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  • BNSF seniority districts

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General discussion about working in the railroad industry. Industry employers are welcome to post openings here.

Moderator: thebigc

 #951467  by choochooman
 
Hello all I am new here.I was wondering what are all the different BNSF seniority districts are? Is there like a map somewhere that shows them? Thank you for your help.
 #951666  by jz441
 
BNSF has a system wide seniority, except the Pacific North West.
 #951766  by jz441
 
There are only two... Pacific Northwest and System seniority. Minot is within PNW seniority district.
 #952171  by jz441
 
I will try to remember..... Minnesota, ND, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon.
 #952714  by kr1065
 
JZ,

So Denver falls within system-wide seniority? I thought that was limited to legacy ATSF lines (unless Denver was part of the original ATSF). Folks in the PNW district can't transfer into other terminals with system-wide seniority?

Thanks!
 #952986  by jz441
 
Denver has BN and ATSF lines.... I believe south run is ATSF, but it makes no difference seniority wise... Denver is under system seniority. There are contractual differences, BN vs ATSF. Seniority is where the money is :-)
 #960548  by Iron Bender
 
jz441 wrote:There are only two... Pacific Northwest and System seniority. Minot is within PNW seniority district.
Wrong, wrong, wrong....
 #960823  by Jeff Smith
 
Iron Bender wrote:
jz441 wrote:There are only two... Pacific Northwest and System seniority. Minot is within PNW seniority district.
Wrong, wrong, wrong....
Care to elaborate?
 #961166  by Iron Bender
 
There are more than 2 seniority districts on the BNSF. There are actually dozens of them. For a new hire trainman, it boils down to what looks like about 6 districts.

The "closed seniority" districts include:
01 Superior district (part of Wisconsin and Minnesota)
02 MInnesota district (part of Minnesota and North Dakota)
03 Montana/North Dakota district (western North Dakota and eastern Montana)
04 Rocky Mountain district (western Montana)
05 Pacific district (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, British Columbia)

Everywhere else is covered by the NH99 roster, or New Hire 99 board, which was agreed to by most, but not all, general chairmen and implemented back in, guess what, 1999.

Trainmen in the closed seniority disctricts cannot take their seniority out of those districts and people outside of them cannot bring their seniority into them. So the NH99 guys have a lot more choices in where they can work, the guys in the closed seniority districts don't have to worry about somebody from a 1,000 miles away bumping them when things get slow.

And Minot is definitely NOT within the Northwest Division or the Pacific seniority district.
Last edited by Iron Bender on Mon Aug 15, 2011 6:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.