decision to fire him under dubious circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Additional links\/info below\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Permanent<\/strong> links<\/strong> below\u2026<\/strong>\ufeff<\/p>\n\n\n\n Featured<\/strong> Music<\/strong> (all<\/strong> songs<\/strong> sourced<\/strong> from<\/strong> the<\/strong> Free<\/strong> Music<\/strong> Archive:<\/strong> freemusicarchive.org<\/strong><\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Post-production: Jules Taylor<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>My name is Bryan Mack. I\u2019m from Florence, South Carolina. I had 17 years with CSX Transportation. I was a freight conductor. And I basically grew up here in town, of course, did other things. But my railroad training, of course, done other pursuits. But yes, I\u2019ve had 17 years in the transportation business. And interests include, getting out, traveling, music, as well as cooking, fitness, and other things. But yes, I stand to make things better for the next generation in addition to just being a good, decent person and all, leaving behind good things for others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>All right. Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Working People<\/em>, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Brought to you in partnership with In These Times <\/em>magazine and The Real News Network, produced by Jules Taylor, and made possible by the support of listeners like you. Working People<\/em> is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. So if you\u2019re hungry for more worker and labor focus shows like ours, follow the link in the show notes and go check out the other great shows in our network. And please, support the work that we\u2019re doing here at Working People<\/em> so we can keep growing and keep bringing y\u2019all more important conversations every single week. You can support us by leaving a positive review on Apple Podcasts, you can share these episodes on your social media, and share them with your friends, your coworkers, and your family members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And of course, the single best thing you can do to support our work is become a paid monthly subscriber on Patreon for just five bucks a month. If you subscribe for 10 bucks a month, you\u2019ll also get a print subscription to the amazing In These Times <\/em>magazine delivered to your mailbox every month. So just head on over to patreon.com\/workingpeople, that\u2019s P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com\/workingpeople. Hit the subscribe button and you\u2019ll immediately get access to all the great bonus episodes that we\u2019ve published over the past five seasons of the show. And we\u2019ve published some really great bonus episodes recently for y\u2019all to take advantage of if you are a Patreon subscriber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My name is Maximillian Alvarez, and I am so grateful to have Bryan on the show today. As you guys know, we have been relentlessly covering the crisis on the nation\u2019s freight railroads for well over a year now here on the podcast over at The Real News Network. And I\u2019ve done some coverage on my segment at Breaking Points<\/em> as well. And I\u2019m sad to say that a lot of the things that we\u2019ve been talking about with railroaders like Bryan over the past year and a half haven\u2019t gone away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We saw that in the catastrophe in East Palestine and we continue to see it in the derailments that are happening all over the country from Minnesota to California, but also just the day-to-day grind that workers are going through, the ways that Wall Street greed and cost-cutting, profit maximizing decisions made by corporate executives have translated to constant overwork, under staffing, trains that are probably twice as long as they should be twice as heavy as they should be. We\u2019re in a real mess here, and if you guys have been listening to the show, you know pretty damn well how we got into that mess, because workers like Bryan, with so many accrued years of experience on the railroads, have been telling us left and right about this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it\u2019s important that we don\u2019t just say, okay, we know that now. Let\u2019s move on. We need to stay committed to this. We need to stay committed to railroad workers until we start seeing some real improvements in this industry, not just for the sake of workers like Bryan themselves, and that should be enough, but also for all of our sakes. Again, I mentioned East Palestine. These are the stakes of the destruction, the corporate and Wall Street led destruction of the railroads. It\u2019s all of our problem. These trains are passing through our neighborhoods, as the great Matt Weaver of Railroad Workers United told us on the show a couple weeks ago. These trains, they\u2019re not passing through the backyards of the rich. They\u2019re passing through our backyards. They\u2019re passing next to our baseball fields and our schools and through our towns. And so, we all have a stake in this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so, I\u2019m really, really excited to get a chance to talk to Bryan more about his life and his work and what these changes to the industry have looked like from his vantage point. But before we get there, Bryan, as I was telling you, as we love to do on the show, we like to take our time and walk our way through people\u2019s back stories and learn more about them and how they came to be the people they are and how they came to do the work that they do. So you mentioned that you are a local boy, so you grew up in South Carolina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Yes, I did. I grew up here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>Okay, so do you got deep family roots over there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Yes, I do have family from the area. And incidentally, the town where I\u2019m from was actually based upon the old Wilmington and Manchester Railroad, which became a part of the Atlantic Coastline Railroad, which incidentally became the Seaboard Railroad, which is now the big conglomerate, as we know as CSX. And yes, my dad was an employee too of the company, as well as several other persons around the city, as well as friends that worked for the railroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>Wow, okay. Tell me a little more about that. So what was it like then growing up with your dad working for the railroad, and that just being a constant presence in the town that you grew up in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Well, it\u2019s interesting where we grew up, which was the North side of town, and my dad, just as a kid, my dad was a service attendant, and he was so close by the job and where our house, which they presently still live. If he had to be at work at 7:00, and if he left the house at 6:55 AM, he still would have enough time to spare before he actually had to punch the time clock. That\u2019s how close we lived by the yard. And you could hear whether passenger movements or freight, or just even the switching of the conductors in the yard, you\u2019ve heard it because the rail yard was so close. And the main line, which is the north-south route between Northeast Washington, well, New York, to Miami, Florida going into Florida, which ran right through town. You heard those trains every day, all day, 24 hours a day, good weather, bad weather. So yes, it was a part of the town\u2019s makeup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>So I have two questions here. One, how big was your family? Did you guys have a big family or were you an only kid?