How the World Ran Out of Everything by Peter S. Goodman

Author:Peter S. Goodman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

For Anthony Gunter, the final indignity came in the summer of 2022.

His employer, Norfolk Southern, was congratulating itself for record revenues at the same time that it was arguing that it could not afford to provide paid sick leave to workers like him.

At his home in eastern Tennessee, Gunter sat down at his computer and typed an email to his supervisor.

“Due to the corporate greed20 and the extreme disrespect that this company has shown,” he wrote, “I’ll be hanging up my hat just shy of fourteen years. Norfolk Southern has no recognition for good employees that show up to work on time and do their job safely, efficiently and take the extra initiative to go above and beyond production expectations!”

Gunter did not walk away lightly. His father had worked for the same railroad on a traveling maintenance gang for more than forty years. Gunter assumed that he, too, would endure that life until his own retirement, even as he recalled the pain of watching his father leave when he was a child, sometimes sneaking into his dad’s duffel bag to try to follow him out on the road.

The job was rough, but the money was unbeatable in his stretch of rural America.

After graduating from high school in 2008, Gunter joined a Norfolk Southern maintenance gang that roamed from Georgia to Illinois. He worked four ten-hour shifts in a row, driving as far as twelve hours to get to and from his home in Tennessee to his job sites.

He swung giant hammers, pounding stakes into railroad ties. He moved metal plates weighing more than twenty pounds, bending over and dragging them by hand, nursing aching muscles every night.

He slept in camp cars set alongside the tracks—metal boxes lined with bunk beds packed so tightly he could reach over and graze the man sleeping next to him. The showers were frequently out of order. The toilet was portable. Meals provided by the railroad were prison grade—shriveled hot dogs, baked beans, gristly hamburger patties.

But that first year, he earned $18.87 per hour plus overtime, bringing home $55,000. By 2015, he was making $86,000 a year.

Then the railroad implemented Precision.

Suddenly, Gunter and his crew were forbidden from working overtime, even as they were expected to complete projects on an accelerated schedule—more pressure for lower pay.

The railroad stopped paying workers for the first half hour they spent in company vehicles riding from camp to their work sites and back. This lopped off an hour of pay per day, enraging Gunter and the others in the gang.

By 2017, his take-home pay had slipped to $70,000. That same year, he got married. Two years later, his daughter was born, and Gunter gained an up-close understanding of what his own parents had weathered—the physical distance, the frustrations of the spouse left to take care of children alone, and the difficulties of returning home.

“It was definitely a strain on the marriage,” he said.

In 2021, his son was born with a heart defect, requiring surgery eight months later. Gunter stayed home for the baby’s stint in the hospital, resigned to foregoing pay.

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