OMAHA, Neb. — Union Pacific Railroad is laying off 4,638 workers, including an undisclosed number in Utah, as part of its winter layoffs. It will be thousands more than in recent years and about half the railroad's building and maintenance workers, a union representative said.
"They gave us a memo and said it was for budget reasons," said Dave Tanner, general chairman of the UP division of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees in an interview with the Omaha World-Herald. "We're evaluating what we can do to get these people back to work."
Railroad officials declined to discuss specific numbers in the seasonal layoffs, but a senior vice president for corporate relations, Bob Turner, said the union-quoted figure was "in that range."
Tanner said Monday that the largest previous layoff he could remember in 30 years of working on the railroad took place in September 1998, when about 600 track-maintenance workers were laid off for the season.
Union Pacific spokesman John Bromley said UP employs 178 maintenance and construction workers in Utah, but declined to say how many of them have lost their jobs.
"We haven't been discussing publicly the numbers, but I can tell you this is spread over 23 states, so there's not any big impact in one locality," Bromley told the Deseret News.
Bromley added that many of the layoffs are in areas where UP has been replacing existing track or building new track. Most of that activity is taking place in Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico and California, he said.
Bromley said more workers were being laid off than last year, but seasonal layoffs occur every year.
"It's a large number, I won't dispute that," Bromley said. But it is not out of line with some years, he said, and Union Pacific, the nation's largest railroad, has grown a lot over 30 years and employs more people.
Each year there are winter layoffs when construction on culverts, tracks and bridges comes to a halt, especially in the northern half of Union Pacific's system.
Bromley said this year's layoffs are systemwide, but the railroad expects to resume projects at the first of the year and most of the workers will begin to be re-called to work then.
Contributing:Zack Van Eyck