Seniority Rosters 4/1/76--How were they put together?

[charlie6017]

I'm curious.........with all those Conrail predecessors merging to make one huge company, how did Conrail sort out employee rosters to make out seniority rosters as of 4/1/76? I have read and heard via video that former LV and EL people say how they had to start back at the bottom. I can imagine many people were upset and were for a long time.

Basicly, how did Conrail figure seniority?

Thanks,
Charlie

[LCJ]

It was different in different locations depending on how the work was established. Places like Buffalo dovetailed the rosters to even out the seniority. Of course, on PC we had both prior PC seniority and prior-prior PRR and NYC seniority going on. EL folks had prior EL and prior-prior Erie and Lackawanna rights, too.

All very complicated. I remember we had some EL and LV guys we called "boat people" who came from out west to take jobs in Selkirk under the agreements established for work allocation.

Of course, everyone had a 4/1/76 Conrail date if they were on any roster that day. I was hired on the PC 6 seniority district in Weehawken which became Conrail District F (most of the northeast).

[Noel Weaver]

A bigger date was I think January 1, 1980 when all of the engineers ended
up with a universal date and could from that date on use their 1980 rights
to work any location they wanted and could hold a job in.
In addition, there were a number of agreements created in order to try to
protect prior right and prior, prior right employees. Prior right was in
this case Penn Central or whatever while prior, prior right was going back
to the New York Central with a specific division, the New Haven with a
specific division and the Pennsylvania with a specific division as well as
the other various railroads and divisions that made up Conrail.
They also had various equity agreements to allow for work for engineers
who lost out when much or maybe even all of the freight was removed
from various sections of the railroad. This is how New Haven, Erie-
Lackawanna, Lehigh Valley and other smaller territories were able to bid
and hold work on the main lines of the former New York Central and
Pennsylvania railroads as well as lines of the Lehigh Valley and Reading
which also benefited from these changes. The various rosters and there
were a lot of them got work or equity based on the amount of through
freight work that they had at a certain time. The system was unpopular
with some of the brothers and sisters but in my opinion, it was very fair
to all of us. No system would be perfect but the BLE and the company
both tried to be fair about this and I think they both did a decent job.
From what I have heard, everything is different at least so far as CSX is
concerned today but I have been retired for ten plus years so I am not
affected anymore by what they do.
Noel Weaver