(Tom Stanton, KLIN News)
BNSF Railway Company, the largest freight railroad in the United States with a large operation in Lincoln, has reportedly laid off dozens of workers across the region.
The layoffs came down Tuesday, Feb. 27th, a source told KLIN News. BNSF confirmed the dismissals, citing an “imbalance of employees where growth is occurring among some of our mechanical work groups.”
“We have team members in locations on the network where there isn’t sufficient work and simultaneously not enough team members where the growth is occurring,” a BNSF spokesperson told KLIN. “Work groups must be readjusted to ensure we have the right people in the right place at the right time to best serve our customers’ current transportation needs and be positioned for future growth.”
In regards to a lull in available work, one employee affected by the layoffs who wants to remain anonymous corroborated that traffic is down right now but that is typical for the first few months of the year.
“They’ll be in a tough spot,” they said.
Local layoffs reportedly include 15 pipefitters from the Lincoln Diesel Shop, 38 carmen and 4 laborers from the Havelock Shop… and regionally, 10 boilermakers and 25 pipefitters were let go from the Argentine Yard in Kansas City, Kansas, and 85 total layoffs in various positions from facilities in Topeka, Kansas.
In an effort to reallocate workers from slow sites to sites with higher labor needs, BNSF says they’re offering location transfers with incentives targeted to those locations where there are open positions. Additionally, they’re offering craft transfers for mechanical employees to be retrained for other open positions on the BNSF network.
According to the rail company, there are currently several hundred open mechanical and engineering positions on the BNSF network.
“Our hope is that we can reallocate personnel through these incentive programs, so BNSF continues to grow with our customers,” the statement from BNSF concluded.
Another anonymous employee who spoke with us speculated that BNSF’s goal is to eliminate the mechanical department and shift those duties to contract-workers as a cost saving measure.
BNSF did not comment when asked if this was their intention.