Word: brakemen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Actually, a big step was taken last November under an arbitration award by a panel created by the Congress. It granted carriers the right to eliminate gradually 90% of the firemen on diesels, along with unneeded trainmen, including some brakemen and switchmen. This reduction of up to 40,000 employees would save the carriers about $325 million a year. The unions have appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court...
...Choo. Several other railroad unions had the same kind of origin as the Firemen. Working on the railroad was a hazardous way of making a living in the 19th century. Many a fireman was scarred by a boiler explosion, many a yardman was mashed between cars. So often did brakemen fall from atop moving cars that one in three would be injured or killed in the course of a year. Understandably, insurance companies were reluctant to insure railroaders. In the railroad workers' need for insurance the first rail unions had their beginnings, as fraternal insurance societies. The unions still...
Order of Railway Conductors and Brakemen (20,000). Named the Conductors' Brotherhood at its founding in 1868, the union added Brakemen to its handle only a decade ago. The current president is Louis J. Wagner, 66, who got started in railroading in his teens as a station agent's helper. In addition to taking tickets, conductors act as straw bosses while the train is on the road. They are supposed to see that other crewmen are on the job, and that the train moves smoothly enough to avoid discomfort to passengers or damage to freight. Brakemen used...
Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen (190,000). Biggest by far of the operating unions, it was founded as the Brotherhood of Railroad Brakemen in 1883 by eight railroaders meeting in an Albany & Susquehanna caboose at Oneonta, N.Y. Brotherhood President Charles Luna, 56, began his rail career as a construction helper on the Santa Fe in Texas. The word "trainmen" does not apply to a particular job; it is a generic term that covers both conductors and brakemen. In general, the members of Luna's union tend to be men with less seniority than the members of the older, more exclusive...
...America (18,000). Boss of the Switchmen's Union, founded in 1906, is Neil P. Speirs, 50, a business administration major at the University of Idaho who left a white-collar job to become a switchman during the Great Depression because the pay was better. Switchmen are essentially brakemen who work in railyards rather than on the road, taking over from road crews as the trains pull into the yards. In recent decades, automatic switching controls have taken over much of the switchmen's former work, so that, like firemen and brakemen, they are afflicted with obsolescence...