Union Pacific Reviews

Pros

if you stay available for work you can make a lot on money. it is a lot of hurry up and wait.

Cons

the management is in the bushes waiting to fire you. there are new managers that dont know anything trying to tell you how to do your job.

Advice to Senior Management

pay attention to what your guys are telling you. do not think that when we offer help that we are trying to screw you.

Pros

Great building, great technology, good people

Cons

Very Old school culture. Almost to a flaw.

Advice to Senior Management

Great management team, recommend bring in younger more motivated people

Pros

There is a lot of room for growth, considering a lot of people are beginning to retire.
It is very easy to move from job to job.

Cons

Omaha is not the best city to live in if you are a big-city person.

Advice to Senior Management

N/A

Pros

Good pay benefits and retirement.
Its not hard work, if you finish up your unit early you dont have to work very hard the rest of the shift.

Cons

You will get terrible shifts and days off until you build up any seniority it usually takes a few years befor you can get a daylight job.

Advice to Senior Management

Management is young but i have nothing really bad to say about them i never really had any problems with them.

Pros

the pays ok. been here 30 yrs dont think i could handle a nine to five job. most people are ok to work with.

Cons

the hours can be lousy sometimes. upper management has no respect for the people that are putting many hours in so they can make their fairly big bonuses.

Advice to Senior Management

treat people with more respect. seems like the mentality of the harriman center is "hay i work at the harriman center for the up i can treat you as bad as i want" some crew callers act that way train dispatchers and timekeepers also. they have to have the ok from upper management to act that way.

Pros

1. Amazing people
2. Competitive pay
3. Structured career path and clearly defined hierarchy; promote within
4. Clear role expectations
5. On-site gym

Cons

1. No work/life balance
2. Many employees are terribly disengaged and checked out
3. Extremely limited flexibility
4. Limited # of women in leadership roles; 95%+ of the organization is male
5. It takes 5 years to earn 3 weeks of vacation
6. Politics and lots of game playing
7. There is no way to objectively measure performance; elements of the Performance Reviews (TPT) & ranking systems are very subjective
8. Weak leadership development program
9. Weak mid-level managers!
10. Not progressive...very OLD corporate culture that resist change
11. Tend to lose young talent

Advice to Senior Management

-Start objectively measuring performance for individual roles
-More transparency & corporate communication
-Create a more credible leadership development program & succession plan to groom hi-po's (you are going to need it with all of the retirements coming down the pike)!
-Study and adapt to the growing needs of gen X...you will have to evolve if you would like to recruit and retain top talent.

Pros

*Great bounuses and raises when the company does well
*Strong opportunites to move throughout the company
*Good company to retire with - some positions offer a railroad retirement package.

Cons

*Field jobs typically work long hours, weekends, nights and outdoors
*If you want to move up in the company, expect to work long hours. It's not a typical 40 hour work week.

Advice to Senior Management

Just like any other company, there are bad managers. Some managers excel in delegating. Others do an excellent job at being a team player.

Pros

Long term employment and health benefits. The work is not hard in train service but the hours away from home and family at nights and weekends are the worse part.

Cons

Company refuses to give train crews any compensated paid leave days (Vacatuon & Personal leave dtys) on weekends when our families are off. We have 4,000 plus employees layed off and the extra boards that cover employees on vacations are cut to the minimum.

Advice to Senior Management

Drop the Total Safety Culture program.. This is a joke and only a few slackers benefit from it.

Pros

For the young, healthy and single, the insurance benefits are good.
A few managers are open-minded and progressive.
There is a chance for annual bonuses.
They try to cut costs in other ways before cutting personnel.
They promote from within.

Cons

They reorganize way too often.
The board of directors doesn't understand the impact bonuses have on employees. They recently met just days before the promised bonuses were to be dispersed and decided to cut the funding in half. This was a HUGE disappointment and now we are waiting to find out what they will actually be after initially being told they would be 50-75% of the previous year.
If you have a chronic illness, have kids, or if anyone in your family requires meds for mental health issues, you do not want to work here -- the insurance will eat you alive.
They promote from within, but sometimes they promote people who do not have the necessary expertise, just to promote internally.
Their managers state outright that they expect salaried employees to put in significant overtime. They don't care that much about family situations.

Advice to Senior Management

Study a little about the things that are important to Generation X -- work/life balance, family life, working from home, etc.
Understand the importance of bonuses -- don't promise what you aren't going to deliver.
Stop reorganizing and just let people do their jobs. Every time people get settled and are finally being productive, UP implements another reorg, which just upsets the fruit basket. This is crazy!
Be careful with the idea of not replacing people when they leave -- at this point, it has been taken too far and is putting unreasonable work loads on people. Burned out, over-loaded employees are not productive employees.

Pros

-Highly visible company and widely recognized.
-Large variety of customers and types of commodities shipped
-Diversified in customer base allowing the company to survive in recession type economies.
-Minimal competitive options
-Somewhat competitive base salary
-Adequate vacation time offered and increases with years of service
-Retirement is good-pension plan
-401k with some company matching
-Opportunities to manage large customer account base-common for $100 Million in Revenue management
-Excellent fellow employees "in the trenches" working along side you.

Cons

-Large Company, employees can get lost in the "mix"
-Awards and recognition is minimal; although there are recognition programs they are managed very poorly.
-Medical benefits have really lapsed
-High deductible health insurance with a Health Savings account
-Poor prescription drug plan-especially for non-generics
-Poor leadership within higher level management-manage through fear and intimidation
-No commissions for sales and marketing -doesn't make up for base salary offered and revenue managed -or for new business developed.
-Year end bonuses do not make up for non-commission sales. Depending on well the company did a typical bonus is anywhere from $2,000 on the low end to $10,000 on the high end.
-Very process driven while trying to protect internal procedures.
-Loses focus on customer satisfaction or who the customer even is.
-Very difficult to make fast decisions- even if they are obviously the right thing to do.

Advice to Senior Management

(Chairman and CEO) is visionary and well respected. He has a tough job of changing the way the railroad manages its people. I have faith that he can make the change though.
A few of the VP's that manage business groups with about 200 employees per group need a lesson in managing people. Some do a great job while some do a very poor job. Employees (business managers through directors) should feel valued through positive comments and competitive salaries. Of course constructive feedback should be expected but in an effective way versus through fear or intimidation.