Speaker 1: When I go in, it's doctor. He's standing there and
Speaker 1: he says, okay, we need you to do so many squats. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I do the squats. Then he goes, okay, we
Speaker 1: need you to be able to stand here. And they
Speaker 1: brought in a male nurse and they go he needs
Speaker 1: to try to knock you down. Most times, when you
Speaker 1: get your back to work physical, the nurse takes your
Speaker 1: blood pressure and wait, but that's not what it's like
Speaker 1: working for the railroad. I'm standing and I'm almost like
Speaker 1: in a sumu position. I'm standing there. He grabbed me
Speaker 1: by my arms to try to move him. So I
Speaker 1: just grabbed him and sling to the side, and so
Speaker 1: he comes back at me again. I throw him the
Speaker 1: other way, and so he's trying to wrestle with me.
Speaker 1: But I'm still throwing him all load the place, and
Speaker 1: it's doctor's like she's not moving, and the nurses like
Speaker 1: she's strong were than me. Nicky was a Union Pacific
Speaker 1: freight conductor trying to get clear to go back to work,
Speaker 1: but this physical was testing her in ways that had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with her job. It was a setup.
Speaker 1: Usually when you get your physical, the doctor isn't expecting
Speaker 1: you to fail. So the doctor's looking at me, yo
Speaker 1: as well, you're beating all my tests and you're knocking
Speaker 1: my nurse all around. What happened? They said you couldn't band,
Speaker 1: you couldn't squad, you couldn't do anything. I said, you
Speaker 1: saw a fact girl and figured you can knock me down.
Speaker 1: But you got to realize I do this job every
Speaker 1: day and if you look at me, I'm the delicious,
Speaker 1: you know. The doctor asked Nikki why the railroad was
Speaker 1: putting her through this, So I tell her, well, I
Speaker 1: had a superintendent. He said some things. I said some things,
Speaker 1: and he was mad. He said I embarrassed him, and
Speaker 1: so he goes. So he's trying to burn you, I said, basically.
Speaker 1: So he wrote a nice note. But even with a
Speaker 1: doctor's note, Nikki still hadn't heard the end of it.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows when you piss off a manager or a superintendent,
Speaker 1: they come after you. It's the way at a railroad,
Speaker 1: you always know. When I went to Colton, a hobo
Speaker 1: capital city, I wanted to see the risk Ruby took
Speaker 1: living on the outside. But hanging around Colton, I found
Speaker 1: another story, one about the people who keep the city
Speaker 1: of the rails in motion, the story of the people
Speaker 1: who drive the trains. We've been raised to think of
Speaker 1: engineers and conductors as these jolly figures. Throw away that
Speaker 1: childhood cartoon of Thomas the tank engine. For workers, the
Speaker 1: locomotive is the battleground where when the employees get hurt,
Speaker 1: they say, the railroad finds ways to blame them for
Speaker 1: their injuries so it doesn't have to pay. Plus Now,
Speaker 1: after the East Palestine derailment in February, the issue of
Speaker 1: how the trains run and who runs them seems more
Speaker 1: important than ever, and the perfect place to examine this
Speaker 1: age old conflict is a case made by one thicklicious
Speaker 1: train conductor, settle In for Niki Jackson versus Union Pacific,
Speaker 1: a tale of train yard bullying. You'll not soon forget.
Speaker 1: I'm did Alm Morton and this is City of the
Speaker 1: rail After hanging around Roseville meeting Jonathan and Robert, I
Speaker 1: understood working for the railroad wasn't exactly a regular way
Speaker 1: to make a living. The hours are crazy, and the
Speaker 1: workplace is a world of its own, separate from the
Speaker 1: one that most of us live in. In the last
Speaker 1: five years, it's gotten even rougher while the railroads cut
Speaker 1: nearly a third of their workforce, and the workers haven't
Speaker 1: been quiet about that. When you cut things to the bone,
Speaker 1: those left have to work harder to get the job done.
Speaker 1: This forces the people in the city of the Rails
Speaker 1: to form bonds that feel like family wearing on the rails.
Speaker 1: Nikki used to rely on her railroad family, but one
Speaker 1: incident in August twenty seventeen kick Nikki out of that family,
Speaker 1: and through her story, I saw how the railroad breaks
Speaker 1: you down. I met Nikki at her house in Morino Valley, California,
Speaker 1: a little desert town a couple of miles due south
Speaker 1: of Colton. Nikki welcomes me into the great room of
Speaker 1: her suburban ranch house with a big screen TV over
Speaker 1: the fireplace. She's dressed simply in sweats, but the one
Speaker 1: thing I noticed right away are her colorful nails reaching
Speaker 1: an inch past her fingertips. A little bit of femininity
Speaker 1: she maintained the whole fifteen years she worked as a
Speaker 1: conductor for Union Pacific. There's not too many women on
Speaker 1: the rails, only six percent of that workforce's female. But
Speaker 1: to Nikki, getting a job on the railroad was like
Speaker 1: winning the working class lottery. She was a single mom
Speaker 1: working three jobs to support her four kids, and the
Speaker 1: schedule was insane. I worked at DMV in the mornings,
Speaker 1: I worked at Walmart at night, and then on the
Speaker 1: weekends I worked at factory. To you, two hours sleep
Speaker 1: a day. Working three jobs with four kids, even if
Speaker 1: she was home, it was tough to get to sleep.
Speaker 1: So when Nikki heard about the railroad's benefits, she wanted
Speaker 1: that job. At the railroad, there's great healthcare and a
Speaker 1: retirement system separate from and much better than Social Security.
Speaker 1: And as a conductor, Nikki would still have to work
Speaker 1: long hours, but she'd have much better money and federally
Speaker 1: guaranteed sleep. Congress governs railroad workers hours and mandates they
Speaker 1: get ten hours rest between shifts. And here it is now.
Speaker 1: You guys are gonna give me ten hours at least
Speaker 1: you got me. This is a big step up. Sure,
Speaker 1: this would be a hard job, but getting hired onto
Speaker 1: the railroad was a lifeline for her family, and the
Speaker 1: salary would be enough to move them directly into the
Speaker 1: middle class. And I made more money. They said I
Speaker 1: would only start with sixty still made ninety and over time,
Speaker 1: I made a hundred thousand, but it was a challenge
Speaker 1: from the start. The railroad waste no time explaining what
Speaker 1: work will be like. Early in the screening process to
Speaker 1: become a conductor, the teachers describe how much time you'll
Speaker 1: be away from home. Then the teacher gives the prospective
Speaker 1: employees half an hour to call their families and advises
Speaker 1: that if their partners don't support this demanding schedule, they
Speaker 1: shouldn't come back. Most times, fewer than half the class returns.
Speaker 1: Rigid Tokuna a retired yardmaster, and Colton told me what
Speaker 1: he used to say when he greeted new employees. Whenever
Speaker 1: we have I have a new guy with me, and
Speaker 1: when I was on the ground, I'd always tell him,
Speaker 1: you know, we welcome to the family. They're going to
Speaker 1: see me as much as you're going to see your family.