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Small. Small. It\u2019s just my parents, my dad, mom, myself, and I have a younger brother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>Okay. So I asked that because I was also going to ask, did you feel, like, a draw to the railroads? Was this something that you knew from an early age that you wanted to do as well? Or were you a rebellious teenager being like, nah, I don\u2019t want to do what my dad\u2019s doing. And then you find your way into it anyhow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Well, I\u2019m glad you asked that. Well, knowing in a back sick way, my dad when he was not\u2026 Well, my dad\u2019s back was short a little bit, which ties into my involvement was my dad was a service attendant when they weren\u2019t derailments, but when they had a derailment, which Florence was one of the main service points that used the Derrick Crane, they inherited the, was called the record. And you would take the mechanical personnel when the derailment happened and you would go and clean it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And my dad was the person that actually cooked for the crews and house people there. Then he started at 5:00 in the morning. He would go with the crew, and he had his own commissary with food, his own diner car. He was the cook and he fed the crews, townspeople, et cetera, so they could clean up the main line, wherever the derailment was at. So he was gone a lot of the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And when we would travel on a vacation with my family and I, he would point out a lot of where he would go. He would point out towns or different locales, and of course, I would see him when my grandmother, his mother, she would come home via Amtrak, and he would actually have to water the train. So of course, he would pick me up and then we\u2019d go over to the station and I\u2019d see him work. And of course, he\u2019d be in his workwear, him getting my grandmother when she\u2019d come in, train pulled in and get off, [go to speak to her]. My mom would come through, pick me up, take me back home. Of course, I got a chance to see that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I knew what was going on, but my story, I was a musician. And let\u2019s just say, well, the luck of the draw of not fighting a job, you find your way back because of the stable income, and you knew the compensation was decent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>What kind of music did you play?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>I\u2019m actually a tubist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>Oh, hell, yeah. How\u2019d you get into that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Well, just going through high school, I can tell you this, I retained perfect pitch. And I started sixth grade, which it wasn\u2019t really formalized in. And long story short, I was an alto saxophonist, or saxophonist for those who were exact, and I wasn\u2019t really good at it, per se. But with me retaining perfect pitch and my band director in seventh grade decided, hey, try tuba for eighth grade. And sure enough, I locked in and played tuba, and it just sort of lined up and I studied music, actually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I went on and studied music and did it as a way to look for an in, so to speak. But then sometimes, when you\u2019re doing music and trying to break certain ceilings, there weren\u2019t many people in it that look like me. So of course, you gotta look the other ways. And it was a fun route because the journey made me a better person. However, you still have to eat. And of course, that\u2019s why I say stability and employment. I said, well, if it didn\u2019t work all else, try the railroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>Yeah, man. I\u2019m always so fascinated by stories like this, and people who listen to the show will remember this because, it\u2019s something that I was so envious about growing up, because you say you weren\u2019t very good. Trust me, brother, you can\u2019t be any worse than I am [both laugh] playing an instrument. And I wanted to understand music on that level so badly. And I remember I was the only one of my siblings who showed any interest in that. My sister did guitar \u2013 She\u2019s 10 years younger than I am, and that was a lot later \u2013 But when it was just me and my two brothers, my mom was constantly trying to pass off her old high school flute to one of us. And it didn\u2019t take with my brother Jesse, didn\u2019t take with Zach. And so, I showed some interest, and she had this big ceremony of taking her old flute down in the closet, giving it to me, and I just couldn\u2019t play it for shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I tried [laughs], I couldn\u2019t read music, and my poor junior high teacher, bless her, was just like, okay, this kid sucks but he clearly means well. So I was always fascinated by people who could play music and also make music. And I\u2019m always so interested when I talk to folks like you about how music ends up becoming this vector through which people find their paths in life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just one example, I remember talking to these two great longshore workers out in Tacoma, Washington, Zack and Skiff, and their dads both worked on the docks as Longshore workers, so their families knew each other. But both Zack and Skiff, they got into punk music, and it was through touring with a punk band that they ended up coming into contact with each other. They became friends, and then they ended up going back to work on the docks together. And now they\u2019re best friends. They lead the Young Workers Caucus in the ILWU. But that wouldn\u2019t have happened if they hadn\u2019t taken that detour through music when they were young. So in retrospect, it all works out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Right, right. Absolutely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>Well, and so you mentioned something that was really interesting. Where you said, understandably, and this is something that hits home for me as well, that when you look like we do, depending on when you grew up, where you grew up, certain paths are going to be open to you and certain paths aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I remember interviewing another fellow, railroader, Marilee Taylor, back in the fall when we were in the midst of the contract fight, potentially approaching a national rail shut down. And Marilee told me about what it was like to be a woman conductor, or she was an engineer, at a time when there weren\u2019t many women engineers. And I was going to ask that about you and your dad. Did it feel then like the railroads were a little more open to you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Well, to answer a question about having a female employee, I received a book about the first Union Pacific engineer of color, and I was looking at the book and I read, and it was a very good book. Interesting. And I know the lady, I think she lives out I think Nebraska or someplace. Well, incidentally, I worked with a colleague, and she actually is still with CSX. She actually went back home, and we\u2019d actually worked together. And she was a woman of color who was one on the division \u2013 I worked out of the forest division at one time \u2013 There were three, maybe four Black women conductors. We had one out of our terminal, which is Hamlet. Then there was two that were down in Aderville. Well, actually it was three, but one of course, well, one doesn\u2019t work. And the other two, I\u2019m not sure, one I know is working. Another one is. And two were Black women. One was a white lady.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And incidentally, you do have a few. But as far as just getting in and trying to know how many of your colleagues you have, I\u2019ve looked at it. And of course, you have the local guys. But I tried to look at it as just you\u2019re having people that are doing the work and able to do the work at a competent level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I knew, of course, the things that my dad did, that job disappeared. And of course, automation and a few things, but then having to do the work of trying to fit in and figure out your niche, yeah, you work out a pigeon hole, so to speak. And that\u2019s why I tried to come in with it and look at it, well, take the best opportunity, learn and work with what you\u2019ve got and move up. Incidentally, just to pick what you can and do the best with what you\u2019ve got.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>Yeah, and it makes sense, because like you said, this is something that railroad workers have been telling me nonstop. It is a good job. It\u2019s one of the best blue collar jobs you can find with in terms of the pay, in terms of the pension. That\u2019s why so many folks for so many years, if you were vested in the railroads after five years, you were pretty much in for life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s been so sad to hear workers tell me that it doesn\u2019t feel that way anymore. And they\u2019re seeing people with 15, even 20 years leave the industry all together, or maybe they\u2019ll run to passenger service as a refuge. And so, I know that we\u2019re going to start tracing that, over the course of your career, how you\u2019ve seen the industry change and what it looks like now. But before we get there, let\u2019s focus in on that time when you hired out. So when did you hire out on the railroads?