Latest / The Real News Podcast / Railroad Jobs Have ‘Gotten Worse’ Since Biden and Congress Blocked Workers from Striking

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Railroad Jobs Have ‘Gotten Worse’ Since Biden and Congress Blocked Workers from Striking · The Real News Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: A I Got work, oh right. Welcome every one to
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  Speaker 1: Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams and
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: struggles of the working class today. Working People is a
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and has
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: brought to you in partnership within These Times magazine and
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: the Real News Network. The show is produced by Jules
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners just
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: like you. My name is Maximilian Alvarez, and we've got
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: a really important episode for y'all today, and it's about
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: a crisis that affects all of us, even if we
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: don't think that it does. And I'm really grateful to
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: be joined by a familiar voice that listeners are going
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  Speaker 1: to recognize from a number of the one on one
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  Speaker 1: and panel interviews that we did with railroad workers back
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  Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, when the United States was on
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  Speaker 1: the verge of its first national railroad strike in a generation.
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  Speaker 1: To protect and his job, we just call him Jay
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  Speaker 1: around here, and we won't name the railroad company that
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  Speaker 1: he works for, but he's a veteran trained dispatcher who's
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  Speaker 1: been in the industry for twenty two years. Basically the
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  Speaker 1: railroad equivalent of an air traffic controller and a nine
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: to one to one dispatcher rolled into one. It was
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  Speaker 1: rank and file workers like Jay who first alerted us
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  Speaker 1: to the long brewing crisis on the nation's freight rail system,
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  Speaker 1: which is also impacting our passenger rail system, our whole
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  Speaker 1: supply chain, and the towns and cities where these trains
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  Speaker 1: passed through all over the country. We'd learned about the
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  Speaker 1: Wall Street takeover of the railroads, the deregulation, the corporate consolidation,
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  Speaker 1: the profits and margins obsessed mania that has led to disastrous,
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  Speaker 1: unsafe and unsustainable policies and decisions that have put frontline workers,
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  Speaker 1: track side communities, and the public at large at long
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  Speaker 1: term risk for the sake of mass of short term
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  Speaker 1: profits for the rail carriers, their executives, and their shareholders,
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  Speaker 1: cutting or automating jobs year after year, piling more work
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  Speaker 1: onto fewer workers, running those workers into the ground, spitting
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: them out of the industry, and then hurriedly hiring untrained
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: workers to replace them. We learned a lot about this
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: crisis leading up to the potential strike in twenty twenty two,
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  Speaker 1: which then President Joe Biden in both parties in Congress
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  Speaker 1: conspired to break before it even had a chance to begin.
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  Speaker 1: We saw the costs of this crisis with the catastrophic
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  Speaker 1: train derailment and chemical disaster in East Palestine, Ohio in
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  Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. So today we're talking with Jay again
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  Speaker 1: to ask the simple question, has anything gotten better on
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: the railroads? So, brother Jay, it is so great to
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: have you back on the show again. Man, I know
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: it's been a minute. First and foremost, how you doing, brother,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: How you've been doing since we heard from you?
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  Speaker 2: It has been a minute. It's how many years now?
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  Speaker 2: We said?
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  Speaker 1: What is this?
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  Speaker 2: Twenty twenty two? What four years now? Already? Four years? Well,
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  Speaker 2: I feel like it's going faster and faster every year
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: in the order I get. But I'm doing well despite
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: facing strong opposition and tough headwinds. I don't let anything's
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: tap me. I mean, if you're going to do something,
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  Speaker 2: you may as well set out put your hand to it.
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  Speaker 2: You may as well do it right. And somebody's got
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: to tell the truth, because if everybody believes someone else
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: is going to do it, nobody's ever going to tell anything.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: So here we are, and I'm looking forward to what
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: we have to discuss today.
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  Speaker 1: Right on man and like in terms of speaking the
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: truths that need to be heard, right. I mean, you
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: recently filed a formal complaint with the Surface Transportation Board,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: and you know, by the looks of that complaint, you
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: know it does not sound like the things that you
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: and I were talking about four years ago have gotten
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: much better. In fact, it sounds like they've gotten worse.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: I would absolutely say they've gotten worse. Unfortunately, something that
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: I've figured out, and you continue to see this with
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: the Wall Street syndrome that's afflicting corporate America. I mean
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: all across the country. It doesn't matter what job it is,
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: what profession it is, it's cut cut, cut, cut to prosperity.
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  Speaker 2: But in reality, there is no prosperity. When you're cutting,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: the prosperity is actually a false it's almost like a
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  Speaker 2: false flag operation. If a company is not bringing in
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: new and new revenues, new investment, new business, whatever the
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: case may be, and yet you continue to show record
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  Speaker 2: profits when as a as a portion of the company's
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  Speaker 2: earnings a very small portion often is what your new
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  Speaker 2: increases or you know, new customers were. How do you
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: support that, How how do you where does your money
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  Speaker 2: come for stock buybacks. Where does you know the record
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  Speaker 2: revenue newcome quarter after quarter a year every year, And
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  Speaker 2: the reality of the situation is, it's not actual revenue.
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  Speaker 2: It's cutting conductors, it's cutting engineers, it's combining trains, it's
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  Speaker 2: eliminating crew districts, it's cutting car inspectors, hiring non contracted workers,
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  Speaker 2: which are known as scabs to most union workers. Oftentimes
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: these folks are paid less. And we already know with
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: expenses the way they are, that a living wage in
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: America probably at this point would be nothing short of
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: about twenty five bucks an hour. I mean, let's just
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: call it what it is. So if you're making less
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: than that, man, you're struggling. You know, power bills are
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: going up, school taxes are increasing, Fuels through the roof,
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, not as bad as it has been in
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: the past, but at four fifty four to seventy nine
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: a gallon, that's not exactly good either.
