< PREVIOUS ] [ 1998 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
Let us go back two years, before the merger of the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads was approved by the federal Surface Transportation Board. UP and SP wanted an endorsement from Colorado Gov. Roy Romer.
The merger would rip up 350 miles of mainline track in Colorado, and create an effective UP monopoly in the vast region between Denver and Sacramento. Romer endorsed this. He also said he got a good deal from UP, including these provisions in a March 19, 1996, letter to Romer from U.P. President Dick Davidson:
· Burnham Yard in Denver has been designated
as the system-wide maintenance base for G.E. locomotives
and will remain so once the merger has been completed.
Given current business and union agreements, UP will
maintain operations at Burnham Yard, at approximately the
426-466 job level, with the potential for future
growth.
· Given the current status of UP's system-wide
facilities, the SP operations center in Denver will be
maintained through at least 1998. This involves
approximately 400 jobs and does not preclude expansion of
the workforce if warranted by future facilities
decision.
The office building on Lincoln Street, which housed the operations center that was supposed to stay open through this year, was sold in January. Most of the personnel were transferred to Omaha. The 400 jobs there have shrunk to about 25 at last count.
At for the Burnham, where employment was supposed to
stay in the 426-466 range, about 300 jobs will remain after
UP transfers 72 employees this spring, and the heavy
system-wide maintenance
on some GE locomotives will
be done at North Little Rock, Ark.
In that March 19, 1996 letter, UP said it would maintain at least 1,400 jobs in Colorado, and that commitment was raised to 1,800 in August of 1996, after the merger was approved.
Ed Trandahl, a UP spokesman, says the railroad is doing
better than that, with about 1,900 Colorado employees:
Our anticipated 1998 force count in Colorado now stands
at 1,051 in Denver and vicinity, plus 748 elsewhere in
Colorado, for a total of 1,799. We top the 1,900 figure
mentioned earlier by bringing in 120 season
maintenance-of-way workers.
On the other hand, I've talked to officials of some of the railroad craft unions in Colorado, and the highest number they can come up with now -- let alone after the transfers UP plans in the near future -- is 1,575.
That's above the 1,400 UP promised in early 1996, but
below the 1,800 it promised later in 1996. The jobs aren't
where UP promised they'd be, but the promises were prefixed
with phrases like Given the current status of ...
and Given current business and union agreements
...
The UP is presumably in business to haul freight and make money, although it's had troubles doing either lately. Texas gets most of the national attention, when the national media pay any attention -- its governor, George W. Bush, seems to think it's important to look after his constituents' interests.
Colorado has suffered too. Go ask some coal miners in Paonia how much fun it was to be laid off at Christmas because the North Fork mines couldn't ship because the trains weren't coming. Or the Burnham employees who thought their Denver jobs were safe.
But John Dill, the state director of economic development who negotiated Colorado's side of the merger deal, wasn't aware of these potential job losses until he met with the unions last week. Perhaps Dill was too busy making other deals for Colorado jobs, while we're losing some $40,000-a-year jobs.
In other words, our state government cuts a deal with a big company, and then performs no oversight to see whether the company is holding up its end of the deal -- although, unless Romer grows a spine and starts obeying his oath of office, there isn't a lot the state can do about it.
We elect people to look after our interests, and they don't. And they keep cutting deals -- stadiums, Nike, enterprise zones, sales and property tax rebates.
This should be an issue in the gubernatorial campaign this year. It won't be. Republicans like these deals, and Democrats won't take it on, since it would be an attack on the party's national chairman.
Too bad there isn't a real Populist party in Colorado any more. Until then, every time you run into somebody running for governor, ask him or her what sort of oversight the state should provide on these deals.
If our state can afford to pay the snoops and busybodies who arrest your neighbors for growing the wrong plants, it should be able to find the resources to oversee the deals it makes with the Fortune 500.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1998 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >