Laid off from Railcrew Xpress.

What Railcrew Xpress layoffs have meant for employees

Railcrew's letters for both CSX cancellations used nearly the same words. Each said CSX had notified the company that its contract at several locations in the state was canceled, that the listed locations would close permanently and that the employees had no bumping rights. The Indiana letter listed area, operations and location managers among the positions at its five sites, the Florida letter listed lead drivers and location supervisors, and the Georgia letter a location supervisor at Waycross, so a supervisor's title didn't keep anyone at a closing site off the list. If a future employer asks why the job ended, the company's own letters put it on CSX's cancellation. Anyone weighing a move to a Railcrew location that wasn't on a notice may want the no-bumping line in view. WNIN described the Evansville closing as Railcrew pulling out of the city, so for drivers in Evansville, staying with the company would have required working from somewhere else.

For a company of Railcrew's size, the five-state round was large. Its notices listed 337 jobs by our count, about one in six of the more than 2,000 employees Railcrew told the Jax Daily Record it had when those notices went out. The company described its work as moving railway crews, mainly engineers and conductors, from train to train, Inside Indiana Business reported, and the Florida and Georgia letters list drivers at every site, with lead drivers or a supervisor at some.

The letters' dates mark when Railcrew told the states, which may not be when a given employee heard. By our count, the Indiana letter is dated about six and a half weeks before its cancellation date and the Florida and Georgia letters about nine and a half weeks before theirs, so neither gap measures any one person's notice. Each letter also said the listed positions would be affected by the cancellation date, so that date was the latest the letters gave for any of those jobs.

Railcrew didn't specify whether a new contractor would rehire the affected Indiana employees, Inside Indiana Business reported when it covered those closings. If you learn that another company has started moving train crews at the location where you worked and is filling driver jobs, whatever pay, schedule and start date it offers would be settled between you and that company, and it's worth setting those beside what Railcrew paid.

Reported totals for the RCX Logistics round ran higher than what our tracker holds. FreightWaves put it at 600-plus drivers, and an Alabama Department of Commerce specialist told the outlet that 64 drivers and two office employees in Alabama would lose their jobs, while Railcrew's vice president of human resources confirmed the layoffs in all three states. The four rows in our WARN tracker from that round total 336 jobs across Texas, Alabama and Florida, and KCTV5 later put those cuts at hundreds of employees.

If your job ended at one of the sites on the five-state notices, the letter or state record that names your location is worth keeping, since it carries your location and the dates Railcrew gave the state. North Carolina's report names even small sites such as Bethel and Bostic, and the Florida letter names Wildwood, though South Carolina's report carries a single statewide entry that names no site. For the state where you worked, the unemployment pages for Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia are places to check that state's rules.