Deely and Shelton from Amtrak to VRE

This sort of belongs here in the Amtrak Forum and sort of doesn't.

J. Deely and S. Shelton of Amtrak west coast fame have been hired as operations managers by Keolis (the French company who won the bid to operate VRE).

These two guys were fired by Amtrak last fall, hated almost, if not, universally by the rank of file, were sued, successfully, I believe.

It is amazing how some people, no matter what, manage continually to land on their feet over and over again.

Valid news about the new positions, but let's remember to keep this respectful - slander is not allowed.

Roving Resume may be the proper term.

What was the lawsuit?

Ironically, if these managers are truly hated by the rank-and-file, then they've already solved one problem for Keolis. Keolis is required to offer VRE positions to the Amtrak employees who are currently holding them.

don't most companies have a non-compete clause. keolis bid against amtrak for the VRE contract (which amtrak is fighting supposedly) and yet the people heading keolis have inside knowledge of amtrak operations? sounds shady.

If a manager is hated, he/she probably is good at what he/she does.
very few managers are loved by rank and file

DutchRailnut wrote:If a manager is hated, he/she probably is good at what he/she does.
very few managers are loved by rank and file

I beg to differ - I've had several manager that were very effective, and still earned respect from their employees and their management. I've also had some that gave no respect to their employees, and the workforce responded by slacking whenever possible. It sounds like these two gave no respect, and earned none in return.

I don't think there is a natural trend. I have worked with all kinds of management people. Some who were not only lousy
people but lousy railroaders too. I can name names but I will not. I have worked with people who were not nice but they
were still good railroaders and knew their jobs well. I have also worked with management people who were nice people but
not good railroaders and also with pleasant people who were also very good railroaders.
To further this comment, most of the management people whom I have worked with have been very decent to me and a good share of them also were good railroaders. There were some who stood out above all others. Again, I am not going to
name names.
Noel Weaver

"keolis bid against amtrak for the VRE contract (which amtrak is fighting supposedly) and yet the people heading keolis have inside knowledge of amtrak operations? sounds shady."

If these guys were hired after the fact and did not have input to the winning bid then there's nothing shady as the inside knowledge couldn't have been used to formulate their competitive bidding response. It would also be interesting whether the Amtrak non-compete agreement (assuming one exists which I don't know) is specific enough to cover contract services such as this versus long-haul passenger ops. Given that they are legislatively the 800 pound ape for LD passenger in this country, they might not even have a non-compete agreement.