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>I decided after trying my hand at the public school or so, it was the end of 2004, about December 2004. I\u2019d done part-time stints and trying to \u2013 I taught public school a year, by the way, dealing with\u2026 Not so competent administration. Toward the end of 2004, I decided for that following year, 2005, I said, let me just try something different, and let me try to get some stability. Because I was almost 30 then, I had my graduate degree in addition to taking auditions, which I didn\u2019t get that playing job and I didn\u2019t want to go on to pursue doctoral work incidentally, because I do have a master\u2019s in tuba performance, incidentally, a master\u2019s of music and performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I decided, well, let\u2019s just try something to see if it would get me compensation. So I\u2019ve heard CSX was hiring, and with my being from Florence, I knew that there was going to be a long wait because in this area, this region where I\u2019m from is called a PD region. And yes, if you see the PD Swamp that is actually accurate. PD region or PD Swamp, the great PD River. Florence was basically based off of that. And of course, the surrounding towns: Dillon, Marion, et cetera, the I-95 Corridor, Northeastern South Carolina, that is a big part of it. And I decided to give it a try.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So what I had to do, instead of looking at Florence, I wound up hiring, and they were looking for conductors in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was familiar with the town because I played with the orchestra. Yes, I had a good running relationship with the Charlotte Symphony. So I decided, hey, go ahead and give Charlotte a try, that\u2019s a big town. And, hey, if you can make some money and do it, why not? So I went to Richmond, Virginia, in May, and I took the exam that was offered, and it was a program personality test, and it was at a local hotel up there in Richburg, Virginia. One evening, I think it was a Monday or Tuesday evening, I believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And anyhow, I took it. And it was proctored, about 8:00, took it that evening and I thought, okay. So when I got done, I decided, okay, we\u2019ll go on back home. And I had to drive down to Fayetteville that night, got a little tired and stayed with a relative. So I found out they accepted me. Then I went to training in June, and from June to about July, I was in Jacksonville, Florida, the University of North Florida. We trained there and we learned the basics. They quizzed us and gave us testing. Then we went on the field train to Charlotte, North Carolina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, we went to Atlanta at the REDI Institute, which is the acronym for Railroad Education Development Institute. And our train had actually pretty decent instructors and instructors at University of North Florida were good too. And from there, I spent two weeks in Atlanta. And then on the 1 of August, I went to on the job training in Charlotte at Pinocchio Yard. And from the end of August to September, to mid-October, I trained, and then I became a promoted conductor. So that was my first start on the railroad in Charlotte, North Carolina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>Man. All right. Take me back to that time. Set the scene here. So you\u2019d just gone down to Atlanta, you got your training, now you\u2019re coming back up, you\u2019re stepping into the train yard. What was it like for you in those first few weeks and months, just getting accustomed to that job? Because even though we\u2019ve talked to so many railroaders over the past year, I still feel like I\u2019m constantly learning new things about what you guys do every day. So for listeners who have never been on that side of the railroads, take us through that. What did it look like? What did a typical week look like? What goes into that job? And how were you as a young, just starting out in the industry, how are you adapting to all of that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Well, when realizing \u2013 And of course I\u2019m acutely aware now the differences, seeing passenger service, i.e. which it may be intercity service, which is Amtrak versus a commuter railroad, let\u2019s say Southeast Pennsylvania Transit Authority, SEPTA, in Pennsylvania, the Metro Transit Authority or Metro in Chicago, New York\u2019s Transit, or the MBTA in Massachusetts Bay Area Transit Authority, or Los Angeles Metrolink, or the varying agencies. There\u2019s a difference in that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then you have freight, which of course, well, it was eight carriers, and I\u2019ve seen it dwindle even through my lifetime. I\u2019m familiar with freight operations, and of course, I\u2019m familiar with passenger operations. So Florence, of course, has its north-south trains as well as the dedicated freight runs, i.e. intervals. So you see the people stepping up and riding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, to debunk the myth of, hey, that railroad gets over and rides all day, all night. That was quickly dismissed, because as I\u2019ve trained, I started learning the basics of showing up for work and then learning about changing a knuckle, which is a part of a rail car. I\u2019ve done it a few times, but you don\u2019t look forward to it. But I also learned about switching. And that came later, but my time when I first went to Charlotte, oh, it was not glamorous at all. And I learned that quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So yeah, it changed my perspective in terms of going to work and getting up on the engine and going a hundred miles, waving, sticking my hand out the window waving at kids. No, no, no [Max laughs]. That was nothing. It was nothing of the sort. No. When I got to Charlotte after my training periods in Atlanta and Jacksonville, oh, man. You worked in the freight yard and you basically flat switched, which is the term of moving cars around the crew. And we were switchman foreman, and we were a three-man crew then, switchman foreman, and it was the engineer. And you basically worked in the yard, and you may have serviced the industrial customers, which dwindled even as my career started back in July 2005 to where we are now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But no, it was on the ground, and we worked outside whether it was hot. Oh, gosh. And that was a little bit later, but I can never forget the summer of 2007 when it was really hot and they cut the crews back to one person on the ground, i.e. the foreman. I had a yard job, so I was the foreman, and I had an engineer on the cab. Well, then locomotive, and we were a servicing industry in 107 degree heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So that became a little bit of a, hm, I\u2019m in this and it\u2019s okay, but your job money, it was not glamorous, and no, it wasn\u2019t this big large allotment of money that you were used to seeing. You weren\u2019t waving at kids. And I also worked a good bit of night, oh, now, because you\u2019re working daytime, no. You\u2019re going to work a lot of, well, graveyard shift, so to speak, nighttime, because a lot of the railroad happens at night. As well as bad weather, inclement weather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So when you get used to it. I was fortunate, and I really do appreciate the fact that I did work with men that knew how to switch. And there\u2019s an art that you have to keep yourself safe, but they\u2019re giving you the list and telling you what cars they want and what track and they telling you to order. And you have to know how to comprehend that, keep yourself safe, follow the rules, but also, you have to have a sense of knowing what to do and be responsible. And at the time, there was another person working with you. Because I trained with two other people on the ground in addition to an engineer, but then that was cut down to one person. And they were good people, but again, as anything goes retire, of course, automation and cutbacks and greed, it changed the dynamic eventually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>Man. It never gets easier hearing people like you tell me about that. And I want to talk about those cuts in one second, but just since you\u2019ve had this experience. So my day job, I\u2019m the editor-in-chief of The Real News Network here in Baltimore. So I do this podcast independently, but mainly, I focus on the reporting that we do there. And we just published a really great essay by a carman, a guy who\u2019s worked