Speaker 1: You may see me more. And they look at you
Speaker 1: and they say, nah, oh yeah, you see him five
Speaker 1: or ten years later, look at me. And I still
Speaker 1: remember that, Richard, I still remember that. When I heard
Speaker 1: about this, I thought about how hobo's and the people
Speaker 1: who work on the railroad are walled off from the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. In the city of the rails.
Speaker 1: Even though workers get paid well, their lives are dominated
Speaker 1: by the rails. Taking this job cuts them off from
Speaker 1: the rhythms of daily life and bonds them to each other,
Speaker 1: just like hobos and their road families. So Nikki knew
Speaker 1: what bargain she was making when she decided to join
Speaker 1: the railroad family. But this was only the beginning. Those
Speaker 1: who make it through that initial shock stay in a
Speaker 1: hotel for several weeks to get trained and to take
Speaker 1: a test to qualify to start working in the yard.
Speaker 1: But during those three weeks, Nikki endured a lot of
Speaker 1: petty harassing. I get to the hotel to get my
Speaker 1: rule and my hotel reservation has been canceled. Someone stole
Speaker 1: her training manuals. They give us our books and everything.
Speaker 1: Come back, I don't have anybody. They even gave her
Speaker 1: broken equipment to train with. These annoyances were meant to
Speaker 1: drive her away. Think that typical girl. I said, I'm
Speaker 1: not a pushover, never have been, I never will be.
Speaker 1: So Nikki kept cool like railroad women before her. Nikki
Speaker 1: had a high heels to combat boots moment in committing
Speaker 1: to a life on the rails. Nikki's came when an
Speaker 1: instructor went after her for something very precious and highly personal.
Speaker 1: He goes, well, you can't work here because you have fingernails.
Speaker 1: So I reached him my purse, pulled out my clippers
Speaker 1: and I cut them off. I said, these are minds love.
Speaker 1: They will grow back. So everybody's like, oh, the rails
Speaker 1: take a lot from you. But Nicky wanted this job,
Speaker 1: and she decided she'd tough it out. After a few
Speaker 1: months on the job, Nicki made friends with her coworkers.
Speaker 1: It's twelve hours. You're just sitting there in darkness looking
Speaker 1: at the stars. So you have to stay away. You
Speaker 1: hope you have an engineer that you can get along with,
Speaker 1: and you guys just talking and talking. Basically, I'm sitting
Speaker 1: there and I'm calling out signals for the most part,
Speaker 1: So you sit there green signal, yellow signal, red signal,
Speaker 1: just make sure he stopped, and he's away. During these
Speaker 1: long nights in the cab, she found out which of
Speaker 1: her co workers would be her railroad family. The guys,
Speaker 1: you know, once you got to know them, you got
Speaker 1: to know their families. You got to hang out with them.
Speaker 1: Our kids are growing up together. We got to do
Speaker 1: things together. From day one, Nikki was living her life
Speaker 1: on railroad time. Most days, Nikki worked a twelve hour shift,
Speaker 1: and sometimes those routes had her staying overnight in a
Speaker 1: hotel far from home. One thing I found interesting the
Speaker 1: railroaders don't call their work a shift. They call it
Speaker 1: a tour of duty, like the military, because a lot
Speaker 1: of the culture of the railroad comes from its beginnings
Speaker 1: when it was one of the first corporations formed after
Speaker 1: the Civil War. Officers and troops from both sides of
Speaker 1: the conflict got hired on the railroad and shape the
Speaker 1: culture and the hierarchy. This is the kind of thing
Speaker 1: new hires find out when they start to work, that
Speaker 1: the rails have a strict command to control structure that
Speaker 1: demands employees follow orders and doesn't really tolerate sassing back.
Speaker 1: Working her tour of duty in the cab of the engine,
Speaker 1: Nikki also learned by word of mouth that if you
Speaker 1: get injured, it's best not to tell the bosses if
Speaker 1: you can tough it out. She heard plenty of examples
Speaker 1: of her co workers getting fired for reporting an injury,
Speaker 1: and the practice of covering those up is a tradition
Speaker 1: as long as the rails themselves. But when Nikki got
Speaker 1: injured in the train yard a few years after she'd
Speaker 1: been hired, there was no way she could just tough
Speaker 1: this one out. Nikki was in southern California, next to
Speaker 1: the Port of Long Beach, in the dolorous yard, and
Speaker 1: it was right before Christmas New Year's and so we're all, oh,
Speaker 1: Merry Christmas, see you next year, hugs and kisses. I
Speaker 1: get to the rear step out, so I'm standing there
Speaker 1: and I'm waving goodbye, and the ground starts to shake.
Speaker 1: And as it's shaking, it's collapsing and it was like
Speaker 1: quicksand and I started to spin and I'm going down
Speaker 1: and I'm screaming, Well, I got stuck and wind up
Speaker 1: hitting it at my butt. That's how deep in yere
Speaker 1: you're like two feet Briefly, well, still never felt the bottom.
Speaker 1: My right leg was stuck and I couldn't move it,
Speaker 1: and my other leg is dangling, and the driver had
Speaker 1: called management and he's screaming the conductors down and we're
Speaker 1: all panicking. Satan tried to take me alive, but he
Speaker 1: underestimated I got a big button. Nikki thinks it's funny now,
Speaker 1: but it was a serious injury. The manager came to
Speaker 1: extract Nikki from the hole, but he didn't call an ambulance.
Speaker 1: The manager he just threw me in his truck and
Speaker 1: he drove me to the hospital. So Nikki's ankle was
Speaker 1: swollen and bleeding. She torn a ligament at the top
Speaker 1: of her foot, and she couldn't stand. Her manager was panicking,
Speaker 1: and up was vulnerable to a very expensive lawsuit. So
Speaker 1: the system to suppress injuries kicked in. The injured worker
Speaker 1: is supposed to report the injury, and the manager carried
Speaker 1: those forms with him, but instead of letting Nikki fill
Speaker 1: it out, he got a pen and started to write
Speaker 1: it for her. While we were there at the hospital.
Speaker 1: They wrote the statements for meat, and when the boss
Speaker 1: writes the report, it sounds different than if the employee
Speaker 1: had written it. Everyone in this yard in La knew
Speaker 1: the ground was weak where Nikki was standing, and somehow
Speaker 1: that didn't make it into the report, at least not
Speaker 1: into the manager's version. They knew about that hole. You
Speaker 1: was just the one that stood on it, and he
Speaker 1: gave away. Jeff Dingwall, Nikki's attorney, handles a lot of
Speaker 1: these cases. The Railroad would send out, you know, some
Speaker 1: manager to maybe even going to the treatment room with
Speaker 1: them guiding the employee on what to say to the doctor.