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  Speaker 1: Great man, I'm dying over here.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know. I mean it's cost to me seventy
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  Speaker 2: bucks to fill a mid size suv where it used
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  Speaker 2: to cost me forty five or fifty. And I mean
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  Speaker 2: for a lot of people, you have to think in
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  Speaker 2: the nineteen eighties, if you looked at what an average
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: conductor engineer earned then and compared it to today's dollars,
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  Speaker 2: if our wages had kept up, I mean, my god,
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  Speaker 2: we'd be over a quarter a million a year. And
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  Speaker 2: you think about that. It's the middle class that drives
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: the economic engine that is the prosperity of America. It's
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: the middle class that supports all of the other parts
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: of the middle class. So your food service industry, your
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: hospitality industry, any manufacturing company. Let's say you build lawn tractors. Well,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: if somebody's going to need a lawn tractor, they're first
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: going to have to own a home. And if you
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: buy a home and you want to have it built, well,
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: guess what. Somebody's got to ship the lumber. Here's where
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: the railroad comes in. But before you even do that,
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  Speaker 2: somebody's got to go log it. So there's a lot
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: of different hands that touch all of this stuff from
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  Speaker 2: the time it was a tree standing in the forest
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  Speaker 2: till it's a two by four in your living room wall,
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  Speaker 2: and all of the transportation in between. But if all
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  Speaker 2: you have is filthy rich and broke poor with no
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  Speaker 2: middle class, you don't have anything because who needs a
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  Speaker 2: railroad when nobody's buying anything to ship?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, man, Like they're it's like they're planning for uh,
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  Speaker 1: you know, society without humans. Right, It's like, who's gonna
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  Speaker 1: you know, buy your products if no one can afford
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: to live? You know, who's gonna you know, create anything
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: if like you're all putting AI into your goddamn you know,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: programs and operational systems. Like it's like you see that
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  Speaker 1: same sort of blindness that has led you know, Wall
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  Speaker 1: Street and corporate executives to take our vital supply chain
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  Speaker 1: and you know destroy it, like doing all the things
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  Speaker 1: that you're talking about, destroying the workers in the process,
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  Speaker 1: destroying the infrastructure in the destroying towns like East Palestine
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  Speaker 1: in the process, and just moving on because they're raking
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  Speaker 1: in like more money than they ever have. It's like
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  Speaker 1: we're careening towards a cliff, and what's gonna happen? You know,
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  Speaker 1: like when those profits run out? Like does does does
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  Speaker 1: anyone think beyond you know, a few years in these
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  Speaker 1: corporate offices? It sure doesn't seem like it. But I
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  Speaker 1: wanted to sort of ask in that vein you know, like,
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  Speaker 1: after all the attention that you guys were able to
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  Speaker 1: get in twenty twenty two, especially as we got, you know,
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  Speaker 1: to the to the edge of a potential strike, and
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  Speaker 1: then after East Palestine being such a you know, international disaster,
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  Speaker 1: it felt like for a fleeting moment, like the railroads
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  Speaker 1: were feeling like they were going to have to make
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  Speaker 1: some concessions and change some of their behavior a bit.
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  Speaker 1: That's what people have asked me for years ever since.
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  Speaker 1: I wanted to pose that question to you, like did
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  Speaker 1: they change at all in that aftermath? Did it just
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  Speaker 1: go away after a couple months.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, I think as an industry, and we're talking
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: the class one industry, you know, a lot of your
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: short lines are operated by people that are trying to
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  Speaker 2: do what's right. You know, you have small companies, in
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  Speaker 2: some cases they're family owned. Now a lot of them
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: have been getting bought up by holding companies now, but
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  Speaker 2: you know, a lot of the smaller companies weren't the
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  Speaker 2: problem to begin with. It's your giant Wall Street traded companies.
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  Speaker 2: And everybody knows that. You know, it's a shell game.
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  Speaker 2: Everybody knows the math is a fraud and the way
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  Speaker 2: it's represented is not the way it's actually happening, you know.
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  Speaker 2: So they said, well, there needs to be more detectors
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  Speaker 2: out there, we need to have better technology, They need
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  Speaker 2: to be fewer miles apart. Because I think it was
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  Speaker 2: an article that I read last year, the Transport Canada
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  Speaker 2: had written about a real rail car wheel bearing that
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  Speaker 2: if it went bad, it could catastrophically fail in as
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  Speaker 2: little as twelve miles. And you've got a figure. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: if you've got, you know, a two hundred eighty six
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  Speaker 2: thousand pounds rail car and you've got let's see four
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  Speaker 2: axles underneath of it, so that gives you eight contact points,
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  Speaker 2: it means you have eight bearings. You take that two
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: hundred eighty six thousand pounds divided out by eight, and
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  Speaker 2: you know what, I don't know, it can't do. The
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: mathema has like seventeen tons or something pressing down on
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  Speaker 2: that bearing, something like that somewhere in that neighborhood. So
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: with that kind of pressure on there, when something stops
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  Speaker 2: spinning the way it's supposed to and the lubricant goes away,
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  Speaker 2: you could just imagine how hot that gets and how
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: fast an empty car will lasts longer a loaded one
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  Speaker 2: will not. And the more the heavier it is, the
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  Speaker 2: quicker the thing's going to fail because the heat's going
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: to build exponentially. But putting detectors, you know, every so
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  Speaker 2: many miles is all well and good. I don't disagree
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  Speaker 2: with that, But then you have to look at the
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  Speaker 2: operating rules that we have, and the operating rules haven't changed.
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  Speaker 2: So for example, on our detectors, we can't go slower
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  Speaker 2: than eight miles per hour. Ever a detector or give
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: us a train too slow message. It causes the transducers
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  Speaker 2: and stuff not to read write and they lose track
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  Speaker 2: of what they're counting and don't know what to do.
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  Speaker 2: And when that happens, depending on the type of train
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  Speaker 2: it is, then the conductor have to get down and
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: go walk the train for an inspection. On that train
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: might be fifteen thousand feet long. Now, and yeah, I said,
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: fifteen thousand feet that's insanity. A train does not need
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: to be that big. I saw one that was forty
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: six thousand tons three hundred and thirty loads, and the
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: thing had like nine engines on it with is you know,
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: split multiple DP sets And anytime you ask somebody in
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  Speaker 2: leadership about this, They say, well, give me a data
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: driven solution, data data, data, AI models, blah blah blah. Listen,
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  Speaker 2: let me tell you something. If you're going to build
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: a model, the only way you're going to be able
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: to build a model is on things that have already
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: happened in most cases. Now, you can have predictive models
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: and futuristic models and all that, but all of those
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: are based on past behavior. Right. So if someone like
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: myself comes in and says, look, I don't like that,
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: and here's why I don't like it. I can't put
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: my finger on it yet, but something just doesn't feel right.
