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In fiscal year 2021, Amtrak gave top executives the highest incentive bonuses in years, despite the company’s mediocre financial performance and weak ridership during the COVID lockdown, The New York Times reported.
Of the railroad’s 12 top executives, nine took in bonuses between $230,000 and CEO Stephen Gardner’s $293,000 last year.
Gardner has received more than $766,000 in incentive and other short-term bonuses since 2016; Eleanor Acheson, Amtrak’s general counsel and corporate secretary, has pocketed almost $727,000 in bonuses.
“They gave themselves fat bonuses off the backs of workers that were exposed to harm’s way,” Transport Workers Union president John Samuelson complained to the NYT.
“It underscores the reason why there should be worker representatives on the Amtrak board,” he added.
Congress created Amtrak in 1971 to serve the U.S. northeast. Since then, the railroad has never broken even, despite a steady influx of public money.
The carrier was poised to make its first profit late in 2019, then the COVID lockdown shut out its riders.
Amtrak received $22 billion from president Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, passed early in 2021 as the COVID War was still raging.
As of 1 June this year, ridership was still a third less than before the COVID era. Amtrak’s workforce is about 8 percent smaller now than then.
TRENDPOST: We note this article to illustrate how the game is rigged and how the little people of Slavelandia pay for it. Moreover, Amtrak is on track as a third world rail system, with the average speed of regular Amtrak trains at 40 to 42 MPH.
However, according to Wikipedia, “China would have 13,073 kilometers (8,123 mi) of railways capable of carrying trains at speeds of at least 200 km/h (124 mph).” As Gerald Celente says, “the business of China is business, while the business of America is war,” and the U.S. rotten rail and subway system is yet one more element to prove it.