Speaker 1: They would take additional statements from the employee while they
Speaker 1: were in the emergency room, sometimes under pain medication, and
Speaker 1: then what they would try to do is get these
Speaker 1: statements to not match up. Imagine that you get injured
Speaker 1: on the job and the manager comes with you to
Speaker 1: the hospital. Richard Akunya, who was also the union president
Speaker 1: in Colton, told me the second he heard one of
Speaker 1: his workers had been injured, he rushed to the hospital
Speaker 1: to make sure that Union Pacific managers weren't telling the
Speaker 1: doctors what to do. When Nickie hinted she might not
Speaker 1: sue Union Pacific change their tune, they did all they
Speaker 1: could to keep her happy. They had someone take her
Speaker 1: to her physical therapy appointments, get her groceries, and hand
Speaker 1: delivered her an enhanced paycheck. You have permanent damage on
Speaker 1: your foot, so you have a case to sue that
Speaker 1: I did. Well, I did have a case I did.
Speaker 1: They just kept paying because they would pay me more.
Speaker 1: They was paying me way more than what I was making,
Speaker 1: and you know, I was comfortable they made sure I
Speaker 1: was comfortable, specially say don't sue us. No, no, They
Speaker 1: just says, are you going to get an attorney? And
Speaker 1: I said, why are you gonna treat me nice? If
Speaker 1: you're gonna keep treating me like this? Why and how
Speaker 1: long were you off? For? Nine months? For those nine months,
Speaker 1: Nikki got chauffeured around by the railroad, which was motivated
Speaker 1: to take good care of her. But years later Nikki
Speaker 1: was going to be dragged right back to that sinkhole.
Speaker 1: He said, I embarrassed him, and he embarrassed. He embarrassed himself.
Speaker 1: I was just making him aware after the break how
Speaker 1: Union Pacific got rid of Nikki After Nicki's foot injury.
Speaker 1: The next ten years were uneventful as she performed her
Speaker 1: duties as a conductor with a spotless record. The railroad
Speaker 1: is nice when you play their game, and Nicky played
Speaker 1: that game when she chose not to sue after being injured.
Speaker 1: But this changed for Nikki. In August twenty seventeen, Nikki
Speaker 1: was on a route from Colton to Yuma, Arizona, when
Speaker 1: her engineer saw an unexpected red flag I had on
Speaker 1: the tracks and it's like, it's that a flag slow
Speaker 1: to train down. We got to stop before we get
Speaker 1: to that flag. Mind you, Yuma is just desert saying
Speaker 1: nothing there, you know. And I'm looking out in this
Speaker 1: field and I see three vehicles. Why huh? And then
Speaker 1: they turn and they're coming towards us, and I said,
Speaker 1: we're being tested. The new superintendent for Mara, Barba, and
Speaker 1: two subordinates, boarded Nikki's train. Since he got the job,
Speaker 1: Barbara had imposed some new practices and aggressively promoted Union
Speaker 1: Pacific's new slogan to keep employees on their toes, the
Speaker 1: Courage to Care. Nikki described what that slogan was supposed
Speaker 1: to mean for workers. If you see something happening, stop
Speaker 1: the line, make sure this person is black. No, don't
Speaker 1: do it that way. Do it this way, safer, this way.
Speaker 1: And he says he has this open door policy. You
Speaker 1: can speak to him about anything. Lots of big companies
Speaker 1: take up these kinds of slogans when they tell you,
Speaker 1: if you see something, say something, they're making the dangers
Speaker 1: of the workplace the employee's responsibility. After Nikki and her
Speaker 1: engineer passed the field test, Barbara asked Nikki if she
Speaker 1: had a brakestick a long stick used to apply the
Speaker 1: brakes instead of climbing the ladder to turn the wheel
Speaker 1: at the top of the car. Nikki hates breaksticks and
Speaker 1: any conductor can do the job without one, but Barbara
Speaker 1: told her she had to use one. He was making
Speaker 1: them mandatory. Said, well, let's talk about it. Do you
Speaker 1: realize that thing is heavy. I'm holding it up over
Speaker 1: my head, I'm turning it over time. It's gonna ruin
Speaker 1: our rotator cups. When your shoulders hurt, you can't sleep well.
Speaker 1: So now their shoulders hurt and they have to climb
Speaker 1: up on this car, You're gonna either hurt yourself or
Speaker 1: you can possibly kill yourself. So he goes, oh, well, huh,
Speaker 1: why would you say that? So I'm saying, okay, So
Speaker 1: what I'm hearing from you because during the course of
Speaker 1: my career, I didn't lost my ankle because I fell
Speaker 1: in a sinkle. I lost my reproductive system from climbing
Speaker 1: up on cars. And now Nikki had to have an
Speaker 1: emergency hyster directed me where she was rushed to the
Speaker 1: hospital right after work. She believes that this injury was
Speaker 1: work related. All she can see with this courage to
Speaker 1: care thing was another injury. So frustrated, Nikki threw the
Speaker 1: slogan right back at Barba, I say, so you really
Speaker 1: don't have the courage to care. Well he leaves. Everybody's like, wow,
Speaker 1: he's pissed. Okay, you know, sorry, but we go on.
Speaker 1: The railroad has lots of tough guys. So and Nikki
Speaker 1: stood up to Barba. She didn't think much of it,
Speaker 1: but Union Pacific emails about the incident described Nikki as loud, confrontational,
Speaker 1: and dissolving into tears. Meanwhile, Nikki's engineer, Mark Sylvester, who
Speaker 1: witnessed the exchange, wrote an email that supported her version
Speaker 1: of events. He described this as a regular professional conversation
Speaker 1: that kind you'd have with managers, president and inspection. Why
Speaker 1: do these two stories sound so different? Nikki's mom, Rosalind Jackson,
Speaker 1: had an answer, That's why she has such trouble because
Speaker 1: Niki is that person that a challenge of man. She
Speaker 1: don't have a problem, but make it a man, feel
Speaker 1: like you ain't a man. Just finally, Nikki didn't think
Speaker 1: much about that exchange with Barbara as she and Marked
Speaker 1: made their way back to Calton, So she was surprised
Speaker 1: by what was waiting for her when she got off
Speaker 1: the train. So we get back to Colton and I
Speaker 1: get a message saying I have a safety meeting with
Speaker 1: the director in the morning. At the meeting, the manager
Speaker 1: demanded Nikki report her ankle injury and her hysterect to me,
Speaker 1: even though the ankle injury definitely had been reported and
Speaker 1: she had been cleared to return to work after the
Speaker 1: hysterrect to me. Nikki's head was spinning. He says, you
Speaker 1: said you hurt your ankle. I said, you guys knew
Speaker 1: about that. I said, you paid me nicely to be
Speaker 1: quiet and not to sue you. I failed out injury report.
Speaker 1: You even had your managers taken me to the doctor.
Speaker 1: So did this injury happen or not? I checked the
Speaker 1: Federal Railway Administration database of rail employee injuries. It's just
Speaker 1: a slip fell stumbled injury due to an uneven surface.