nearly 20 years as a carman and \u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Oh, yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>Yeah. And he was writing about East Palestine from the perspective of a carman and was describing how, especially over the past four to five years, things have changed on his side of the tracks and what that means in terms of\u2026 For everyone listening, the carmen, these are the guys inspecting the rail cars, and so they\u2019re crawling all over these things. They\u2019re checking out the bearings, they\u2019re looking at the axles, they\u2019re looking up and down, top, bottom, side to side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so, with these cuts every year, you have fewer guys who are tasked with checking more cars in less time. And then you have this philosophy from management that it\u2019s like, if you bad order a car and send it to the repair shop, you\u2019re costing the company money. And so obviously the incentive for you is going to be, well, I don\u2019t want to get chewed out for sending cars to get repaired, and also I\u2019m under the gun and just have an impossible workload. So naturally, anyone is going to fall into the process of things where you\u2019re actually not able to take as much time as you want to check those cars. Things are going to fall through the cracks. And that\u2019s sadly what we are seeing more frequently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so again, I want to get to the cuts, what that looked like on your side, and what that translates to on the day-to-day side of the railroads. But just since you were there on the ground, I was wondering if you could give listeners and myself more of a sense of that ecosystem. Because I think all last year when we were reporting on the contract fights and we were going through the presidential emergency board, the federal mediator, we were talking about a potential rail shutdown in September and then another one in December. A lot of the focus, understandably, tended to go towards the conductors and the engineers. Because those are the people that most of us think about when we think about the railroads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what I hope we contributed was getting people to understand that there are a lot of people doing a lot of essential jobs to make the railroads happen. And that\u2019s why you have all these different unions representing different workers on the railroads. And so, I was wondering if you could give the newbies or the people who don\u2019t see that side of the railroads a little more of a sense of what it looks like there in the yard. Who are the different folks out there who aren\u2019t the conductors and engineers working in the terminal?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Well, I\u2019m going to spread that over two [inaudible] places where I worked, because I started my career in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I wound up working over in Hamlet, North Carolina. All right? So with the same company, CSX.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I hired out in Charlotte, you had, I think it was eight or nine car inspectors, and they were good guys to work with. And basically, we interact with the car inspectors, they did the brake test, and again, they checked the brakes on the cars. And we the conductors, well, little brown crew, so to speak, the switchman foreman, we knew they locked out the track and locked out the locomotive, and they did the test to get the cars. Again, that was the ecosystem. And we had a repair shop. And we respected each other\u2019s craft, so to speak. And we knew that the numbers with some of the guys they hired out pre 1985, and that was definitely a year for the contracts because again, they were protected workers versus someone after 1985. And yeah, that\u2019s another thing within itself. But we knew the older school guys and they knew their jobs so they could tell you stories. And again, we appreciated that mentorship. And again, Pinoca Yard was small, but Charlotte being the city that it is was growing. Then some other business picked up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n So again, we knew that there were grumblings about wanting to do away with the size of the crew. So they did cut our people working on the ground from a switchman form to a [inaudible]. And the car ground, the car inspectors, when somebody retired, you knew basically as that person retired, you might not fill in that vacancy. So that was Charlotte.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And again, the Great Recession back 2008, 2009, oh, it was bad and brutal. Cutbacks. I lost my seniority. So I want to stay in the business. And again, I was not able to leave of my own accord because, again, the recession. So I decided, well. Go and try my hand-over to the class yard, which was the hub terminal facility, the classification facility in Hamlet, which is about 74, well, about 75, well in rail miles, 85 miles from Charlotte. And that facility, car inspectors, you have two yards. Oh, yes. It was a big facility built under the Seaboard Airline in 1954.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I went there, that was where came travelling and learning territory. And the guys, of course, taking trains of freight over many more miles. And of course, you\u2019re dealing with the signal railroad, and you saw the car inspector, you also saw mechanical, maintenance away, signal maintainer. And those guys, incidentally, you become friends with those guys because they\u2019re part of that infrastructure there. You\u2019ve got signal maintainers, they work on crossings and additional signals and the defect detectors. That\u2019s the big thing too. Maintenance away, whether they\u2019re track inspectors who inspect the rails, particularly when it\u2019s hot, but also check the rails for maintenance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gosh, you also have people, if you\u2019re in a classification facility that work on every car. So all of the active welders, car inspectors, and Hamlet handled sometimes 2,000 and 3,000 cars, actually received more like 10,000 up in a few shelves, and that had to be processed. So yeah, that was eye-opening, being able to work there, too. That\u2019s when I really got to travel when I went to Hamlet in 2009. So yes, my career did, and I was out of work when the Great Recession hit, well, basically about four or five months, and really, I qualified at Hamlet. So yes, I then left Charlotte and went east and worked out of Hamlet. And that\u2019s when my career picked up. And a lot of my colleagues that hired out in Charlotte actually came over to Hamlet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>Wow, man, I could talk to you for another hour about the recession and that whole time period, because in a lot of ways that\u2019s where this show and my trajectory started, because I won\u2019t\u2026 Don\u2019t worry listeners, I\u2019m not going to make you guys listen to the story another time. But yeah, man, we lost everything in the recession. We lost the house that I grew up in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Wow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>This time 12 years ago I was a temp working in warehouses and factories back home in Southern California and didn\u2019t know what was going to happen. And I could just see and feel in myself how depressed I was, how depressed my dad and my mom were, and how we were all holding that inside and blaming ourselves for a worldwide recession that was impacting millions and millions of people and families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so, the first person that I ever interviewed for this show was my dad, Jesus Alvarez, because I wanted to try to get him to talk about that stuff. And then we ended up talking for almost three hours about his life, about becoming a citizen, meeting my mom, building a family, and then just so much blowing up and disappearing in the recession and all that stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m constantly reminded every time we do another episode of how important it is for us to provide space for each other to talk about this stuff and to share our stories, and to remind ourselves that our stories are important and deserve to be shared. And folks like you, you have so much knowledge and experience, and so many incredible stories. It\u2019s like, why don\u2019t we talk about that more? It drives me nuts. But I just wanted to point that out, because both of our paths intertwine at that historical moment. So talk to me then about what happened afterwards. Like you said, you were out of work for maybe four months, and then things picked up. So what happened then?