Laborer Dog

Every new Railroad Maintenance of Way Employee is assigned a Seniority Roster number on the day they are hired. This Laborers Date is the common denominator for all employees. Everyone goes on to get qualified on the various machines or they move up the management track to become Foreman or Roadmaster but they all start with a Laborer’s Date that determines their place in line.

This seniority date is always referred to as the Laborer’s Date. No one ever asks “When did you hire out?”, or “What’s your seniority date?”, it is always; “What’s your Laborer’s Date”. The reason this is so important has to do with an obscure Union ritual known as bumping.

Bumping is an unbelievably bizarre result of the Union implementation of the Seniority Roster at any cost resulting in chain reaction of bumping as each person finds someone to displace every time there is a layoff. So it is the Laborers Date that determines who can bump who when times get tough as they do every winter when the Production Gangs get laid off and everyone scrambles to find a spot on a Section Gang in the maddening game of musical chairs played out up and down the line.

The term Laborer Dog is used with equal amounts of affection and derision depending on who is aiming or receiving the insult or compliment as the case may be, but it could be used on anyone all the way from the biggest Bigshot on down to the newest wannabe, because they all have that one thing in common.

Some people had a hard time going back to their starting position and would spend more time complaining about the work than actually working but the rest of us found a way to make it pay. And to this day I still respect any one working hard for a living and I am always proud to think of myself as a Laborer Dog.