Speaker 1: On December twentieth, two thousand and six, the day Nikki
Speaker 1: almost got swallowed into a sinkhole. This injury happened in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles County, the county with the Dolores Yard is located.
Speaker 1: The victim's age was Nikki's age at that time. Thirty four,
Speaker 1: but that wasn't what they wanted to acknowledge. In twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: there in the office, the manager demanded Nicky write out
Speaker 1: new injury reports. This is one of the ways the
Speaker 1: railroad lays a trap for you. Her co workers knew
Speaker 1: what was coming for Nikki. An engineer, Sidney Williams, recommended
Speaker 1: a lawyer, Jeff Dingwall. He'd seen this playbook a hundred times.
Speaker 1: And they'll say, we needed you to write this injury
Speaker 1: report out. And typically it'll be in somebody's office where
Speaker 1: it's just you and the manager, or it's in somebody's
Speaker 1: truck on the side of a railroad somewhere on the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere, where it's you and the manager. Sometimes
Speaker 1: the managers would write out the report themselves and make
Speaker 1: the employee sign it. Sometimes they would make the employee
Speaker 1: fill it out, look at it, crumple it up, throw
Speaker 1: it away if they didn't like what it said, and
Speaker 1: have him write another one. And these are examples I'm
Speaker 1: giving you from cases I've had. So this isn't like
Speaker 1: I'm just making stuff up. These have all happened. And
Speaker 1: so you know the pressure and the intimidation. There is
Speaker 1: inherent in the process, and that's certainly what happened to Nikki.
Speaker 1: I heard lots of stories like the wind that Jeff
Speaker 1: described of the manager standing over the employee in a
Speaker 1: conference room as he writes out of statement, ordering him
Speaker 1: to start again and again until he gets it right.
Speaker 1: So Nikki wrote those new reports, and the next day
Speaker 1: in Pacific removed her from service without pay or benefits,
Speaker 1: citing health problems, the one she dealt with years before.
Speaker 1: Then her supervisor ordered her to submit medical records to
Speaker 1: prove she'd even been injured in the first place. But
Speaker 1: Nikki's attorney, Jeff, told me that really everything they were
Speaker 1: asking for from Nikki was all part of the trap.
Speaker 1: What was messed up about it? If all of these
Speaker 1: injuries had been known to the railroad for a long time,
Speaker 1: she had reported to them, she'd been treated for them,
Speaker 1: she had been cleared to return back to work, and
Speaker 1: now for them to say we didn't know about these things,
Speaker 1: and we're going to yank you out of work and
Speaker 1: making jump through all these hoops and do these things
Speaker 1: to get your job back is not uncommon for what
Speaker 1: they do. But that's kind of what led to her
Speaker 1: lawsuit being filed. This time, Nikki was off work for
Speaker 1: four months, and those months were nothing like the last time.
Speaker 1: She was not being delivered groceries or paid extra by
Speaker 1: the railroad. She wasn't being paid at all. Well, Nicky
Speaker 1: was out of work. It was her railroad family that
Speaker 1: took care of her. Those same railroaders she had vacationed with.
Speaker 1: They started coming by to check in on Nikki. I
Speaker 1: mean it was. It was like a bliss feeling because
Speaker 1: a lot of them came and they gave me money
Speaker 1: to pay my bills. Soon it was like I got friends,
Speaker 1: you know. They came by all the time, and so
Speaker 1: I was there for lonely I was. They were upset.
Speaker 1: They would take me ould it. I appreciate it. But
Speaker 1: after four months home getting deeper in debt, Nikki was
Speaker 1: eager to get back on the job. After persuading her
Speaker 1: doctor to turn over all her records, Nikki returned to
Speaker 1: work in January twenty eighteen, but from that moment forward,
Speaker 1: her work life was hell. Before she was allowed to
Speaker 1: start her first shift, she had to complete that ridiculous
Speaker 1: physical where she found herself sumo wrestling a nurse. Fitness
Speaker 1: for duty tests they will send them off to their
Speaker 1: own kind of hand selected doctor and have them do
Speaker 1: a physical exam. In this case, she passed with flying colors.
Speaker 1: That physical wasn't the end of it for Nikki. In
Speaker 1: February twenty eighteen, Jeff Dingwall fold the whistleblower complaint with OSHA,
Speaker 1: citing the unsafe conditions in the yard and harassment. And
Speaker 1: after that plant was filed, Nikki started getting tested a
Speaker 1: lot more. He had managers testing me all day every day.
Speaker 1: Any day I went to work, I got tested. Nikki's
Speaker 1: friend Sidney Williams, now a retired engineer, remembered when Nikki
Speaker 1: had a target on her back, and he remembers Ramero Barba.
Speaker 1: She was on their radar. More than likely she got
Speaker 1: tested more. Nikki carries herself in a way that they
Speaker 1: don't like, the alpha male, black or female. He went
Speaker 1: beyond the call of duty to do what they demanded
Speaker 1: that he do, to go after certain people. They didn't
Speaker 1: like it. They didn't like Nikki. Every time Nikki got tested,
Speaker 1: it slowed down the train leaving or getting home. It
Speaker 1: got to the point a lot of people didn't want
Speaker 1: to work with me because they're like, we're gonna be tested.
Speaker 1: I don't feel like dealing with this today, and you
Speaker 1: know so people would be nervous to ride with me.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, you want the railroad workers to
Speaker 1: be tested to make sure they're doing everything according to
Speaker 1: the rules of safety. They're driving these huge beasts, and
Speaker 1: a lot can go wrong. Like carry Westcott said, you
Speaker 1: can't be distracted working on the railroad, and you can't
Speaker 1: be nodding off driving the train. But that wasn't what
Speaker 1: happened to Nikki. They were scrutinizing her extra hard, trying
Speaker 1: to catch her making even the tiniest mistake. They tested
Speaker 1: her arm strength. They asked her to tide the brakes,
Speaker 1: but gave her a broken brakestick. They even made her
Speaker 1: run on the treadmill. We're not allowed to run because
Speaker 1: we are on ballasts. The ballast is big rocks, so
Speaker 1: you're gonna fall, and you don't want to fall under
Speaker 1: a moving train or on the train. If they catch
Speaker 1: you running, you get rolled up. So I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: not supposed to run, and they go you have to
Speaker 1: run for nine minutes. All I can see was myself
Speaker 1: flying off of this treadmill into the wall. Nikki passed
Speaker 1: that test, But wow, this testing was something else. The
Speaker 1: crazy thing is it's not unique to Nikki. Labor organizer
Speaker 1: and read engineer Ron cam and Cow listed some of
Speaker 1: the things that railroad managers could get you on. There's
Speaker 1: a million things. So you weren't wearing earplugs, you didn't
Speaker 1: have your safety glasses on. Your boot, didn't have a
Speaker 1: three quarter inch heel, this wasn't tucked in. You were
Speaker 1: wearing a tank top instead of as a shirt with sleeves.