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  Speaker 2: Or I can tell you this isn't going to go
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  Speaker 2: the way you think it's going to go. And the
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: first thing I get is, will give me a data
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  Speaker 2: driven solution. Well, you're dismissing my concern and you're saying
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  Speaker 2: it doesn't matter. But yet you're willing to look at
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: the model someone else built, which is an opinion, and
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  Speaker 2: take it for the gospel. But you won't listen to
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  Speaker 2: me because my narrative doesn't agree with yours. That's a
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: bit of a problem. And the damn it to the
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: equipment Max, Oh my god, I mean springs are missing
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: on the side of these cars. Loaded chlorine cars without
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: springs on the side of them. Draft gear broken in
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: places I've never seen it broken, and yet somehow it's
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: still out there running. Bolster angularity issues. Cars lifted off
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: of the truck, so they're actually the truck is actually
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: riding crooked down the railroad underneath the car, burning a
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: hole through the bottom of the equipment. I've had two
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: instances where the bottom of a railcar, the welves have
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: broken and fallen out of the bottom of the car
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  Speaker 2: while the train was moving, thankfully dragging the equipment. Detector
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: caught both of those. Another one the car literally ripped
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  Speaker 2: in half and caused a catastrophic derailment, put cars everywhere,
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: delayed the morning commute for all the passenger trains. I mean,
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: it's crazy. You had that big explosion underneath I ten
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: out on the BN a year or two ago. It
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: was called on a tractor trailer dash cam on the
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: trans Con. Mind you, the Southwest Chief goes scorching through
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: there about ninety miles an hour, twice a day. God
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: forbid if that train has been coming when the tank
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: care wrecked and blew up. I mean multiple poll ups
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: on the Pittsburgh line up through Pennsylvania. Csx's had multiple
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: poll ups, they've had bridge failures. I mean, just like
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: what are we doing, dude? You know, like a railroad
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: is a capital intensive business. You've got to spend money
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: to make it run, and they're not doing that. They're
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: just milking the money out to make the numbers on
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: Wall Street look good. Yeah.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: I think that's that's very succinctly and powerfully put. You know,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: it is a shell game, right because you know, you
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: can see this like for yourself if you live near
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: a railroad or you know, drive across the country, Like
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: everyone knows our infrastructure is going to shit, you know,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: like it's it's just like a lot of this stuff.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Maybe you know, folks don't see it on their you know,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: phones or their timelines, but if you go outside and
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: walk around, like you'll see that, you know, everything's kind
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: of fallen apart, while the people who are supposed to
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: be maintaining it are you know, making bank and the
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: people the workers who actually you know, like are tasked
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: with maintaining it are getting crushed, right, I mean like
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: this this, Yeah, like I see it everywhere that I go,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: but I wanted to like kind of ask what that
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: has looked like, you know, from the dispatch office, you know,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: because like we we've it's like the the the country
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: was alerted last year to like the long brewing crisis
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: in air traffic controlling as well, right, I mean, like
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: and the shortage of air traffic controllers that we've had
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: for years that no one's been listening, uh to, you know,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: when when union reps and workers are are you know,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: complaining about it. But you know, I think that folks
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: still like don't know what it looks like for like
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: a worker like yourself, like all that you're responsible for
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: from the dispatch office, and like you know, you know,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: they can understand what it's like to be an engineer
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: on a train that used to be a mile long
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: that's now three miles long, Right, we can at least
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: sort of imagine that, But what does it look like
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: to be a dispatcher who used to have like, you know,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: the area expansion equivalent of a one mile train going
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: to a three mile train? Like how much terrain are
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: you covering? And how many people do you guys have
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: to do it under these policies? Uh?
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: I mean it. There's nothing short of just straight up
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: saying it's bad. I mean, they've doubled the size of
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: the territory. In fact, the job that I work is
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: two jobs smashed together into one. And you know, one
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: thing that I used to do an awful lot. And
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: this is indicative of your old head as they call us,
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: the ones that have been around for a while, you know,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: new school. Let me tell you something. The standard that
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: we had to adhere to when I hired is not
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: the standard now, not even close. You just do not
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: have to be qualified like you used to have to be.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Now it's DEI, this DEI that you know. We have
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: a number we have to meet and it doesn't really
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: matter whether or not you actually can do the job
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: or do the job well. They just want a body
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: in the seat. And when they doubled the territory, I
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: went from having time to plan, time to think about
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: what I wanted to do, time to be deliberate about
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: giving track time out. You know, you have so from
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: a train dispatcher's perspective, and most people have probably never
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: met a train dispatcher. It's a pretty niche craft, right,
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: just like most people will never meet a locomotive engineer,
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: it's pretty rare.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: You just don't.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, you're more likely to meet a you know,
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: a civil engineer or a lawyer than you are a
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: locomotive engineer. And that's not in any way degrade them.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: That's just shows you how niche job, how niche these
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: jobs are. But if you consider what a train dispatcher does,
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: I literally manage every aspect of the operation of the railroad.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: So I have four hundred plus miles of territory that
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: spans multiple lines and multiple states, two telephones, numerous radio bases,
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: sometimes anywhere from eight to as many as eighteen control
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: screens in addition to your train sheets, your bulletins, all
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: the paperwork that you need to move trains safely. So
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: you might have dimensional shipments on one or two trains
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: or maybe three. Then you have work zones for maintenance
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: of way, so you might have three or four of those,
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: and depending on the company you work for, those may
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: be handled differently. Need absolute block protection, you might need
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: to protect switches. You might have to issue form dser
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: track authorities. I mean all of these different things going on.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: Then you have people that get impatient and don't want
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: to wait for the three mile long trains, so they
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: charge through the crossing and break the gate off. Well,
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: now that's another problem. So then I get a call
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: from the police that I have to facilitate protecting that
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: crossing and running trains at fifteen miles an hour because
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: the lights will stay on indefinitely. If the gate can't
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: go back up, the lights would just flash continuously. So
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: he slowed the train down because people come up, see
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: the lights are flashing, and not look for a train
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: pull out in front of him get hit right well,
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: and I don't need that. I've had enough fatalities in
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: my career, and I have to send a maintainer. I
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: have to slow the trains down. And now you look
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: at that and you say, okay, well, here comes a
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: train at fifteen thousand feet long. I was going to
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: put him in the siding, but there's just one problem.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: He doesn't fit by two railroad car lanks, and thirty
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: minutes behind him is Amtrak. Now can gate. Amtrak's still
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: doing almost eighty He's going to be on that guy's
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: We're end in a couple of minutes. I mean literally,
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: you're really gonna look away and look back and boom
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: there he's going to be that. I mean, that's a
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: little exaggeration, but that's what it feels like. And that's
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: an addition to your rail grinders. You're camping, your tieing
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: surface gangs, your rail gangs, you're bridging building guys just
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: CNS guys that have to do their switch testing and
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: they're crossing tests, and then you have trust passers out
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: there messing around. You know, we were just talking earlier.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: I've had two fatalities and a partial amputation in the
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: last two and a half months involving trespassers. And for me,
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: it's a lot of paperwork, it's a headache, it stops
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: my trains, and you know, it makes me a lot
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: of mess to deal with. But like I said just
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: a minute ago, I've had so many fatalities in my career,
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: have lost count, and it's I just removed myself from it.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: It's just another phone call, another headache, another problem to
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: deal with. And that might sound awful, but you have
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: to realize, you know, trauma doctors and nurses have to
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: do the same thing. They see some horrible stuff every
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: day and if they let it get to them personally,
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: they wouldn't be effective at their jobs anymore, and nobody
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: wants a train dispatcher if that's not effective.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Oh and you know again the I was joking with
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: you before we started recording that. It's like, you know,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: whether I'm talking to you or you know, like the
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: longshore guys in the porta Tacoma, you know, or you know,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: guys on oil rigs and the gulf. Like. The amount
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: of sort of things you have to juggle in your
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: head at once and sort of maintain your focus and
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: decision making kind of capacity without getting paralyzed by the
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: stakes of everything that you're managing is wild to me,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: because like the second I start thinking about it, I
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: start breaking out into a cold sweat because I'm, you know,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: a rube like me who's trying to envision the job
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: that you do. I start by thinking, like, okay, yeah,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: like imagine a matt where you got the trains move
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: in at certain speeds. They got to this, one's got
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: to stop here so that one can go. But then
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: like the reality starts filling in of a four hundred
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: square mile like area, multiple lines, trains that are now
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: three miles long, moving a lot slower than they used to,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: breaking down, you know, screwing up the flow of everything,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: not just on the freight system, but on the passenger
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: rail system that's coming up on this on the same line,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: like you said. And then then you add the layers
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: that that you're also talking to the maintenance of way
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: guys who are the for listeners. Those are the guys
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: you know, on the ground checking the track, maintaining the
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: track right, fixing the track like and then you also
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: have the bridges, like you know, those are their own
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: sort of interchange, you know, kind of system that you
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: gotta navigate, like the do you ever have time to
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: take a bathroom break?
