At the risk of being tarred and feathered, I'm going to say that I think signing over $10,000 is a big slap in the face to the 1000+ furloughed men and women on BNSF.

If they're so concerned about the bottom line, resulting in slashed boards, and laid off workers, then this seems like a waste.

My sentiment is the same for CSX... I think they shouldn't be wasting their money painting every stupid engine while myself and 1000 others are burning up the F9 board at 60 revolutions per minute...

You are looking only at the surface. Dig deeper to find the real reasons that the railroads now care about PR in a way that they never did before. Painted locomotives, incessant CSX commercials on TV and AM radio, grants to local communtities all mean one thing. There are proposals on Capitol Hill that will affect the industry including plans to reregulate the railroads, and they are at full throttle trying to make themselves look good in the eyes of the general public.

If the railroads are really trying to make themselves look good to the general public I am afraid they are about 50 years to late.

John Bohon

Let's also remember that while clearly intended as a good-will measure, any such donation is also tax-deductible, is it not ? A win-win for BNSF or anyone else like-minded I would think.

A closer look at the news article states that the grant was from the BNSF Foundation, not BNSF itself. Certainly that money in the foundation originally came from BNSF itself, but probably in better economic times. Yes, the donation from BNSF to the BNSF Foundation was a tax deduction, but once the money is in the foundation, BNSF itself can't touch the money. It has to be used for charitable reasons.

Many, probably most, large corporations have foundations. A typical use for the money is to match charitable gifts made by employees. In no way could I consider a grant made by a corporate foundation to be a slap in the face to its present or furloughed employees. And, typically, the money that foundations give out is not from the principal; it is from investments the foundation had made.

In other words: Read the fine print.

"At the risk of being tarred and feathered, I'm going to say that I think signing over $10,000 is a big slap in the face to the 1000+ furloughed men and women on BNSF."


Hey, sorry to intrude on this all-too familiar theme, but even if the donation was directly from the company, not its foundation, businesses and large enough to affect a single job, a railroad is a business that exists to make money for stockholders, not to provide continuous employment.

As BNSF's stock went from about 44 to 76 and paid dividends over the past 5 years; even at the bottom of the market in March it was at 53.

Yes, I'm completely aware that RR labor relations often look like they are run with a bulldozer, but people get let go from big companies all the time; most never return.

That having been said, I believe corporate donations are payola; a way to manipulate public opinion with a conspicuously large (sometimes in both senses of the word) check that plays on the emotions of people who don't seem to understand that money belongs to stockholders, it doesn't come from some huge pool of excess money waiting to be claimed for some noble cause. Of course, if the "captains of industry" don't capitulate, activists will accuse them of starving children or approving of war crimes, so they throw tribute to barbarians.