Speaker 1: You didn't have lace up boots, you had slip on
Speaker 1: boots like motorcycle boots. I'm just going through a lot
Speaker 1: of things in my brain over the last twenty five
Speaker 1: years that I or others have been accused of, and
Speaker 1: so it's very very easy to fire almost anybody on
Speaker 1: the railroad. That's one of the additional stresses that we
Speaker 1: put up with. But of all of these tests, she endured.
Speaker 1: The story that's stuck with me most is when they
Speaker 1: made Nikki walk a mile on the ballast in the desert.
Speaker 1: It was a hundred degrees. The bosses were walking on
Speaker 1: the road watching Nikki, who had to walk on the
Speaker 1: unsteady rocks by the tracks, so I'm like, how many
Speaker 1: times do I have to prove myself? And the whole
Speaker 1: time Nikki was walking, the managers were taunting her, trying
Speaker 1: to tempt her to stop just for a moment so
Speaker 1: she would fail. And then one of the managers Nikki,
Speaker 1: would you like a water? I just look at him
Speaker 1: as I'm walking. Are you serious? You already told me
Speaker 1: if I stopped for any reason, I am disqualified. Why
Speaker 1: would you do that? And well you look thirsty? Right? Okay?
Speaker 1: When we finished a mile, have my water ready? This
Speaker 1: is a scene I couldn't get over when I thought
Speaker 1: about it later. Here these hostile managers have trumped up
Speaker 1: this test that they make sure it takes place in
Speaker 1: scorching heat so they can mock her and try to
Speaker 1: make her fail. So I sped up and I walked faster.
Speaker 1: I finished my miles, and I'm standing there waiting on them.
Speaker 1: Day after day, Nikki passed all their tests, but she
Speaker 1: knew this wasn't the end. Like her mom said, every
Speaker 1: time she entered the yard, they were watching her. Every
Speaker 1: time you turn around, this guy was study following her.
Speaker 1: You know, get her in trouble. Are people that's around her?
Speaker 1: Get them in trouble. If she seemed like she was
Speaker 1: being too nice to somebody's inn, that person became a target.
Speaker 1: But Nickie was determined to stick it out to the
Speaker 1: bitter end, be an exemplary employee and the hope that
Speaker 1: she wouldn't get fired. She loved her job and she
Speaker 1: was good at it, but as her mom said, there
Speaker 1: was something more to it. She took more than I
Speaker 1: would have took. I tell you that. But she needed
Speaker 1: her job, you know, she was basically a single parent.
Speaker 1: After more than a year of constant surprise testing, drug testing,
Speaker 1: and scrutinizing her paperwork, Nikki did what the bosses had
Speaker 1: been waiting for ever since. She tunted Barbara about his
Speaker 1: courage to care. Nikki made a mistake, one that wasn't
Speaker 1: uncommon on the railroad and sometimes results in a suspension.
Speaker 1: She was setting out a car railroad terminology for separating
Speaker 1: a car from the rest of the train for their customer.
Speaker 1: When the car got loose and smashed into the wall
Speaker 1: of a factory. It was like, look, this car just
Speaker 1: got away. What do you want us to do? The
Speaker 1: managers that came me and are the managers that's targeting
Speaker 1: me with the superintendent. I'm like, great, well, I guess
Speaker 1: I'm a vacation. Nikki assumed she'd be pulled off work
Speaker 1: for a few weeks, but it wasn't a vacation. Nikki
Speaker 1: got fired. Jeff Dangwall still remembers Nikki calling to tell
Speaker 1: him he was astonished that the railroad would take it
Speaker 1: this far. I called her and she told me what
Speaker 1: was happening. And from a legal perspective, you know too,
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking to myself, who's a whole the idiot
Speaker 1: lawyers at the company that are like signing off on this.
Speaker 1: So I'm getting picked off at my own profession. Somebody's
Speaker 1: got to like have a level head and do the
Speaker 1: right thing here. And so I fired off an email
Speaker 1: to their lawyer and I said, this is a bad idea. Oh,
Speaker 1: you don't want to fire somebody who's already got a
Speaker 1: retaliation suit against you. And the response is essentially like, Yep,
Speaker 1: this is what we're doing. We're going forward with it.
Speaker 1: And it was just like that matter of fact, and
Speaker 1: that's simple. In response, Nikki sued Union Pacific for wrongful
Speaker 1: termination and harassment, a case that took two years. So
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the upside of Richard Kunia's statement
Speaker 1: circles back to Nikki. They were her family. They were
Speaker 1: the only people who could understand what she was going through,
Speaker 1: and they showed up to support her. But that railroad
Speaker 1: family would have to put their jobs at risk to
Speaker 1: testify and supportive Nikki. They need to take a day
Speaker 1: off work without pay and talk about how brutal and
Speaker 1: vengeful their bosses were, then go back to work under
Speaker 1: those same bosses. And it was like, I gotta be sneaky,
Speaker 1: I gotta ask my friends put their jobs on the line.
Speaker 1: And it just got to the point of like, these
Speaker 1: people don't need to sacrifice like I did it, you know,
Speaker 1: so if I had to stop, you know, it was
Speaker 1: like fine, I'll settle with you. You know, I'll settle.
Speaker 1: You wanted me, I'm gone, I will agree, pay me
Speaker 1: this amount and we're fine. And that's what we did.
Speaker 1: It was like, I'll walk away. They ground Niggy down
Speaker 1: and she settled for lessons she thought the case was
Speaker 1: worth because she didn't want to put her friends, her
Speaker 1: railroad family through this trial. So in the end, the
Speaker 1: railroad one, like it always does, they paid her something
Speaker 1: and now she's gone that's the system and it still works.
Speaker 1: We reached out to Union Pacific for comment. They replied, well,
Speaker 1: we disagree with miss Jackson's rendition of the facts of
Speaker 1: the case. Union Pacific does not comment unsettled cases due
Speaker 1: to the confidential nature of the settlements. So after fifteen
Speaker 1: years on the railroad, he took the settlement. But she's
Speaker 1: still trying to find work so she can get her
Speaker 1: full railroad pension. To do this, she's traveled to Oregon
Speaker 1: and to Mississippi, taking three months shifts working for smaller railroads,
Speaker 1: bit by bit, trying to stitch together enough months to
Speaker 1: build up the five years she needs. This meant being
Speaker 1: away from home for stretches of time, but she and
Speaker 1: as it turned out, a lot of other former railroad
Speaker 1: employees are on the same circuit. Oregon, it was the
Speaker 1: same as anywhere else. I got along with the guys
Speaker 1: with my crew, and on our days off we still
Speaker 1: hung out. We went to the rivers and we went hiking,
Speaker 1: and being that all of us had came from Union Pacific,
Speaker 1: we really bonded. Oh, so these were a lot of
Speaker 1: other guys who were taking these three months to gigs. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of us, and everywhere you go. I
Speaker 1: ran into the people that came out of Colton. The
Speaker 1: thing is, like Jeff said, these stories are far from
Speaker 1: after the break. What that means for the rest of us.