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: You have to take one. If you don't, you'll ever
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: get one. I mean, I literally there. Sometimes it is
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: so bad that I literally just I put everything down
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: on the desk and I get up and I'll walk
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: out and take a breather. I just can't do it.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: I got it. I have to clear my mind for
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: a second and just go catch my breath, go over
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: to the bathroom whatever it is, wash my face off,
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: you know, just refreshing up a little bit, and maybe
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: grab something to eat, fill my water cup, and then
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: it's right back in the s feat and you know
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: you're charging at it again.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: And a lot of the policies and stuff that are
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: being implemented don't make sense. And you're seeing this all
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: across the credit the class ones. They're talking about technology
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: like trip optimizer and uh, trip optimizer now zero to zero.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: You know that's a general electric slash wobtech program. And
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: what they're doing is they're saying, okay, well, the engineer
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: has to use trip optimizer all the time every trip
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: if it's if it's working, he or she has to
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: use it. And we so there's a let mean, there's
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: a couple parts I want to touch on here, so
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: the trip offs that don't let me forget that, MAXT
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: write that down, the trip optimizer underpowering trains, then putting
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: throttle restrictions in and saying, okay, well, the train has
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: three engines, but over this particular piece of territory is
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: only allowed to use one. So we run a live
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: in daylights out of that engine. It's wide open, notch eight,
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: full throttle. The train's doing sixteen miles per hour on
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: sixty miles per hour track, and then here comes the
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: UPS train behind it, and he's all kinds of hot
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: because he's got well, UPS loads on it, and hey,
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: guess what. You ordered your package on Monday and UPS
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: told you is going to be there on Thursday. Well,
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: if that's going to happen, the train that's carrying the
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: trailer your package is in needs to be on time,
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: doesn't it. So he doesn't have time to follow that
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: big turret of a freight train doing sixteen mile an
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: hour and they think they're saving fuel, but dude, they're
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: beating a snot out of the engine, I mean the
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: track go ahead.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Just to like you know, like of quick parentheses on that, right,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: like because because again for lay listeners, when you hear
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: trip optimizer right like, it's you know, it's like so
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: many great you know, slogans that don't actually mean what
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: you think they sound like they mean. That's right, because
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: like what is being optimized here is like the basically
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: they're like, how can we pay as little as possible
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: with the fuel we have with like the trains as
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: long as they are going like as slow as like
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: sixteen miles an hour when they should be going sixty?
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Is that is that a fair like sort of summation
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: of like what is being optimized here. It's not making
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: the package delivery more efficient.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: No, if you're what you said is literally what it's doing.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: I mean.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: And here's the interesting thing. Okay, so statistics right, there's
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: my grandfather told me this years ago. He was actually
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: a corporate executive for Black and Decker a long time ago.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: He said, Jay, there's a lie, a damn lie, and
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: then there's statistics. I said, well, tell me what you
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: mean by that. And he's like, listen, you can make
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: a statistical output be anything you want it to be
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: by manipulating the input. So they'll say they're saving fuel, right,
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: but they'll only calculate the fuel burn on the lead unit.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: They don't calculate the distributed power unit that's one hundred
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: cars back in the train that's been in notch eight
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: for the last eight hours guzzling fuel like crazy and
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: the train still can't make two thirds attract speed on
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: if it's lucky. And then they'll say, what, we're saving fuel,
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: all right, we're saving fuel, but okay, well how far
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: under track speed did you go to save that fuel?
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: So they're not lying about what they're saying. It's truthful,
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: it's just missing the information that actually would tell you
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: that it's actually bullshit, so well.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: In the bullshit right, like and again I'm I'm just
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: making sure a that I have this right and that
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: listeners are following along, right, because like all these things,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: like you know, the railroads themselves are interconnected. And like
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: to put it back in the kind of understanding that
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: we were getting from you and your fellow railroad workers
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: from twenty to twenty two, right, it's that like the
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: whole trip optimizer thing, the whole precision scheduled railroading racket,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: right is basically like this this system implemented from the
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: top down, like into the corporate structure and strategy of
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: the railroads to maximize profits and cut costs and maximize
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: shareholder dividends year after year, like and and so that's
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: where you get a railroad system that maybe your average
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: person thinks, like, well, the whole point of the railroads
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: is to you know, deliver good freight's rail service, you know,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: like get the freight there on time, YadA, YadA, YadA.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: But like what we've come to learn is that it's
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: almost like the whole point of the railroads that we
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: thought we knew is secondary to the fact that the
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: railroads are just this like money making widget that these
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: like you know, bloodsuckers can squeeze a lot of profit
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: out of. And so that's why they don't care about
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: delivering things on time or more efficiently. They don't care
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: about like higher speed rail or you know, like you know,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: faster trains or anything like. That's that's why they're like
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: piling all these cars onto these trains with and getting
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: rid of more and more of the workforce. And like
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: the trains are going slower, they're stalling, they're breaking, they're
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: breaking the track, but all those sorts of costs are
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: still worth it to them because all this other crap
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: is like generating massive profits for them, even if it's
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: putting all of us at risk. And I guess the
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: last point I'll say is that, like, you know, the
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: thing that everyone got into in twenty twenty two was
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: like what this was doing to the workers, particularly the
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: conductors and the engineers who have to be on these
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: trains and who have to be on call basically twenty
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: four to seven now because with these trains being so
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: you know, inefficient, big breaking down all that stuff, the
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: workers still have to be on call and they have
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: to be there whenever. Like the damn train gets there
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: and they have to stay on that train wherever it
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: breaks down. Like, so do I have that sort of right,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Jay that It's like all these things are different, interlocking
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: parts of the same kind of problem. But the trip
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: optimizer stuff and everything else that we've been talking about
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: are basically all designed to, yeah, maximize profits in the
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: short term, and they're not about making the freight rail
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: system any better for anyone other than the people getting
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: those dividend payouts.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: And it's calculated vandalism. I mean that's what it is.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: You know, think about capital expenditures and operating expenses, you know,
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: capital investment, right, So if you have capital expenditure versus
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: operating expense, you consider that an overworked train dispatcher, for example,
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: can't effectively plan to let a maintenance away gang out,
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: can't effectively plan to let a real gunder out, can't
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: effectively plan to get thermite welding done or any of
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: the other stuff that needs to be done to maintain
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: the infrastructure, because at the end of the day, I mean, yeah,
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: you might run big trains and you know, think you're
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: saving money, but tonnage is tonnage, and tonnage causes damage. Now,
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: what causes even more damage is excessive in train force
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: that can really wear your curves out a lot quicker
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: that can cause track to shift. Like if a train
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: goes an emergency and all of a sudden, the front
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: end sits down and the ass end runs into it,
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: I mean freaking you know, and all of a sudden
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: it shifts the track out to the side by you know,
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: three or four inches. You say, well, how did that happen? Listen,
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Energy's got to go somewhere. And if you can control
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: a train safely, you can dissipate the energy with a
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: dynamic brake. Is heat, you can dissipate it with friction
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: breaks as heat or what have you. But when the
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: train gets too big and it gets unruly and decides
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: it's going to do whatever it wants to do, and
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: you combine that with trip optimizer, which causes engineer's skill
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: atrophy because he or she never exercises their skills any longer.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: And there's no government policy to force a railroad to
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: make them. Let the engineer run fifty percent of his
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: or her monthly miles to keep his or her skill sharp.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: What you run into is a situation where the trip
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: optimizer is programmed to work within a given set of parameters. Right,
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: So you have a group of nerds sitting in a
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: room somewhere, usually from a foreign country, and they're plugging
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: away at zeros and ones, and they build a model
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: of what they think trip optimizer should do. Right, here's
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: your territory, here's your grade. This has been all GIS
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: and spatial map, and the train should run like this,
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: And they plug it in and most of the time
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: it does a decent job. But then you introduce a
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: variable you can't control. You introduce a train as a kicker,
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: so as soon as you touch the air to try
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: to stop the train, boom, it goes an emergency. Or
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: you introduce a snowstorm or ice which will ice up
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: the brake shoes, and then when you go for the brakes,
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: nothing happens for the first twelve or fifteen miles because
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: you're busy melting ice off of the brakeshoe. Well, most
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: of the new dispatchers have no idea what that means
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: to a train crew. They're not qualified like we used
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: to be. I mean, I used to watch the weather
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: dude constantly. I had the weather pulled up from my
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: entire territory. I knew where there were thunderstorms. I knew
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: where there was thunder snow, I knew where there was sleep.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: I knew if there was going to be tornado warnings
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: or watches. I knew all that, and that was always
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: in my head, and I was thinking about that stuff.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: And for a locomotive engineer, if you got this train
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: going and you think, okay, you know, I haven't set
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: the air in a minute because it's snowing outside, you
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: might need to, you know, drag the train at the
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: brakes on every so many miles just to keep those
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: brakes miice in up because God forbid you have the dispatcher.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: It decides, oh, hey, I'm twenty two and I don't
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: know how to put my phone down, and here I
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: am in a job that requires my attention, but I
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: need to go check Facebook. So I'm not going to
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: line the signal up for that train on this downhill
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: mountain grade. And here comes an engineer that you know,
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: he's been qualified for six months. He hasn't touched a
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: throttle in six months because every single trip he has optimizer.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: So all of a sudden and he thinks, man you know,
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: this thing's doing a decent job. I think I can
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: trust it, right, And then the snowstorm comes and the
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: unexpected approach signal comes because the dispactor's out playing on
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: the phone, and he goes to take over. The train,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: sets the air and nothing happens, goes for the dynamic brake.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: The engines start to load up, and the wheels lock
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: up and start slipping because of the ice and snow.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: So you start spraying sand to try to get the
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: wheels to spin again, because what you need is for
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: the wheels to rotate to be effective for dynamic braking.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: So more air, nothing happens. More air, nothing happens. Unbeknownst
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: to him, at the bottom of the hill, here comes
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: an Amtrak train with three hundred people on it, and
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: they're crossing over in front of him, and this train
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: blows through the stop signal of forty five miles an
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: hour and slams into the Amtrak train right in the
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: side and kills thirty people. And the company's going to say, well,
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: the engineer was qualified, he was supposed to have control
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: of his train. We tested him, he had good operating
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: rules exams, and we wrote him up thirty two times
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: for these minor violations. Nobody wants to talk about the
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: degradation of the skills because he never ran the damn train,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: And that dude, that tisses me off.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Because it's like, you know, again, I know, I'm using
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: very like caveman style metaphors here, like, but just bear
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: with me, right, I mean, but like when you say
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: the atrophy of like engineer skills, right, you know, it's like,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: you know, imagine a you know, long haul trucker sitting
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: you know, behind the wheel, and the trip optimizer is
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: basically a cruise control that like, you know, is driving
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: the damn thing for him, but it's driving it eighteen
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: miles an hour on the highway with like you know, it's.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: Like Georgia and Alabama, Mississippi.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but with like you know, fifty fifty trucks hitched
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: to it, right, and so so then like, yeah, you're
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: just sitting there and you have to be watching, you
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: have to be vigilant. But the damn you know, like
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: autopilot is doing everything for you, not because you know,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: it's what you have been trained to do as an engineer,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: but because it is what the program has been trained
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: to do so that it makes more money for the
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: rich assholes who've never been in a cab like you
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: are sitting in at that moment. And then the worst
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: part is that, like you're saying that, if you're sitting
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: there and then something goes wrong and like you have
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: like these sort of cascading failures, the fingers all going
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: to be pointed at the person sitting in that seat.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah one, And you know, at the end of the day,
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: and this is kind of sad, but I think we
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: need to be honest about this. When a person is involved,
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: we all want blood. It seems to be human nature.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: If a computer does it, nobody seems to care. I mean,
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: you might get mad, you know. Then stomp arounds, wort
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: can carry on steam, the maucha goes whatever else, But
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: nobody really does anything. But if a person screws up, man,