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Well, when I was cut off out of Charlotte, it basically \u2013 And you could see it happening because we knew, we saw the company over-hired, and yet the freight that was coming into the yard wasn\u2019t much. And then you\u2019re hearing about the news, because I\u2019m the type, of course, I listen to a lot of broadcast news. I\u2019m not going to say I\u2019m a news junky, but I am aware of national public video and the big three, or soul media outlets, et cetera, et cetera. And we knew that things were a bit different from the customers and the cars coming in. So about \u201908, they just thought of us as little cuts and cuts, and you don\u2019t think about it, but when it does happen, and I\u2019m going to say when Lehman Brothers, and that was the biggie. And that happened about what, 2008, 2009 or so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That really was the island, because from there each week you noticed somebody was cut off or somebody was back. And we got agreements. Well, flowing back to being a conductor, because to become a locomotive engineer, now you have to start out as a conductor, and then we get promoted or get called to engine service training school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And if you were an engineer and there\u2019s no slot, then if they don\u2019t use you as locomotive engineer, then you go back to being a conductor. And the engineers that had time, that were above me, because I came in, I had two or three years about 2008, well, they who had already about eight, nine, or 10 years, a lot of those men who were actually \u2013 And yes, they were male \u2013 That were renting, well, operating locomotives, they became conductors again. So that basically pushes me or someone from lower seniority out. We had guys that were training and they actually were forced out, and some of them were able to survive. A lot of us went to the classification yard when it was, get in where you fit in. So I got cut off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And myself, my last days were December 2008, and I knew a good friend of mine who I actually spoke to yesterday, he was cut off right before Christmas, Dec. 15 or so. Yeah, was cut off from his job. I was able to hold up, \u2018cause my seniority, he\u2019s the man below me. I can hold on right until Jan. 9. And I\u2019ll never forget my last day working when my seniority ran out, I worked the job 3:22 in the yard. Oh, man, it was cold that night. I think the low temperature was nine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then I\u2019ve had to get out and work. And the guy who should have worked the job, he called out. So I went in and I was like, man, I\u2019m going to end my career working a cold job [Max laughs]. And of course, thanks. Go in and you do it. And I went in and it was, oh, gosh, it was a Monday or Tuesday. It was one of those days in the week. And a little later, I got my call, because they used to call you on the phone. And after I was done, I came in and it told me I was displaced, and that was it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So here I am in my nice apartment, I decide, oh, gosh, what I\u2019m going to do that I\u2019m paying month-to-month rent, which is expensive. So I said, well, put my stuff into storage, and I went back home to Florence. My folks didn\u2019t know that. That was another thing in itself, but I said, well, let me try Hamlet, North Carolina, which was the classification zone. And they went through their share of cutbacks too, of course, because then those following months, so 2009, I was able to actually not work there in the yard, but there was a outlined point switcher job, which was under the jurisdiction of Hamlet, which I followed or trained on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And nobody really wanted that job, because it was closer to my house versus North Carolina. And again, I live in South Carolina, but yet to go to work, I drove from where I\u2019m at currently. The drive is about an hour and a half, close to 75 miles, just to go to work. So no, you knew what was going on, but then you said, when I wanted to keep the job, I wanted to keep the benefit. Drawing the railroad unemployment is not glamorous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But no, I went in and I did that and, hey, it was a job. But I realized I stuck and stayed in with it. And the following year, because I was able to stick around enough and I worked out of Hamlet, I made a pact with my folks to go back and forth. And I did, because I had to qualify on, for instance, 2,200 miles of territory. Oh, yes, I had to get on a freight train or what have you and go to outlying points: Abbeville, Greenwood, South Carolina, Bostic, North Carolina. Oh, gosh, up in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, eventually extended an inter-provisional run to Charleston, but Florence, going through Florence, down to Charleston. And yeah, you\u2019ve gone to those places, Andrew, South Carolina, Wilmington, North Carolina. Well, yes, you will work those places as outlying point jobs. So no, it was a lot there to do, and you grew up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But then one thing I can say, and to put a good spin on it is when I learned how to flat switch, it was much, much easier for me to be able to take those skills and to work around equipment, because I felt then on the line of road, hey, I knew how to do this. And that was a big part of me fitting in going to Hamlet. So yeah, it was not easy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>This also makes me think. We\u2019ve heard a lot about the introduction of precision \u2013 I\u2019m using air quotes here. People can\u2019t see \u2013 The \u201cprecision scheduled railroading.\u201d And I know that this concept has been around for a while, since the \u201990s, I think, but it really took off in earnest in recent years across the different major rail carriers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it sounds like even just from what you\u2019ve been describing, those changes that really got supercharged by the introduction of precision scheduled railroading, which I mean, we don\u2019t have to get all into that. But again, just for listeners, to refresh your memory, what folks have told us is that this is just the industry generated term for the entire Wall Street-led philosophy of cutting the operating ratio every year no matter what. So cutting labor costs, cutting investment in track maintenance and preventative inspection and making sure that every department is fully staffed, so on and so forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So instead of doing that, just chopping costs \u201cleft and right\u201d, reducing the crew sizes on the train, reducing the crew sizes in the yard, reducing the maintenance of way crews and so on and so forth. And every year getting that operating ratio down so that you\u2019re spending less while you\u2019re making the cars longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As we already know, a lot of freight gets moved in the country, and that\u2019s the only way it can be moved. You can\u2019t just unload all of that onto the highways. So there are a lot of shippers, a lot of customers who have no choice but to use the railroads, and the railroads know that, so they have a captive market. And so, what they learned was they could charge what they want. They could have a chokehold on the supply chain. They could keep cutting their staff and piling more work onto fewer workers. All the while, the industry is more profitable than it\u2019s ever been. We\u2019re talking billions and billions and billions of dollars here in profits, stock buybacks, shareholder dividends, executive salaries, all that crap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so, the reason I go into that, Bryan, is because it sounds like what you\u2019re describing is you could see these changes taking hold long before the precision scheduled railroading really became the name of the game in the industry. Am I reading that right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Yes, you are. And I could go back to my days in Charlotte for a sec about 2007. And it was actually defeated, it was the Children\u2019s Fund, I believe. The Children\u2019s Fund was a hedge fund that was going to take over CSX\u2019s operation, and basically they were going to start the strip back, so to speak, of operations. Because again, the company didn\u2019t make a lot of investments previously in the \u201990s to the infrastructure, locomotives