Speaker 1: There was such good luck to meet Nikki, because without her,
Speaker 1: I'd never have seen the conditions in the yard. I
Speaker 1: was searching to understand their life. My daughter chose when
Speaker 1: she dropped into this world. But I didn't see the
Speaker 1: other people in the city of the rails, the ones
Speaker 1: who keep the place running and the price they pay.
Speaker 1: The railroads are something we see but don't see. They're
Speaker 1: big and noisy, and those qualities blot out everything else.
Speaker 1: But after last year's threat of a railroad strike, many
Speaker 1: eyes took a look at the railroads for the first time,
Speaker 1: and many more in the last month as news spread
Speaker 1: of the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
Speaker 1: Both events reminded the public how crucial trains are. Most
Speaker 1: people didn't know that if the railroads came to a stop,
Speaker 1: it would be a massive blow to the supply chain,
Speaker 1: a loss of two billion dollars a day to the
Speaker 1: American economy. So let's start with a rail strike, because
Speaker 1: of what I'd learned from workers like Nikki, I knew
Speaker 1: it wasn't about money. During contract negotiations with the railroad unions,
Speaker 1: the railroads offered workers an astonishing twenty five percent pay
Speaker 1: increase retroactively, meaning back pay of five thousand dollars. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't a surprise to me that more than half
Speaker 1: the union members turned that down. They wanted a more
Speaker 1: decent workplace, and most of all, they wanted paid sick days.
Speaker 1: And how could the railroads say no to that. Their
Speaker 1: employees work through the pandemic to keep the country stocked
Speaker 1: with toilet paper and the tanks full of gasoline, but
Speaker 1: couldn't get a paid day off if they got sick,
Speaker 1: and the railroads wouldn't budge on that. They say, here,
Speaker 1: take this pile of money, but you gotta work sick.
Speaker 1: A lot of railroad workers were quitting. All they want
Speaker 1: sick pay, dude, sick pay for the railworkers strike. Do it?
Speaker 1: Like I say, is you better give these people what
Speaker 1: they want, because if you shut the railroad down, it
Speaker 1: shuts down our whole country. Among the rail workers quitting
Speaker 1: in droves was Robert Hudson from back in episode two,
Speaker 1: I quit because honestly the nature of the work had
Speaker 1: gotten so stressful that it just wasn't worth it to
Speaker 1: me anymore. If you ever wanted to have a life,
Speaker 1: you have to sort of kiss it goodbye and just
Speaker 1: work on the railroad. You can't plan anything, you can't
Speaker 1: schedule anything. Whenever you try to have like a doctor's appointment,
Speaker 1: you have to tell the doctor, yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I'll be able to make it, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to try it for this date or that date. I
Speaker 1: was on call for the vast majority of like the
Speaker 1: fourteen and fifteen years that I was here at the railroads,
Speaker 1: twenty four seven, every single day of the year, especially holidays.
Speaker 1: The work was too stressful, the schedule was too unpredictable.
Speaker 1: Good reasons for anyone to look for a new job.
Speaker 1: But these aren't run of the mill work complaints. That
Speaker 1: was clear when I spoke with JP Wright too. Between
Speaker 1: the hours, the conditions, and the management wearing on the
Speaker 1: railroad was killing him. You could speak to my co
Speaker 1: workers and they would tell you I had a nervous
Speaker 1: breakdown while I was working. In the last several months,
Speaker 1: I just was completely insanely pissed off and just miserable.
Speaker 1: And that's when I finally said to my wife, so
Speaker 1: it could kill me. This isn't an issue if I'm
Speaker 1: tired and it's someone who go work anymore. It's either
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to work and they're going to
Speaker 1: bring me home ins box. It's not just JP and
Speaker 1: Robert who feel that way. It used to be that
Speaker 1: this was a job handed from one generation to the next,
Speaker 1: but no longer because the railroad takes too much away.
Speaker 1: When I hired in, nobody quit the railroad. When I
Speaker 1: hired out in Chicago, I worked with a lot of
Speaker 1: young men who were the sons and grandsons and great
Speaker 1: grandsons of railroad workers. You see less and less and
Speaker 1: less of that. Now. You can hear railroad workers say
Speaker 1: this today. I don't want my son railroading. This is
Speaker 1: not a good sign. So what's the story here. The
Speaker 1: railroads are one of the most difficult and dangerous jobs
Speaker 1: in America. Everyone knows that going in, and that's why
Speaker 1: the people who work on the railroad get paid so well.
Speaker 1: But despite these good salaries, even people close to retirement
Speaker 1: or quitting, what happened to this once great working class
Speaker 1: job precisions scheduled railroading PSR means doing a lot more
Speaker 1: with a lot less. It's capitalism gone crazy. But as
Speaker 1: a management style it might sound depressingly familiar no matter
Speaker 1: where you work under PSR. In the last five years,
Speaker 1: railroads have cut their workforce by nearly a third, gotten
Speaker 1: rid of a quarter of their locomotives and forty percent
Speaker 1: of their box cars, and started running longer and longer trains.
Speaker 1: So precision scheduled railroading is also the reason that recently
Speaker 1: Congress started hearing from businesses demanding action. Apart from the workers,
Speaker 1: manufacturers couldn't get their goods to market because rail service
Speaker 1: was so unreliable, as I very often see as get
Speaker 1: called to Washington. So it's a big deal when Transportation
Speaker 1: and Infrastructure Committee Chair Congress and Peter de Fazio got
Speaker 1: to lay into the CEOs of big railroads in his
Speaker 1: opening remarks, we are at a point of crisis. Freight
Speaker 1: service in the United States of America, which used to
Speaker 1: have the best in the world, is abysmal. The freight
Speaker 1: railroad ceo say, poor service. It's not had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with us. Oh no, no, it's COVID supply chain.
Speaker 1: Oh that their workforce. Oh, by the way, you laid
Speaker 1: off one hell of a lot of your workforce, and
Speaker 1: a lot of them are coming back to you because
Speaker 1: they've been They have been disrespected, mistreated, and you've made
Speaker 1: it more dangerous for your workers with these cuts. At
Speaker 1: this twenty twenty two hearing, DeFazio delivered a no bullshit
Speaker 1: rebuke to the men responsible for driving JP to a
Speaker 1: nervous breakdown. You're not looking to change. I'm talking on
Speaker 1: the CEOs now. You're not looking to change. You're just
Speaker 1: ranking in record profits were more different ends for shareholders
Speaker 1: and oh, hey, by the way, my salary also goes
Speaker 1: up and my stock goes up. Isn't that great while
Speaker 1: the country suffers. Defasio has been speaking in Congress about
Speaker 1: the decline of the railroads for the past twenty years,
Speaker 1: and he's got a lot to say about PSR. I've
Speaker 1: been talking about this for a long time, and people say, oh,
Speaker 1: that's just Defasio of carrying on. Well, now it's Defasio
Speaker 1: joined with some very unlikely allies. That would be the
Speaker 1: chemical industry, the energy industry, the agriculture industry, who are
Speaker 1: bemoaning what has been done. The destruction that has been
Speaker 1: wrought on freight rail in America, so called precision scheduled railroading.