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: you just want to destroy their life for some reason,
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: you want to go after that person and just and
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: we all have that in us, and even if we
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: want to deny it, we know it's true, which is
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: it's a sad thing. And this is kind of where
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: you have to really keep this stuff in perspective. You
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: have to remember until you know the whole story. And
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: I'm guilty of this myself. It's easy to draw a conclusion,
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: it's easy to judge. It's easy to you know, devalue
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: something or whatever. But if you don't know everything that
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: happened behind it, boy, you feel like a real asshole
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: when you finally figure it out. I wanted to make
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: a point earlier, and I forgot. I got. I said
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: about capital expenditures and operating expenses, you know, and I
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: said about this being a capital intensive business, fuel expenses,
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: things like that, Right, so you can hide that under
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: an operating expense. And let me just make this point quick,
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: because this is good stuff. Then to Wall Street, that's great.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: Operating expense is diesel, cost cost a rail, whatever the
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: case may be, not cost a rail, rather cost of labor.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: And then you have capital investment. Now this is where
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: you're going to buy your rail. You're going to have
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: these huge capital plans that they spend every year. We're
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: going to replace thirteen bridges, We're going to do you know,
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: X number one hundred miles a rail, ballast ties, blah
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: blah blah blah. Right, So to anybody investing in a
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: company that doesn't really understand how it operates. And I'm
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: an investor too, but but I don't personally want to
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: see record profit continually because I know it's not possible.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: It's a damn bubble that you're sitting on. It singularly,
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: that damn thing is going to pop and your shoe
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: down you go, right, So you better know how to
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: move your money quick. I'd rather see a steady earnings
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: report with a little bit of growth and a little
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: bit of loss here and there. That tells me a
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: company is healthy in my opinion, and I'm believing. I'm
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: no hedge fund manager, and I wouldn't want to be.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: But you can tell Wall Street, Oh, we're gonna buy rail,
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: blah blah blah. You know, capital investment is the best thing.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: And to somebody who doesn't know any better, this looks
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: like a growing company. It looks like the company's doing great.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: Oh look at all the money they're spending, you know,
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: on all this stuff. The company's growing. Surely bullshit, it's
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: smoking mirrors. The company's not growing it freaking all dude. Listen,
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: when the war on coal started and started destroying coal
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: miner's jobs and everything else in the name of green
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: whatever have you, you know, closing the power plants all that.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: The coal was the bread and butter for the railroad
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: for decades. I mean, you made money on coal like
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: you wouldn't believe me. I mean it, dude, it's crazy
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: intermodal there's not really a lot of money, and it's
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: a tight market. The pricing structure is tight. You're competing
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: directly with trucks, and the performance honestly since precisions scheduled railroading.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, look at the shift from rail back to truck.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: That's how how bad the performance is. And you know
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: who pays the price. The captive shippers, the chemical shippers,
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: the agriculture companies have to ship trainloads of green over
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: to the ports to get it exupported or there green rots.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: That green has to move in a couple of weeks
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: literally from the bread basket of America to the port
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: to get loaded on a ship and go, or the
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: green's going to be gone and the farmers are going
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: to lose all of their revenue for the year. A
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: loss like that would be devastating to them, and the
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: railroad can't provide the service. So what do they do.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: They say, Well, we're just going to raise the rates
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: on those people. And then you hear about the merger
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: that's being proposed right now between Union Pacific and Norfolk
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: Southern Okay, and it's being met with some serious resistance
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: by shippers. Why because of what I just said. They
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: know what's going to happen. Honestly, the way I see
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: it from the Class one perspective right now is a
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: house of cards. They've gotten themselves to a point where
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: there's nothing else left to continue cutting and the truth
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: is going to come out. And what it does, the
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: freaking tag of the stock price is going to tank.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: The people that should have gotten rich are going to
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: lose hundreds of millions of dollars. And they don't want
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: that to happen. They want to get their golden parachute
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: and jump out of the plane and let you on
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: the damn thing. All the engines are shut off because
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: nobody put fuel in it. I hate to say it,
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: but that's the truth.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: Well let's let's sort of like as we turn the
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: final corner here, like let's talk about that. Like I,
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to you know, beat people
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: over the head with the doom and gloom and we're
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: we're not saying that like this is the only way
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: it has to be, Like we're having this conversation so
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: that we can do something to avoid the disastrous horizon
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: that we're careening towards right now. But I think it's
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: important that we sort of look clear eyed at what
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: we are heading towards. And I wanted to ask Jade,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: like if you could just kind of impress upon folks,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: you know, like the stakes of what we're talking about,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: because you know, some people may be interested in this
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: for different reasons, right, I mean, like you know, you
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: were mentioning the coal and you know the kind of
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: the environmentalists who like had their you know, message about
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: the destructive nature of coal, and like, I think a
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: lot about that because I've interviewed these union coal miners.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: We've like reported on you know, deep red striking coal
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: miners in Alabama, you know, but I've also interviewed like
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: coal mining families in West Virginia where the coal is
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: extracted that ends up at the port here in Baltimore.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: And I've talked to the working class people here in
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Baltimore who are dying because of all the coal dust
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: coming off those uncovered CSX railcars for generations. So I
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: don't think it's just the environmentalists did this or that.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: Like I think again, the corporations fucked everybody, and you know,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: like working people across the board, from the inside the
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: coal mines to the port side communities here in Baltimore
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: are left with like the toxic you know remains or
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: the black lung you know. And and but that's not
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: to say, you know that that we always got things
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: right in the past. I think we didn't. The whole
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: point is to sort of learn, Okay, pitting environmentalism and
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: labor against each other was always a stupid idea. In fact,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: the UAW was one of the like the driving forces
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: for the environmentalist movement in the first Earth Day because
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: the Cuyahoga River kept catching on fire, and like you know,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: Walter Ruther was like, what good is a union contract
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: and a vacation if you take your family to a
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: lake that's poisonous, right, I mean, like the divide and
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: conquer from the top has has like it's been pushed
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: on us for so long, and now we're in a
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: state where it's just like life is getting harder, everything's
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: getting scarier. I think society, the things that made us
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: feel like neighbors to each other has been eroding, and
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: we fear each other, we don't know each other. We
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: feel alienated, we feel forgotten, we feel beaten down. And
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: the thing is we're right.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: We are.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: That's that's the kind of common feeling that I hear
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: from folks across industries, across states, across ethnicities, across the
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: political spectrum. Everyone feels that way. And yet the people
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: who don't feel that way are the ones becoming trillionaires,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: the ones you know, raking in these record profits because
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: they have like massive, uh you know, shares in the
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: railroad companies, or you know, the people raking in money
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: from government contracts to PLoP AI data centers in rural
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: red counties or blue cities like here in Baltimore. Like
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: it's it's kind of an all out attack, and so, like,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: you know, it can be hard to wrap your head
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: around all of this and see kind of the monstrous
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: future that we're heading towards. So I wanted to kind
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: of ask you, brother Jay, like because because the last
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: time we talked, I'm sorry I'm talking so much, but
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: it's been so long, and whenever you and I talk
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: you just like we have such a great back and forth,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: and I wish we could talk for hours more. But
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: this just reminded me of the fact that, like, the
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: last time we talked was like six months before East Palestine,
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: and you were you were warning me and anyone who
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: would listen that something like that, Like you didn't you
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: didn't know it was going to be vinyl chloride, right,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, but a lot of what you described ended
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: up kind of basically being what happened in East Palestine.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: A lot of those conditions you talked about a lot
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: of the fallout, right, And so here we are six
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: years later, right, and I hope folks heed you're warning
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: more now than we did then. But like if we
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: don't address these issues, like what are we in store
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: for on the freight rail system, and why should people
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: care about that even if they don't know anything about
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: the freight railroads, Like because this is impacting passenger rail,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: the economy, everything, people do need to care about that.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: But I wanted to give you the final words about
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: why they should.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, Max said, well, there's a lot to
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: unpack there, which we don't have time to unpack all
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: of it. But if I had to think about what
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: people could do now to try to address these things,
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: I would say, your best course of action, and as
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: much as nobody wants to hear politics, would be to
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: get politically active. And when I say that, that doesn't
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: mean go out and terrorize people, doesn't mean burn things down,
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean any of that. It means educate yourself. Who
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: are these people that are running for office? What do
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: they believe? Do they share the values that you share?
