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Comment by paulmd | Hacker News Reader

Part of the problem with train crews is the Department of Transportation's antiquated laws on cannabis. You can't hire anyone who's used it in the last 90 days, that's a pretty huge fraction of the country. Actually you can't even hire them with the understanding that they need to stop immediately and be clean in 90 days, they have to have been clean for 90 days before applying on the DOT form or their application will bounce immediately.

Instead of reforming that law, or telling railroads to deal with it and pay more/reduce capacity, they're just gonna bend the safety laws instead.

Same problem applies to government and clearance jobs. FBI has said they can't find anyone to hire because everyone smokes pot now and that it's a problem for their hiring pipeline.

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As much as I'd like to agree, no. It's rapidly declining quality of life. Class 1s and especially BNSF is notorious for hiring, training, and then laying people off for what can be years, or training them in desirable locales, and then offering them work in shitholes. Beyond that the union negotiations are at a standstill, BNSF hasn't offered meaningful pay increases for years, the contraction of the labor pools means more work and less time off. Precision rail has made every craft increasingly uncomfortable, from the Surface Transportation Board hearing, the deposition given by every union sure makes it sound like every branch of every railroad is running a skeleton crew. Word of mouth goes a long way, and back in the day you had to know somebody to get an in on the railroad. They can't even get full training classes these days they've sullied their reputation so badly.

But most people will take the $100k plus over weed. And even once you're hired, you don't instantly get terminated for pissing hot or even coming in intoxicated. They'll send you to rehab and put you on probation, and even if one violates that probation one doesn't necessarily get fired. Plus you can afford cocaine on the railroad budget, or meth, or heroin. Anything but weed.

Are you sure a significant percentage of the target demographic they are wanting to hire regularly consumes cannabis and will gladly miss an opportunity for … cannabis ?

The question isn't "would you prefer a job or cannabis", it's "what fraction of the population is ineligible for consideration during the period when they're job-seeking". We have an extremely tight job-market right now and you're talking about adding a massive frictional force to employment in that job-market.

What is the average time a high-skilled professional (or even blue-collar) worker is unemployed between-jobs these days? Probably a lot less than 90 days, I'd think. And 2 years might as well be forever in this job market.

CDC numbers put the number of people who used cannabis at least once in 2019 at 18%, and it's probably only gotten higher over time. It's probably more like 25% nowadays - and sure that's "once a year" but the real number is likely also higher than a voluntary survey would find.

In market terms, reducing your supply by 25% or 30% is a lot and would significantly push your prices upwards. And if you don't let prices swing upwards enough, you'll get shortages.

On top of that it's just a generally undesirable job. Lots of time away from home, and extreme responsibility and stress, even in the best-case scenario, and they're making it even more unpleasant (the ever-popular "dead-sea effect") as they run out of people to do it. We're already seeing that showing up in similar jobs like nursing.

And then on top of that you've got the DOT requirements that exclude another big chunk of the population from consideration. So they're competing for an even smaller fraction of the job market, and they just aren't paying salaries to keep up with it all.

You seem to be assuming that the 25 or 30% of people who have used cannabis are all people that would otherwise be both interested and qualified as recruiting targets?

It's not clear to me that the requirement to be drug-free is excluding a lot of people who the railroads would otherwise want to hire.

No, they seem to be saying that people eligible and interested in railroads probably smoke weed at the same rate as the general population. There’s nothing to indicate that people who would be open and qualified are far more abstinent than the population at large.

The role of cannabis in hazardous jobs is very interesting.

Here in Aotearoa I had a glimpse into that world as we had a referendum on legalisation (that we lost 52-48%, weep) that I was involved in.

Work testing is a big issue, with experienced workers (I personally know a ocean going boat captain in this situation) being treated dreadfully and made to urinate in a cup under close supervision.

In the meat processing industry it has become competitive. I heard of two meat processing companies close enough to be in competition for workers.

Works A used urine testing. Smoking a joint put you in danger of getting fired for a week, or three. Works B used a sweat test which means 24 hours after your joint you are clear.

Works B has a line of hard working butchers.

Works A has a chain of drunks

Who wants to take a job that has so much control of your life they are dictating what you do in your personal life just to interview there?

Freight train jobs involve long hours, bad hours (middle of the night, very early morning, etc), and a decent amount of physical labor. Very few people will take the job just due to lifestyle issues alone. Further limiting your job opening by mandating against cannabis certainly doesn't help the job appear more attractive. Railroad salaries are quite high given the necessary education, but the job conditions often are not worth the money to many people.

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