or track, et cetera. And at the same time, after the big Conrail merger, Michael Ward and the management group at the time did invest back into the locomotives. They invested back into fixing the track, and it was successful. It really was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, you could see that you heard about the cutbacks in other places, and yes, we knew who Ewing Hunter Harrison was, but we didn\u2019t think that it was going to just change or take whole. We just knew that, hey, the trajectory was going to be big and bright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Again, Michael Ward, who was the CSX CEO before Ewing Harrison, yes, we were expecting good things, and yes, we knew that there were tips as far back as 2008. The Children\u2019s Fund did do that, but that was forwarded off because people voted against that. But you fast forward to 2016, 2017, and again, in comes the elections and Ewing Harrison and all of that. And I think he was able to get influence because, again, he lived in Florida, and of course, I think he was a member of [inaudible] club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>So that inner sanctum, right, with all those people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Yes. So he had a captive ear, so to speak, of future presidential candidates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>What did that look like for you on the job as this stuff really started to take hold?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Oh, it was bad. Bad, bad, bad. We started seeing that hm, oh, watch, they made this change. But then we realized, well, wait a sec. If you don\u2019t have X number of people that are running and you\u2019re going to make the yard a flat switching yard, it takes time to do that, and you didn\u2019t have enough people to do the work. How are you going to make this\u2026? It\u2019s almost like you\u2019re pulling cars out of the air, but yet you don\u2019t have the people to manufacture them or to make just anything or\u2026 So to speak, I\u2019ve heard the term pulling hen\u2019s teeth, that their tips almost seemed too good to be true. And yet we noticed the cutbacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then, we noticed the people that were laid off. Then we noticed the discipline. And I have to say, the whole crush with management, oh, gosh. And I have to say this, the sociopath \u2013 And I use that term just of all of the people that they\u2019ve had in, it\u2019s been just terribly mismanaged, and nobody knew what was the focus. Nobody knew what\u2019s the focus. Customers were mad, oh, gosh, I worked a local switcher, and the customers were just irate at all the changes and guys, people quit. Oh, it had the most terrible of the hump, one of the biggest fiascos the country or even myself or the industry could ever experience. Just terrible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>Man, I\u2019m so sorry to hear that. I really, really am. I can only imagine, given all of that, what it was like for you and your fellow railroaders to watch the media and the response from the media and the politicians and even the public for a lot of last year when, as we\u2019ve already mentioned, the high stakes contract negotiations between the 12 different unions representing over 115,000 rail workers and the freight carriers, the class ones. All of that came to a head, even though at that point we were three years into the contract negotiation. So it\u2019s not like this had just come from nowhere, it\u2019s just a lot of us on the outside just didn\u2019t know about it or just weren\u2019t paying attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I know that more people are paying attention now, which is a positive. But I wanted to ask, what was it like for you as a railroader watching your contract fight either be ignored, or then when it was finally covered last year, the kind of coverage it was getting? What do you think maybe folks in the public weren\u2019t seeing and weren\u2019t hearing about when the rest of the national media started paying attention to the crisis on the railroads?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>I think a lot of people didn\u2019t realize that with the unions and the job of the railroad, it\u2019s a structured way of how you are supposed to deal with contracts. But also, the fact that worker input or employee input was never great, and the leverage was always going to be for the carrier, so to speak. Now, a lot of people didn\u2019t understand that the days off, we didn\u2019t have. I worked my career primarily off the extra board. And again, when they cut the extra board back to the point that I didn\u2019t stand to work in handling, I had to look to outlying point job, which incidentally was controlled by another set of so-called professionals \u2013 And I use that term very strongly there. So-called.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But no, the customers weren\u2019t getting the service, and it was just the public didn\u2019t understand when outright started coming about the service of the train, we knew that they were trying to do more with less, but we also knew the trains weren\u2019t getting across, they didn\u2019t have the crews, the personnel, the people, general public didn\u2019t know about how we\u2019d work or didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The extra board is on call. The public doesn\u2019t know about that. And also, when I think the general public will understand the railroad has their own governing bodies and own structure and to strike, no, that\u2019s illegal. They didn\u2019t understand that. And no, a lot of what should have happened \u2013 And this whole thing with the contract negotiation, we wondered, and it showed who was on our work on the side of the rank and file, so to speak, which wasn\u2019t big. This is even some of the politicians that we thought were on our side. So no, it feels not good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>Well, I think it bears repeating, that after what happened, let us not forget, we \u201caverted\u201d a potential rail shutdown in September because we were approaching the end of the cooling off after the Presidential Emergency Board had released its report in August, which meant that after the end of that period, then legally strikes could occur, or lockouts initiated by the carriers could occur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then there was this closed door, 11th hour bargaining session involving Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, Pete Buttigieg, and everyone in the contract negotiating war room. And so, we got this tentative agreement that was kicked back to the membership. There were different timelines for different unions to vote on that, yada, yada, yada. So anyway, I\u2019m paving over a lot here, but again, folks have heard us cover this over the past year and a half. I just want to make sure that everyone\u2019s remembering the timelines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So then we were walking our way up to the end of November. It was looking like there were still a lot of members in the unions who were understandably dissatisfied with the contents of that tentative agreement, who were prepared to vote it down or had already voted it down. It was looking like a potential strike could occur in early December. And Joe Biden urged Congress to force that contract down workers\u2019 throats. Everyone in DC congratulated themselves on, I don\u2019t know, saving Christmas and averting a national rail shutdown while essentially giving these rail carriers who have destroyed the supply chain and the workers who make it run everything they fucking wanted \u2013 Pardon my French.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so, I was staring at this and I was like, what incentive do the carriers have to change? None. Because if they know that this is what whoever\u2019s in the White House, whoever\u2019s in Congress, like they did last year, like they did back in the early \u201990s, they\u2019re going to be that ace in the hole for the carriers, and they\u2019re going to force workers to accept a contract that they don\u2019t want to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so, I wanted to ask, from your vantage point, what has it been like for you and your coworkers after that whole debacle? Because I think if we hadn\u2019t had the catastrophe of the Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine, this wouldn\u2019t be on anyone\u2019s radar. It\u2019s just like, because such a horrific event happened and now the public\u2019s attention is on this stuff again, and they\u2019re realizing that, in fact, these derailments happen quite frequently, and there are reasons for that and that we should be looking at and actually addressing. But if we hadn\u2019t had that, I don\u2019t know if anyone would still be invested in this as much as they should be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I wanted to ask for you personally and for railroad workers in general that you\u2019ve known and been talking to, what has it been like since that whole shit show at the end of November and early December last year?