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: You know, just because somebody has a college degree doesn't
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: mean they're qualified to be a politician. And oftentimes I
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: find that the people that have the most sense, or
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: the people that grew up that they had a hard life.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: They know what it is to work for a dollar,
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: They know what it is to have to pay for things,
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: and they know what it is to want something and
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: not be able to afford it. And in some cases,
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: they know what it is to need something and not
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: be able to afford it. And honestly, a lot of
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: the policy shifts need to take place to rein in
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: on these things are going to happen at the polls.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: That's where they're going to start. They're going to be
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: they're going to start your city councils, and you know
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: you could run. I mean, you know, I mean just
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: because somebody thinks they can't do it, why can't you
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: do it now? I will tell you. The political system
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: is heavily stacked so that particular people, either the left
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: or the right, you have to have the right people
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: backing you with a lot of money if you're going
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: to go anywhere. And that's because we left to go
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: as long as we did without addressing it. And I
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: kind of think it's almost like a cancer. You know
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: that you want to catch cancer early. If you've got
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: a skin cancer or something, you catch it early, usually
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: no problem. They cut it off. Done, dude, let that
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: shit go, and you may as well go buy a
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: box because that's where you're going to be. And I
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: feel like this is the same thing. It's this corporate
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: greed has been let go for too long. It's been unchecked,
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: it's been left to fester. It's a malignancy in our society.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: It's not just the railroad, it's the airlines, it's every
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: freaking where. And what happened to America building our own things?
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, my god, dude, are you kidding me? You know,
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: look at that steam engine. It just ran across the country.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: What a marvel that thing is. Just the big boy,
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: right wow. We built that here in America. We built
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: that in the nineteen forties, going into the World War Two.
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: I mean, men.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: Literally grabbed wrenches the size of a daggling computer monitor
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: and we're cranking on nuts and bolts that you hold
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: it the size of your and to build these machines.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: We did that here. And now because of what we're
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: dealing with, everything's been outsourced. The skills that we once
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: had are gone. You know, nobody knows how to build
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: a bridge anymore. Like the Pennsylvania Railroad did the keystone bridges.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: They literally had the keystone that held them together. Nobody
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: knows how to do that anymore. It's lost. It's just
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: it's gone. All of the skills that we used to
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: have in the country to I mean, I don't even
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: its just dude it to you. It's hard to even
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: I can't even process it. And my mind's going on
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: thousand miles an hour right now thinking of what we've
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: lost because we've not been good stewards of what we
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: were given. Artificial intelligence. You know, what is the first
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: word in artificial intelligence, artificial and all capital letters. Come on, hello,
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: wake up? You know self driving cars all well and good?
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: Have I used the technology? Yes? Do I trust it?
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: Absolutely not. I watch that shit like a hawk, and
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: if it does something I don't like, man, I am
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: on it. But we've seen people posted videos onlines leaping
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: in their teslas and you know, running into tractor trailers
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: and hitting pedestrians and whatever else. I mean, it's out there.
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: It's not like this hasn't been reported before. But that
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: ultimately ties back to skill atrophy once again. You trust
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: the computer because it does just good enough, just often
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: enough that you think you can And boy, that's a
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: dangerous place to be, dude, that's a dangerous place to be.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: And it's happening everywhere. Honestly. If the FAA would allow it,
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: the airlines would fly at the damnplane with one engine
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: on and the other one shut down because they could
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: say fuel and I'm air quoting that. Oh it's say
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: look how much money. We'd say, oh my gosh. But
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: they wouldn't consider the fact. Not that they wouldn't consider it,
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: they wouldn't give a fuck if the left engine is
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: the one that's running and the right engine shut down.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: The planes trying to turn right the whole time. So
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: you have the rudders or whatever those things are called,
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: ailerons whatever, facing the opposite direction to counter the force
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: from the engine just to keep the plane straight. Well,
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: that would cause fatigue and then the damn thing would
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: snap off and down you go. Uh, And then everybody
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: would say, oh, what happened? Well, you know, or for
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: greed happened? Look at Boeing, dude, are you kidding? Like?
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: How did Boeing get away with what they got away with?
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: They killed hundreds of people, they lied about it, They
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: found the emails that they were deceiving the government at
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: what happened? Nothing? Not a single executive went to jail
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: and they knew their names. What does that tell you?
