CSX Transportation Hiring Conductors for Baltimore Area
By Ben Mook
After years of stagnant hiring and with a large percentage of its work force nearing retirement age, freight train operator CSX Transportation Inc. is in the midst of a major hiring boom.
The company announced Wednesday it is looking to add 60 new conductors for the Baltimore area. CSX’s Baltimore Division encompasses Maryland south to Richmond, Va. and north to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. The company’s facilities in Maryland include rail yards at Curtis Bay and Locust Point in Baltimore and in Cumberland.
CSX Transportation, the freight arm of Jacksonville, Fla.-based CSX Corp., operates and maintains 560 miles of track in Maryland. The company handles around 200,000 carloads of freight a year and employs 1,500 state residents. The 60 new conductor positions would be added to 56 new jobs the company created in 2004. CSX operates in 23 states, and employs around 9,500 conductors.
“We had a long period where railroads weren’t hiring so much – now we need to hire,” CSX spokeswoman Meg Sacks said. “We are hiring to keep up with attrition rates and to keep up with the increased demand for freight traffic. We have a lot of folks around the retirement age, really starting last year and into the next few years.”
According to the Association of American Railroads, the major railroad operators will need to replace in the neighborhood of 80,000 positions in the short-term future. Railroad workers are eligible to retire at age 60.
The conductor position is considered an entry-level job where workers receive a lot of hands-on training and learn the rules and regulations of railroad freight transportation. The starting salary is $30,000, Sacks said.
On a train, locomotives are driven by engineers. Conductors ride in the locomotive and handle a host of tasks including operating switches, minor repair work and train inspections. From the conductor position, workers can advance to become locomotive engineers, trainmasters or move into management.
CSX and other large rail operators are trying to stock their pipelines with younger workers and get them trained to meet an expected large loss of workers in the coming years.
Association of American Railroads spokeswoman Kelly Donley said CSX is not alone in its effort to find replacements for retiring workers. She said employment remained pretty flat over the years as the rail industry worked through deregulation under the Staggers Act of 1980.
But railroads are seeing a “renaissance” of sorts with high oil prices and the industry’s positioning as a more environmentally- friendly transportation option. Another growth area is what is known as intermodal transportation – where more than one mode of transportation is used to deliver freight. An example would include freight brought in on a ship, loaded to a truck and then taken to a rail yard.
Donley said the rail industry has seen record-breaking growth the last few years, and it is not expected to stop. She said industry- wide there are plans to spend around $10 billion to increase capacity, also leading to an increased demand for labor.
“The industry was consolidating and employment wasn’t really growing,” Donley said. “But, there is a huge demand for workers now. It’s a very big growth industry, and we don’t see an end to it.”
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