Speaker 1: This slashing burn management style transformed America's largest railroads from
Speaker 1: a fussial technology into a profit generating machine. They now
Speaker 1: make profits on a par with the world's richest technology companies,
Speaker 1: in part by driving down conditions for the workers. As
Speaker 1: regional monopolies, rail registers outrageous fees and deliver cars when
Speaker 1: it's convenient for them, not necessarily the customer, and were
Speaker 1: then making more money than they've ever made before. They've
Speaker 1: got no incentive to change, and no government bodies to
Speaker 1: demand that they do so. And when workers tried to strike,
Speaker 1: the government wouldn't let them so. Just in case you
Speaker 1: were wondering, you know, if we were if the supply
Speaker 1: chain is shoes, we're going to get any better. They're not.
Speaker 1: He's a chair right now. President Biden is asking Congress
Speaker 1: to intervene to avert a potential rail strike before Christmas.
Speaker 1: Raordinary level of corporate greed in America. There is no
Speaker 1: better example than what is taking place in the rail
Speaker 1: industry today, most of it. Twenty twenty two, there was
Speaker 1: a rumble about a coming rail strike. The railroads and
Speaker 1: the fourteen unions were at a stalemate. Ten of those
Speaker 1: unions ratified the contract by thin margins, but the four
Speaker 1: largest unions rejected it. Those four unions threatened to strike.
Speaker 1: If they did, the others wouldn't cross the picket line,
Speaker 1: meaning the whole rail network would come to us stand still.
Speaker 1: More good stalled at port, grain growing musty, and silos
Speaker 1: chemicals piling up at refineries. That's when Congress stepped in
Speaker 1: to force the workers to accept a contract and it's
Speaker 1: illegal for them to strike. Even President Biden, who famously
Speaker 1: commuted to the Senate daily on an Amtrak train and
Speaker 1: reminds everyone of his support of the unions, back the
Speaker 1: legislation to make the strike illegal. As his press secretary
Speaker 1: Karine Jean Pierre said, President of course supports he supports
Speaker 1: paid sickly for all Americans and for including rail workers.
Speaker 1: But he does not support any bill or amendment that
Speaker 1: will delay bill that's getting to his desk by Saturay.
Speaker 1: Those who give up so much to work on the railroad,
Speaker 1: give up holidays with their kids, push through injuries and
Speaker 1: hazardous conditions, deal with tests upon tests from their superiors,
Speaker 1: those people were not even worth considering when a profit
Speaker 1: was to be made, and Biden would be dragged by
Speaker 1: business and political opponents if the railroads went on a
Speaker 1: STRIKEE So I guess six days can wait, at least
Speaker 1: for the employees who drive the train. In the last
Speaker 1: few weeks, many of the big railroads have agreed to
Speaker 1: offer six days to the craft unions like the workers
Speaker 1: who inspect the cars or lay the traps. By cutting
Speaker 1: back the staff so dramatically, the railroads need to hire
Speaker 1: a lot of people, and Union Pacific offering a thirty
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars hiring bonus as started to work. The
Speaker 1: number of people working on the railroad increased by six
Speaker 1: percent in January. But they still have to deal with
Speaker 1: the fact that working for the railroad now has a
Speaker 1: terrible reputation. Go take a look at glass Door. It
Speaker 1: gave up a two point one employer rating. As one
Speaker 1: railroader road pros ray pay, fun and exciting cons management
Speaker 1: is cutthroat, looking for a reason to fire anyone. I
Speaker 1: promise I did not get Ron camin Cow to write
Speaker 1: that review. He's the veteran railroader who characterizes the worker
Speaker 1: management relationship with those three little words. They hate us.
Speaker 1: Nobody treats other human beings in the way that we
Speaker 1: are being treated unless they actually hate us. They really
Speaker 1: do hate us. They're spying on us, they're harassing us,
Speaker 1: they're threatening us, they're disciplining us, they're talking down to us,
Speaker 1: they're being condescending that they're like a malicious overlord who
Speaker 1: lacks any sort of basic respect for us as a
Speaker 1: worker and as a human being. And combine that atmosphere
Speaker 1: with this constant work, constant fatigue, constantly being away from home.
Speaker 1: Throw in the attendance policy where you can't even get
Speaker 1: away from this to get some respite and some rest
Speaker 1: and some time off the job, and you can quickly
Speaker 1: understand how this is becoming an untenable situation for numerous
Speaker 1: engineers and conductors in this country. Of course, this is
Speaker 1: much bigger than the real roads. Like Robert Hudson said,
Speaker 1: they're the pulse of the economy. They keep the country moving.
Speaker 1: They've been doing it for two hundred years. But what
Speaker 1: happens when that force begins to buckle under the weight
Speaker 1: of its own greed, you know, and you have to
Speaker 1: have people run the railroad in this country. The wheels
Speaker 1: of industry could grind to a halt and we could
Speaker 1: have a national crisis on our hands. Trains are the
Speaker 1: most fuel efficient means of transportation, no innic humanity. Every
Speaker 1: American should really be concerned about this. Not just railroad workers,
Speaker 1: but a lot of railroad workers are past caring. They're out,
Speaker 1: and so are a lot of other people. In the
Speaker 1: last few years, during the pandemic and past its peak,
Speaker 1: the country has experienced with the media calls the big
Speaker 1: quit people like JP and Robert voluntarily quitting their jobs
Speaker 1: saying I'm working too hard, working too long hours. It's
Speaker 1: not going to get any better, and I've had it.
Speaker 1: Sort of sounds like Mike Brody in our first episode
Speaker 1: when he told me we're all just going around in circles.
Speaker 1: Could it be that the young Obos were onto something?
Speaker 1: What does your work mean to you? For many of
Speaker 1: the people working on the railroad, the trains mean a
Speaker 1: lot more than a paycheck. Talking to Nikki, I saw
Speaker 1: how the rails transformed her. They gave her a lifeline,
Speaker 1: a new kind of family, and boosted her to the
Speaker 1: middle class. But when we look at a train, we're
Speaker 1: not thinking about the workers. We're not thinking about the
Speaker 1: risk they take. We're not thinking about the power of
Speaker 1: the train holds. We're not thinking about the power of
Speaker 1: the railroads. The reason Union Pacific can offer these huge
Speaker 1: hiring bonuses is that they're swimming in cash seven billion
Speaker 1: net last year, and they didn't spend that on the workers,
Speaker 1: but on buying back their own stock six point three
Speaker 1: billion dollars worth. That's a lot more than the four
Speaker 1: point six billion spent on the employees pay and benefits.
