The biggest challenge facing US surface transportation is improving service as impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are still being felt throughout the country and world. From a supply chain perspective, the impacts of last year’s Omicron variant on the labor force were felt at our ports, as well as on highways and at distribution centers as customer demand increased.
At Union Pacific, crew availability has been at the heart of our service issues. We recognize recruiting and retaining talent is essential. Over the past year, Union Pacific recruited and trained more than 900 train crew employees and exceeded our goal of hiring more than 1,400. We must continue innovative recruiting practices, such as our Second Chance Hiring program. We have also received approximately 13,000 new-hire referrals from current employees and have offered jobs to nearly 1,000 of those referred. Great people know great people!
The current round of national negotiations with our labor unions included the largest raises for our union workforce in decades — a 24 percent pay boost that will push average railroad salaries to $110,000 per year by 2025. Work remains to make our jobs attractive to today’s employees – especially the unscheduled, “on call” jobs. We are committed to redesigning that work in partnership with labor leadership. Our comprehensive benefits program includes vacation and time off, medical insurance, Railroad Retirement, 401(k), and other benefits useful at various life stages. The endgame is to provide jobs that are attractive to the best talent in industrial America.
As a result of our hiring and our employees’ hard work, Union Pacific made real progress to increase fluidity and better meet customer demand and must continue to do so to provide the service our customers require. At the same time, robust hiring is also needed to fill jobs at warehouses and to source dray drivers. Supply chain fluidity boils down to placing people in jobs to increase throughput capacity.