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Well, I know for a fact there\u2019s a lot of displeasure with the agreement. I can tell you that my colleagues looked at that contract and said, God, no days off. They were displeased when the first round of talks, so to speak, with the bargaining board. They were upset with that, because what it was, they felt that, hey, they ignored, again, time off the pay rate\u2026 Well, the amount bargained for\u2026 Well, it shouldn\u2019t even be bargained, it just should be the pay rate was low, and one like 20%, well, 45%, something like that. You didn\u2019t get that. And again, we\u2019re going through this record inflation, and we still worked through the pandemic. We still didn\u2019t have changes to the time off, vacation, et cetera. And yet, you\u2019re still cutting people, and you needed a bunch of people, but then you didn\u2019t focus in on training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The training, and that\u2019s another thing. It\u2019s just the people that they tried to hire, oh, gosh, they didn\u2019t a bit more know what was going on than the man in the moon, because not only they\u2019re not trained, but they\u2019re not doing the protocols of working, thinking about what you\u2019re doing, paying attention. You mentioned derailments. Well, if you were, let\u2019s say, switching your car out, let\u2019s use that as an example, you would know that if you\u2019ve got to go into a track, and if you\u2019re putting cars into a track and it\u2019s, let\u2019s say, off a controlled track, there\u2019s going to be a switch that you have to line up. Then you are also going to have something called a derail, and that\u2019s a device, or whether it\u2019s a device or a cutout person, a track that\u2019s going to keep a train on the track or derail it off just in case. It\u2019s like an assuring thing to make sure you\u2019re not going to cause much damage. Well, the guys or the new hires didn\u2019t know how to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, they did not have a clear sense of keeping themselves safe in terms of equipment or switching out equipment. You\u2019re moving around cars and things. And what I say to that is, if you\u2019re not keeping the knowledge of the old guys who\u2019ve got 25, 26 years in or more, and they leave, well, who\u2019s going to pass on the knowledge to the people that you want to hire? I think before this precision scheduled railroading, now to return the mic back to you, is we had guys that could have passed that knowledge on, but instead when they cut back the first round, those guys were gone. You won\u2019t get those guys back. And of course, that is a travesty in itself. And no, we are not pleased. A lot of us, my friends and colleagues are just saying, hey, we went to retirement. That\u2019s it. They wouldn\u2019t recommend anyone, and we don\u2019t want to see people as a fatality. That\u2019s what we want to avoid. We don\u2019t want to see that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We want you to go home the same way you came to work, in one piece, and with your job, of course. You didn\u2019t tear nothing up, you didn\u2019t hurt anybody. That\u2019s what we want to do when we\u2019re working. And no, we think that that was all thrown out for naught, whether it was the politicians who don\u2019t understand anything, or the general public who was just held out there, or the carriers who were only looking at their stock buyback, some rich person who doesn\u2019t do any work. That is the biggest thing I think we\u2019ve gotten out of, we figured, well, who\u2019s our friends? Who pulls for us? Nationalization, I think, is one thing that might, well, but yeah, who\u2019s pulling for the rail employees? That\u2019s what we\u2019re wondering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>Well, geez. I mean, I think that you said it all there, man. And I really, really hope that folks who are listening to this understand that, as I said earlier, we have a role to play here. We have to keep our attention focused on this. We have to keep demanding accountability for what these companies and their greedy shareholders and executives have done to this vital workforce, what they\u2019ve done to our supply chain, and what they\u2019ve done to put our communities and communities like East Palestine at hazard because of their relentless greed and their relentless need to boost their operating ratio, so on and so forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before we let you go, man, I wanted to ask about what\u2019s been going on with your work and career specifically of late, because I know that you are dealing with some real bullshit \u2013 Pardon in my French \u2013 And I wanted to ask if you could tell us a bit more about that, and especially what folks listening to this can do to show solidarity with you and to support you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Okay. Well, my thing is, if you don\u2019t know, I was basically, purportedly, by arbitration, dismissed because I violated safety rules. And I\u2019ll tell you, a lot of the railroad class one carriers, if you look at their manager, they\u2019re some of the worst people. And you would wonder how did they get their job. Sociopaths, that you could find. If the top level executives that I was talking about with their background, their so-called education or lack of education, who they are, if you would talk to them, seeing who they are, they\u2019re basically toeing the line of the people that found the railroads in also that wants to do the precision PSR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But also, you\u2019re dealing with people and all of the isms. Nepotism is bad. Bigotry is bad. Racism is bad. I could truthfully say for myself, with the credentials I had, and I knew the management core that I dealt with in a division, they were all white, male, and they were ignorant. And they felt that I myself was a threat because I came in, oh, some of the stuff that I did going above and beyond to even get the equipment to work. And even I\u2019ve dealt with a few bad managers that were actually female too, that basically you hired people not because of what they knew, but because they were your buddy. And if you\u2019re seeing that in the field, imagine what headquarters have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SEE THE LATEST EPISODES<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Working People is a podcast about working-class lives in the 21st century. In every episode, you’ll hear interviews with workers from all walks of life. Working People aims to share and celebrate the diverse stories of working-class people, to remind ourselves that our stories matter, and to build a sense of shared struggle and solidarity between workers around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So no, I\u2019ve been out of work and I fought it with the union. I haven\u2019t worked since May 2021. So yes, I was dismissed, of course, trying to fight that. And then arbitration says otherwise, and it was an era of harassment for the Black employees. Oh, yes, certain ones were protected years ago with certain suits and settlements that they couldn\u2019t talk about. And remember this, the non-disclosure agreement or NDA, that is common. Very, very common, particularly with CSX.