Amtrak Executives Say Attrition, Not Furloughs Led to Shortage of Mechanical Workers

Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner and Board Chairman Anthony Coscia pushed back last week on the assertion that furloughs during the COVID-19 pandemic are responsibility for shortages of mechanical workers at the passenger carrier.

During a public meeting last Thursday in St. Louis of the Amtrak board of directors, both took issue with an assertion by Rail Passengers Association head Jim Mathews that “choices surrounding furloughs and equipment have left Amtrak struggling to accommodate demand surges – both on specific routes and over travel periods, such as Thanksgiving.”

Coscia acknowledged that Amtrak lacks adequate equipment and personnel to “bring back service the way we’d like to.”

Gardner said attrition and not furloughs are the reason for the thin workforce in Amtrak’s mechanical department.

“That’s not true, that’s not what happened,” Gardner said in response to Mathews. “What did happen was that during this period of time [the pandemic] when we could not hire we could not overcome the attrition. So last year we hired 3,600 people or so, but we also lost 1,600 people during that same period to retirements, to a change in job, [and] to relocations” and other reasons.

Gardner said about 90 percent of workers who were furloughed by Amtrak during the pandemic have since returned to their jobs.

Coscia said Amtrak is trying to rebuild a workforce “that had kind of atrophied to a certain degree.”

The question arose during a discussion about how Amtrak has a backlog of equipment idling in shops instead of being placed back into revenue service due to a lack of mechanical staff to bring those cars into operating condition.

Gardner said hiring electricians and machinists is tough to do in some locations, but Amtrak is working with its unions to find new ways to hire and train new workers. One such program is a new apprenticeship program for entry-level jobs.

“We’re working every angle to be able to restore people that make the trains available to serve our customers . . . [and] restore service and then grow,” Gardner said.

Amtrak is seeking to hire an additional 4,000 new employees in 2023, most of whom would work in the mechanical crafts where the need is most acutely felt.

Nonetheless, Amtrak management still expects to fall short of reaching full staffing by the end of the federal fiscal year on Sept. 30, 2025.

The passenger carrier expects capacity on its trains to be less than it was four years ago and forecasts it will carry 28 million passengers in fiscal year 2024, which would be 90 percent of 2019 levels.

Amtrak expects to restore capacity to pre-pandemic levels in FY2024, which begins Oct. 1, 2024. It also expects ridership during FY2025 to exceed that of 2019.

Tags: Amtrak, Amtrak board of directors, Amtrak workers, Anthony Coscia, Stephen Gardner