Norfolk Southern to relocate 500 jobs from white-collar hub in Roanoke

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Norfolk Southern to relocate 500 jobs from white-collar hub in Roanoke

The company is making the move to consolidate its work force while also streamlining services.

Posted: Tuesday, January 27, 2015 10:40 am

By Jeff Sturgeon and Duncan Adams | The Roanoke Times

Norfolk Southern Corp. dropped a bombshell Tuesday on 500 of its Roanoke employees, announcing that their jobs are moving to Norfolk or Atlanta and they must relocate to stay employed.

The decision will eliminate nearly 30 percent of the company’s 1,700-person work force in the Roanoke region and close its downtown hub of white-collar jobs performing marketing, accounting and information technology functions.

Expressions of pain, anger and worry poured out from Richmond and Washington, District of Columbia.

Read more: Lawmakers react to Norfolk Southern decision

Both praised Norfolk Southern for providing local jobs for more than 100 years, while lamenting that its local presence, which has dwindled for years, will shrink even more. It is the descendant of the railroad that gave birth to Roanoke, and it was once the city’s largest employer with more than 5,000 personnel.
....

Reporter Tiffany Holland and news researcher Belinda Harris contributed to this report.

Immediately, people starting assigning the blame to you-know-whom. Here's a comment that notes another possible reason that NS decided to move its workers:

Bruce Harper · Top Commenter · Webmaster at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Goodlatte and Griffith are tying this to their partisan agenda by blaming this on the "war on coal." Perhaps if we still had Rich Boucher and his understanding of the need for broadband and other infrastructure improvements, it would be easier to attract high-tech industries. While NS was announcing it was bailing on Roanoke, Google was announcing it was expanding its gigabit internet to 18 other cities, including Charlotte, and Raleigh-Durham. Getting a better internet in 5 or 6 years isn't going to do much for the Roanoke Valley or Southwest Virginia.

January 27 at 1:53pm

NS to close Roanoke office building, relocate workers

Rail News: Norfolk Southern Railway
1/28/2015

Norfolk Southern Corp. yesterday announced plans to close a Roanoke, Va., office building later this year and relocate functions to Atlanta or Norfolk, Va. ... The Class I employs about 500 people at the Roanoke building in the marketing, accounting, information technology and other departments. Affected employees will have the option of relocating with their positions.

"This will not involve any involuntary force reductions, and we will provide substantial relocation packages for those who choose to relocate," said NS President James Squires in a press release.

The railroad is closing the building to foster departmental synergies, make better use of its real estate assets and support a goal of streamlining the management workforce, NS officials said. The Class I is in the final process of evaluating which positions will be relocated to the corporate headquarters in Norfolk or the operational headquarters in Atlanta. Some regionally oriented positions will remain in Roanoke, but will move to other area work locations.

Roanoke will remain the headquarters for NS' Virginia Division, and the railroad expects to continue operating a local switching yard, locomotive and car maintenance facilities, and a locomotive overhaul and rebuilding facility in the city. NS employs about 1,700 people in Roanoke. ... The Roanoke office building was built in 1992. Disposition of the 203,000-square-foot building will be determined at a later date, NS officials said.

[Newest Reality]

1. Stability?

It seems almost naive to expect any form of stability when our lives are subject to the bottom-line.

Trimming down for profitability may appear to be financially sound and lucrative from a business perspective, but the results include another price for culture and society at large. In fact, pulling away people's livelihoods without any culpability is somewhat parasitic to say the least and there is a laundry list of short-term and long-term impacts on the people affected that spreads and grows.

In that sense, there is a very high price we all pay for this model, but the perpetrators of exploitation who are legally bound to provide profit to share holders at all costs incur benefits in the process while creating devastating, economic vacuums in lives, communities and beyond.

Without placing value on the people, (who are actually the creators and consumers of any of the products and services involved) this paradigm becomes the equivalent of a parasitic relationship rather than a symbiosis of sustainable sustenance and stability. If we continue this way, then it is not difficult to extrapolate a dark, grim and diminished way of life for more of us as we inherit a manufactured dystopia where a draconian legacy forms the face that will greet future generations with a cruel grimace and a nightmare lifestyle.

A shift in thinking is in order. We can patch this and chop that branch off, but the tree is thick and hardy. It is time to get to the very root of the problem rather than trying to prune away the economic and social pestilence we find ourselves embedded in.

[underpants]

2. Wow that is going to have a big effect on that very cool city

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. Who's left?

I don't know the economy of Roanoke. I think GE is out in Salem, right? Elizabeth Arden has a warehouse where a worker was killed back in December. It was the Norfolk & Western Railway that turned Salt Lick into Roanoke, though.

These were white collar jobs, where the workers go out to lunch, and buy washers and dryers and cars, and spend money on movies, and go skiing nearby, and....

I mean, losing any job is bad, but this will extract a lot of money from the economy. Given the choice among Norfolk, Atlanta, and Roanoke, I believe I'd choose Roanoke as the place to live.

[underpants]

4. B&W in Lynchburg

I don't know a lot about the economy there I just know that Roanoke is a great fun city. Great restaurant thing going on there.

I have two relatives (1 is retired) in that area who are connected to NS. Hell the Transportation museum is right in the middle of the city.