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Start asking, well, how do you hire, and what are your credentials for getting someone in the railroad? Then you\u2019re going to ask yourself to the general public, well, how does this person respond well to somebody? When you hear the spokesperson, you\u2019re not actually talking to that manager who makes the decision. You\u2019re not talking to the chief of operations, they\u2019re held up someplace. They\u2019re not answering to you, the public, who\u2019s the beneficiaries of the service. And what I can say is we think diversity is good, but when it looks down to the industry like the railroad, there\u2019s a lot of peeling back of the layers of the onion, so to speak. When you see that, that\u2019s what needs to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think myself, and I know some of my colleagues were working, and again, I knew I was singled out because, again, when you\u2019re dealing with people and their particular perceptions, racism, bigotry, et cetera, you\u2019re dealing with people that are threatened by someone that not only knows what they\u2019re doing, but also someone that\u2019s going to go against the management or someone that\u2019s going to call it out, hey, this isn\u2019t right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I really do think that a lot of what happened that could make it better for not just myself or someone is the public need to know and say, hey, we need to call this out. I wish people could get the human resources of the railroads to see, well wait a sec, you might have one or two people of color in on this other job, but who\u2019s actually doing the work? What\u2019s been your hiring? Well, what have you done? I think that\u2019s really one of the worst things. And you can see it. Oh, yeah, CSX, Norfolk Southern, but yeah, I mean, Fortress Jacksonville, so to speak. Oh, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s a lot of things that they will not tell you there. And I think myself, hey, if anyone\u2019s listing, I will tell you this. When they do listen, hey, the only thing I\u2019m willing to do is do my job, get my job, go back and forth and work to serve the greater good. That\u2019s all it should be. Not because you\u2019re figuring that I did something wrong. You\u2019ve got some pent-up phobia or fear because of someone that looks like me or something that you took from years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No, we all, my friends and I came into work and yes. Yeah. It was bad harassment. It was bad harassment. My colleagues that are of color can tell you some stories. But again, it gets swept under the rug, and you see it, and yet no one does. You\u2019re talking to a person that has a master\u2019s plus 18 hours, and yet I was never promoted as a dispatcher. Yet, I was never told, hey, go into transportation. No. And it wasn\u2019t because I worked badly with us, it\u2019s because I dealt with sociopathic management that kept in the supremacist attitude that if I\u2019m hiring my friend or my buddy, we\u2019re going to keep everything in check and everything in check. Here is what\u2019s led to what we have now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximillian Alvarez: <\/strong>Man, and it\u2019s such a powerful statement. And that I would normally end the episode there on that final word that you said because I want people to really sit and think with that. But I couldn\u2019t help but hop back in because I\u2019m thinking about the story that you shared at the beginning with your dad working on the railroads, and during derailments, being there cooking for everyone and cooking for the people doing the cleanup, the crew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And even then, like you said, still dealing with a lot of racist problems in and beyond the railroad industry. And it\u2019s just like when I think of that scene that you described with your dad and your grandma and the way that we handled derailments then, and how often derailments happen then compared to now, and I\u2019m just really struck by that. I wanted to ask by way of rounding out, what do you think has changed for the better in that time, and what do you think hasn\u2019t changed at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bryan Mack: <\/strong>Well, overall for the industry, I think you\u2019ve got people that care, that know what they\u2019re doing. They actually care about their job. They come to work, they take it seriously. Go above and beyond. I mean, I just saw it even myself working my years. Gosh, me and my colleagues that I worked with, we wanted to\u2026 Should we show up? I have one of the best attendance records, and I\u2019m not ashamed to tell anyone that I have one of the best attendance records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I didn\u2019t take off other than when I needed to. I\u2019ve always showed up, didn\u2019t use time, didn\u2019t mark off or anything, so to speak, unless it was a bad weather condition or something. But no, I showed up operations, went above and beyond, bought the equipment in, and I think the training was better. But then now, even that has been laid way to the side. But also, I think we\u2019ve got to ask ourselves, hey, the next generation\u2019s not going to do some of the things there. Let\u2019s look back and say, do it better. But also, hey, we are not in it for greed, but rather the greater good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want to get good treatment, hey, treat people like the way you want to be treated. Look at the work, the employees, not as workers, but as colleagues, and maybe even your own children, you\u2019re showing benevolence to them. That\u2019s how I would see. That\u2019s how I see. I think that\u2019s what should be improved upon, focused upon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other thing I can tell you is just if you talk to some of the people that, whether they\u2019re conductors or mechanical personnel, signals, et cetera, hey, you hear their stories. They\u2019re the people that want to work. Then whether it\u2019s an isolated locale, they want to do the right thing, and they know that the job is a good job. But, hey, allow them to do the work, to keep the public safe. And not only that, allow them to do what\u2019s necessary to keep the trains rolling. Yeah, something may happen, but the people deserve better, the public. But not only that, and if you\u2019ve got your infrastructure there, hey, let\u2019s do it for the good of everybody. I\u2019m thinking more win-win. But yeah, we\u2019ve got to, hey, do better. If you know better, you can do better. Right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Principled, independent journalism that gets to the roots of the crises we face is more important today than ever. <\/strong>Journalism that doesn’t just dwell in despair, but empowers you to take action. Journalism that movements and changemakers need<\/em> to fuel their activism against worker exploitation, the climate catastrophe, white supremacy, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We never<\/em> accept cash from the corporations we’re trying to fight and we never<\/em> hide our content behind restrictive pay walls. But that means we need you to rush a tax-deductible donation<\/a> or join our growing community of sustaining members<\/a> who give a little each month to make a big difference to our journalists and contributors. Solidarity, not charity!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n about:blank<\/p>\n\n\n\n about:blank<\/p>\n\n\n\n More ways to give<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Editor-in-Chief<\/strong> Second-generation railroad worker Bryan Mack of Florence, South Carolina relates his many years on the rails and how profit-chasing executives have sacrificed workers, customers, and the public to protect rail carriers\u2019 margins. BY MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ APRIL 19, 2023 (therealnews.com) CSX Transportation Inc. freight trains sit parked in a railroad yard ahead… Continue reading \n
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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nWORKING PEOPLE<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Before you go, we want you to know how essential<\/em> your support is to our work at The Real News Network.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nMAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Ten years ago, I was working 12-hour days as a warehouse temp in Southern California while my family, like millions of others, struggled to stay afloat in the wake of the Great Recession. Eventually, we lost everything, including the house I grew up in. It was in the years that followed, when hope seemed irrevocably lost and help from above seemed impossibly absent, that I realized the life-saving importance of everyday workers coming together, sharing our stories, showing our scars, and reminding one another that we are not alone. Since then, from starting the podcast Working People\u2014where I interview workers about their lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles\u2014to working as Associate Editor at the Chronicle Review and now as Editor-in-Chief at The Real News Network, I have dedicated my life to lifting up the voices and honoring the humanity of our fellow workers.
Email: max@therealnews.com
Follow: @maximillian_alv<\/a>More by Maximillian Alvarez<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"