Name: 
E-mail: 
Employed as: Conductor, for 1-10 years
Posted: 16 July 2012

Joe

Its not standard practice for the yardmaster to protect the remotes.
The rules are very specific about protecting your shoves and if he
didnt have a shove light then he was responsible fo protecting it. 
Im glad you brought this subject up because it is starting to become a
real problem at avon with some of the yardmasters thinking they have
more authority than what they have. They just dont understand that they
are not supervisors. Their job is to build trains and move freight
around the yard. I personally dont think it is right for the
yardmasters to be union contract employees. Having a fellow union
brother or sister acting like a "Boss" is a conflict to me. I have
heard some of the newer younger yardmaster give orders to crews that
were in violation of fra laws and operating rules numerous times. When
the crews questioned one of their "orders" he had the nerve to get on
the radio and start screaming...are you defying the orders that I just
gave you. I was glad to hear the crew tell him they werent moving until
they talked to a supervisor and to get the TM. He again had the nerve to
tell them he gave them an order and they were to follow it. Avon does
have a few old head yardmasters(very few) that are good and do know the
rules and their place in the chain of command, but again there are few.
The unions dont want to lose any dues paying members, but pitting
fellow members against each other is not in the best interest of the
union. However, it may not be in the best interest of the entire yard
if some of these ym's were given true power seeing how some of them
act already! This is happening because the TM's on duty ARE NOT
supervising their yardmasters. If they were they would have heard the
yardmaster give the remote operator the ok to shove with specific
footage and would have called him on it! But he didnt, therefore he
should have received some discipline as well!