Union Pacific Employee Reviews about "work life balance"

Pros

Mediocre salary. Costco is catching up and appears to be a better environment.

Cons

work life balance is terrible. vacation/personal leave is not with current times. employees work 8 years before getting a 3rd week of vacation 17 years before your 4th. Retirement age is too high for physically demanding jobs. They hire as young as 18 but you have to work 42 years before you can draw retirement. If they would change the retirement to allow you to retire after 20 years no matter your age it would be better.

Pros

decent money and relatively good people to work with

Cons

toxic management that treats all employees like unwanted liabilities instead of assets zero work life balance. its all work. good luck trying to get a day off every now and then without being punished with being pulled out of service and an investigation happening management promoted from within the craft is not wanted. only college grads that have never set foot in the field before. they are yes men that have no idea how to railroad only how to mess things up.

Pros

Base pay and bonus at the end of the year are good. Having the ability to lead a team and make positive changes is empowering.

Cons

Senior leadership has a culture of management by fear. You will be cursed at, belittled, and berated at times. Work life balance is abysmal. You are told you have off days but that’s really not the case. Your phone will ring 24/7/365. There is almost zero recognition for performing well, but lots of negative recognition for anything else. You are easily replaceable and depending on your direct management you won’t have much support. I often find myself laying down as soon as I finally get home for a few minutes just to make my blood pressure reduce a little bit.

Pros

Salary and bonus, lots of responsibility and the ability to lead a large workforce early in your career

Cons

Work life balance is non existent. Incompetent managers are promoted from within and run the terminals into the ground. Zero respect for the personal life of unionized workers or the management team. Purposely create division between management and agreement workforce. If you enjoy leading a team and genuinely care about their success, work for another employer because they make it very difficult to have a positive relationship with the agreement workforce

Pros

The job is actually fun. Pay is decent and I absolutely love all of my colleagues. Being a conductor is great and everything you imagined as a kid but … this review isn’t about the actual job it self, so let’s move on to the cons…

Cons

Horrible executive leadership , local managers are snakes and will literally fire you if you walk wrong, toxic environment with very low moral. We haven’t had a pay increase in 2 and a half years and it sounds like we’re looking at a pay cut shortly, divorce and suicide rates are high, there is absolutely no work life balance, new hires have to work at a reduced pay rate for their first 5 years, being on call is to be expected with this job but when the phone rings to go back out after being only being home for 10 hours gets old fast, the rule book is 3 inches thick and they make amendments almost daily making it difficult to keep up with, a certain strategy or maneuver that was perfectly legal yesterday might get you fired today, and then be legal again tomorrow, trains have tripled in length and weight since 2019 with no extra pay, most locomotives you see on trains are shut down for “fuel conservation” making for a grueling 15mph trip, unions are very weak and just want your money so all the chairpersons can get together for an all inclusive trip to Las Vegas.

Pros

The pay can be exemplary for someone who is only a HS graduate.

Cons

You are mostly on call and will likely be furloughed annually for at least the first 5 years. They are currently making company-wide cuts in an effort to falsely inflate stock prices. This makes it difficult to have a work life balance because terminals are often under staffed.

Pros

Decent compensation but not enough for what you have to put up with and doesn't compensate for the poor work-life balance and lack of opportunities for growth.

Cons

Consistently unvalued and terrible work life balance.

Pros

Good Work Life Balance Good pay for the area Supportive team and manager

Cons

Very Bureaucratic Hard to get access to what you need

Pros

They give you a lot of responsibility and ability to gain leadership experience. There is no shortage of work to be done and you can take a lot of ownership over your territories which is very rewarding

Cons

A lot of micro-management from superiors, minimal work/life balance due to stress and time commitment necessary for job. A lot of middle aged, white men who call the shots and you are promoted based on your relationship with the people in the those positions and less based on your actual accomplishments and skill set.

Pros

only decent thing is the income but other places with better work life balance are catching up to it

Cons

company does not care about you