Speaker 1: The workers tried to strike, Who's in the news for
Speaker 1: a few weeks when we were all worried about how
Speaker 1: our Christmas presents wouldn't get to us for the Congress
Speaker 1: forced the contract on the workers, and most of us
Speaker 1: forgot about it, which is how these companies get away
Speaker 1: with it. That's being railroaded. People walk away from the
Speaker 1: railroad to take control of their lives again. Robert works
Speaker 1: at a cemetery now, JP moved to Austria. Travelers walk
Speaker 1: away too. Sometimes they're done for good, like Morgan, and
Speaker 1: sometimes they're back on the tracks after a stint, like
Speaker 1: Mike Brodie. Would Ruby be home for good when she
Speaker 1: landed back here. It was in this context that I
Speaker 1: got the good news that Ruby was nearly home. Ruby
Speaker 1: and her boyfriend made it north to New York and
Speaker 1: visited her brother Ben. I'd heard from them when they
Speaker 1: were in Minneapolis, which has a big train hopping community.
Speaker 1: They spent a pleasant week there, then hop the high Line,
Speaker 1: the transcontinental route that goes right past cc riders trailer
Speaker 1: on their way to spoken. I was so happy to
Speaker 1: know about her progress, but I was also a little
Speaker 1: anxious in a way. It was worse knowing what train
Speaker 1: she'd hopped. When I was ignorant of I thought less
Speaker 1: about it, But now I couldn't get her out of
Speaker 1: my mind, wondering if something might go wrong on her
Speaker 1: way home. Then one Sunday, Ruby called ecstatic. They were
Speaker 1: hitchhiking from Suakan to Washington with their dogs and got
Speaker 1: picked up by a pet loving worshipper of Our Savior,
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, who was moved to give Ruby her car.
Speaker 1: She took them to the DMV and turned over her
Speaker 1: registration to Ruby, who called me as they were just
Speaker 1: about to hit the road in the Jesus Mobile and
Speaker 1: head south to San Francisco. The car was a nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five geometro covered in Jesus stickers. Ruby described putting
Speaker 1: her hair in pigtails and donning a dress so she'd
Speaker 1: looked innocent if they got stopped by the cops. But
Speaker 1: the problem was her boyfriend, a rough guy covered in tattoos.
Speaker 1: Oh well, God might just be on their side. Jesus
Speaker 1: take the wheel. After all my worrying, wondering if one
Speaker 1: day I'd be going down some back alley or train
Speaker 1: yard to retrieve Ruby. I was just delighted by this
Speaker 1: image of her cruising back into the city with her
Speaker 1: two dogs and her hobo boyfriend, and in the Jesus
Speaker 1: metro that woman. I wish I could kiss her for me.
Speaker 1: This was a miracle. I knew I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: be Ruby's first stop back in town either. Likely i'd
Speaker 1: get another call when she got back asking me to
Speaker 1: get coffee. I was looking forward to that. I also
Speaker 1: recognized by now I wouldn't be expected to offer an
Speaker 1: opinion about anything else unless asked. My approval was not
Speaker 1: part of the equation. And of course my life had
Speaker 1: changed too. I'd pulled off Christmas at our home by
Speaker 1: the lake, but now here at the barn. I'd given
Speaker 1: away a lot of our old belongings. But she was
Speaker 1: coming home, and Ruby was already off the rails, So naturally,
Speaker 1: I thought my time in this world was coming to
Speaker 1: a close until we heard the news. Cadaver dog searches
Speaker 1: the remains of an abandoned New Orleans warehouse where a
Speaker 1: fire killed eight homeless people. We talked to two victims
Speaker 1: that escape before the fire got today. News of a
Speaker 1: fire in New Orleans spread quickly through the traveling community.
Speaker 1: A popular squad in the Ninth Ward had burned to
Speaker 1: the ground. Eight young riders had been lost in the
Speaker 1: flames in a warehouse right beside the railroad tracks, and
Speaker 1: while major outlets had picked up the story, it was
Speaker 1: only to mention that some homeless people had died in
Speaker 1: the fire. I knew there was a lot more to
Speaker 1: it than that. I wanted to tell the stories of
Speaker 1: the people who died in the fire, And there was
Speaker 1: still a lot that Ruby didn't want to tell me
Speaker 1: about the time she'd been away. Maybe in New Orleans
Speaker 1: I could get those answers. There was a big room
Speaker 1: in the middle and had these huge doors that we'd
Speaker 1: all hang out on, and it was like right by
Speaker 1: the train yards, so it was like perfect to hear
Speaker 1: the trains in the background, So I'm like, are you
Speaker 1: on a train? No? Mom? Stop asking this big party
Speaker 1: where like sixty or seventy people came because we were leaving.
Speaker 1: It was awesome. But then at that party, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of shadows in New Orleans, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a shadow town. That's part of its romance is
Speaker 1: around the bride, lights and carnival of the French corner.
Speaker 1: On all sides of it are the shadows, dark streets,
Speaker 1: empty buildings, open fields, and the train yards. Of course,
Speaker 1: that's next episode on City of the Rails s the
Speaker 1: Montica Samatica Doster fourteen as well be Drinking Gasoline. City
Speaker 1: of the Rails is hosted by me Daniel Morton and
Speaker 1: developed in partnership between Flip Turn Studios and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Want to give us a piece of your mind? Want
Speaker 1: to tip us off? You only have two episodes last
Speaker 1: get those messages in. The number is seven oh seven
Speaker 1: six five three three three nine. We just might use
Speaker 1: it in the show. And if you're a worker with
Speaker 1: a story to tell, please give me a call. I'm
Speaker 1: working on a series of stories about the railroads in
Speaker 1: the workplace and I want to hear from you. And
Speaker 1: if you want to follow Alan, find us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at flip turn Pods. One day I'll start posting at
Speaker 1: Danelle Ryder too. At iHeart. Our team is executive producer
Speaker 1: and sherwinner Julian Weller. Our executive producer at Flip Turn
Speaker 1: is Mark Healy, Senior producer and editing master Abu Zafar
Speaker 1: and of course our Lady squad Shehina Ozaki and Zoe Dankla.
Speaker 1: Plus we have new recruits. Thank you to Tricia Mukherjee,
Speaker 1: Jackie Huntington and Jessica Krinchich for stepping into these last
Speaker 1: few weeks with production support from Marcy to Pinat. Original
Speaker 1: music every episode by Aaron Kaufman. Our theme music is
Speaker 1: Wayfaring Stranger, performed by Profane Sass thanks to Scott Mischad
Speaker 1: at Flail Records. Thanks Alex French, who pitched in while
Speaker 1: finishing up a show of his own. Let's start a coup.
Speaker 1: You can hear it wherever we're listening to this. Our
Speaker 1: logo is by Lucy King Tinia and uses a photograph
Speaker 1: by Mike Brodie and At iHeart, thanks to Nikki Etour
Speaker 1: and Bethan maca Luso, and in this episode, Jason English too.
Speaker 1: We'll be back next week in New Orleans on City
Speaker 1: of the Rails.