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: That's pretty disgusting. And honestly, I know that some people
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: don't believe in faith, some people don't believe in that
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: kind of stuff. But for me, I look at it
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: and I say, if men did what men were supposed
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: to do and led the way they were supposed to lead,
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: got out there, got involved in their school board meetings,
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: got involved in their local governments, led their families, raise
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: their kids, had supportive wives that were right behind them
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: and right beside them the whole time. How different would
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: things be if we had done that in the nineteen
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: fifties instead of looking at it the day and saying,
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: well what now? Instead of all the broken families and
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: all the fatherless children and all of that. Like that
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: that's really gotten my attention lately, It really has.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Well, And like you know, I have a lot of
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: thoughts on that, and I want us, you know, especially men,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: to be able to talk to each other about this stuff,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: because you know, like like you and I have been
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: upfront on our conversations, right, like we're from different sides
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: of the political spectrum, but like you know, we don't
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: we don't even identify each other that way. Like that's
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: like the fourth or fifth or sixth or tenth thing
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: that we know about each other, that's right, right, And
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: it's like when you when you know each other that way,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: and it's like when you only know each other through
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: the politics first, and then everything kind of flows downstream
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: from that. It's not impossible, but it's so much harder
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: to build like really you know, like meaningful, genuine, organic
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: kind of connections. And I guess all I'm saying is that,
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: like there is a real problem I think that is
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: affecting men in this country, and like, but it goes
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: so much beyond you know, like what we're talking about here,
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: because I'm I am also you know, as a man
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: in this assists, you know, like hetero guy in this country.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: You know who's got you know, I got my family.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: I've got my daughter, I got my wife, I got
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: my mom, I got my sister, I got all that.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: You know, like all these people I love and care
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: about my family. It is not their job to address
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: like the crisis in this country of men, you know,
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: like of predatory men, you know, just drawing people's lives
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: all the way up to like Epstein level atrocities to
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: you know, like the shop floor sexual harassment that like
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: still happens rampantly daily in this country. Like we have
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: a real big fucking problem with men, and men have
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: a lot of problems that they're not talking healthily about.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: And like, I don't care what it's gonna take, but
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: I'm down to be part of those discussions. I don't
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: think we're gonna get it here, you know, because we
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: have to wrap up. But like what we'll just have
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: to do another conversation and bring more folks into that conversation.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: But like you know, I I there's a lot of
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: things you said I agree with, and a lot of
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: things you said that I vehemently disagree with. But I
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: think like if we could, if we could at least
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: sort of agree on this that final point that it's
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: like whatever our thoughts are about this, like we actually
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: do need better healthier ways for men to talk about
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: this stuff, process this stuff, and like we actually have
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: a real imperative duty to do that, given like what
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: horrible men are doing to this fucking society, to you know,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: the people that we live around. Right, this has gone
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: on long enough. It is not just one political party
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: or another. It could be Graham Platner, it could be
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: Donald fucking Trump man. Like it, like we we actually
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: need to get together as working people, as men who
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: can sit down and sort of like talk through this ourselves.
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: I don't want anyone else talking through it for us.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: I think that's really what I want us to just
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: like come to agreement on.
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: Well, Max, when you talk to your grandpa, you know,
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: I remember you said you called him Graham, So when
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: you talk to your grandpa. Everybody in his era knew everybody.
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: Everybody in the community knew everybody. You know, you knew
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: the neighbor down the street, the neighbor down the street,
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: the neighbor across the street. You sit out in your
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: porches in the evening, they'd all talk to each other.
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, everybody knew everybody. You had that real sense
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: of belonging in, that real sense of community. And that's
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: the point that I'm trying to make. Most people that
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: are turning to private media are doing so because they're
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: tired of the corporate lives. They don't want they're they're
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: tired of it. They want to they want somebody that's
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: genuine and honest. That's what people really want, and I
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: think that's what most I think that's what most guys want.
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: I think that's what the ladies want. They just want
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: somebody to be honest with them, right, And they'll come
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: to the private media and they'll listen to conversations like
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: this and like, think about it. I wouldn't walk up
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: to you in public and be hey, Max, I'm a Republican.
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: How weird is that nobody does that? Yeah?
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: Well, and we even said the same thing about like
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: you know, all the reporting we were doing in East
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: Palestine right like this, this was I believe Ashley McCollum,
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: an incredible working class hero herself who lives, yeah, used
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: to live right down the street from where the train
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: derailed in East Palestine, and she's gone through hell ever since.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: But like you know, she asked the blunt question. It's
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: like if you run up to a burning car and
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: you see a person inside, do you ask them who
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: they voted for? No? You pull it up, you know,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: you know that's and if we can just start from there,
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: I think will be okay. But like I think the
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: fact that so many people don't feel that way is
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: why we have such a big problem that needs addressing
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: now by us. And in that spirit, brother, like I
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: cannot thank you enough as always for yeah, coming on
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: talking openly, like you know, just just being real with
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: me and our audience, keeping it real all the time,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: like it's it's always such a great conversation whenever you
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: and I get together, brother, And it's been really really
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: great seeing you again.
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: I appreciate the fact that we can set aside differences
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: and disagreements. Honestly, a lot of times you strengthen relationships
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: in your disagreements if you do so civilly, Because remember
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: what I said earlier about not knowing the whole story.
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: There's a reason that you feel the way you feel
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: and a reason I feel the way I feel. But
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: if we could never sit down and talk to one another,
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: we're never going to learn what those are. And you
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: may find out you have a whole hell of a
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: lot more in common than you ever thought you did
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: if you just take the time to say hello.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: All right, gang, that's going to wrap things up for
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: us today. I want to thank our guests, longtime friend
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: of the show, Jay veteran trained dispatcher who's been in
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: the industry for twenty two years, And of course I
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: want to thank you all for listening, and I want
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: to thank you for caring. We'll see y'all back here
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: next time for another episode of Working People, and in
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: the meantime, go explore all the great work that we're
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: doing at the Real News Network, where we do grassroots
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: reporting that lifts up the voices and stories from the
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: front lines of Strung. Check us out across our YouTube channel,
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: our podcast feeds, our website, and our different social media
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: pages and help us do more work like this by
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: going to the realnews dot com, forward Slash, donate and
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: becoming a supporter today. I promise you guys, it really
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: makes a difference. I'm Maximilian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves,
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: take care of each other. Solidarity forever.
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: When my fish you.
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: No longer see. I live on, Yes, I live on.
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: Wherever we go. We are going to roll the union
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: on a song, I live on. Yes, I live on wherever.
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: How hunger are we just as as Honger.
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: It can be your song. I live on. Yes, I
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: live on. Well, mean things are happening in this land.
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: It's read a song. I live on. Yes, I live on.
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: Wherever the book mean names are happening in this landis read.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: I live on. Yes. I'll live on wherever the video
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: tape of media showing I live on. Yes, I live on.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: If I have help to wreck this a pretty wood
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: to be here, I'll live on.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: I'll live on. When my body was stylis and in
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: some loans and bread, I'll live on. Yes, I live on.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: When my songs and corns are read, I live on. Yes,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: I'll live on
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: Right