From Fire Truck to Train: Manda Snide Leads by Example

In 2014, Manda Snide was working at a nursing home. She was burnt out and underpaid.

“I’d asked the director of nursing for a raise for a quarter an hour, and she said ‘no,’” Snide remembered. “The brand-new people were coming in making exactly what I was, and I had 10 years and a college degree.”

Sister Snide also volunteered as a firefighter and EMT. One night, at a regular first responder meeting, she met a railroader. That conversation changed her life. “If I can run a fire truck,” Snide said she realized, “there’s no way that I couldn’t handle trains. I could go do this and not be so burnt out and make a lot more money than I was making.”

Railroading as a New Life Continues a Union Family Tradition

It’s been over a decade since Sister Snide started working on the railroad.

“Union leadership started a process years and years ago, and I still continue it today,” she explained. “We take [new hires] out to supper with our Designated Legal Counsel so that we can be truthful about what railroad life really is, because in the hiring process they don’t really give you all the facts. They don’t talk about the hours and how grueling that that can be.” Sister Snide is also carrying on the tradition of union membership within her family.

In September she helped her father celebrate 45 years of service with the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE).

“That side’s been really cool to come from a union family and to have been taken care of and had the insurance and the benefits from that my whole life,” she reflected. “To become a member and have those benefits bestowed upon me has been great.”

Snide Identifies Critical Issues in Nebraska

As the Alternate Safety & Legislative Director (SLD) in Nebraska, with a longtime dedication to safety, Sister Snide makes it a priority to serve as a voice for other women who work on the rails.

“I think I’m given a pretty unique opportunity of being a female in a leadership role that those females might feel comfortable talking about issues,” she said.

Some of those issues may be surprising; take the issue of locomotive remote-control boxes.

After seeing a video of the powerful radio transmitter in a remote-control box tripping an outlet, Sister Snide remembered that you can even turn microwaves on via your radio.

She reached out to other state directors and learned that not every box emitted as much radiation. But she also reached out to a few women members when one, who had been pregnant, shocked her with her reply.

“She had issues [with the pregnancy] and the doctor removed several tumors, and he had told her that they were likely due to some radio frequencies or radio cell phone-type frequencies,” she explained. “She brought up the concern about the remote-control box, and he said ‘It’s possible, but I can’t prove it.’”

Sister Snide is also focused on creating opportunity for struggling families.

“One of the things I’ve been working on with Union Pacific is trying to provide childcare, and it would benefit everybody,” she explained. “If we could provide childcare, I think it would be a huge access for single parents, not just single mother. This job changed my life financially, and I’m sure it could change a single parent’s life as well.”

Earning Respect From Management

Throughout her career on the railroad, Sister Snide notes that she was accepted almost instantly into what’s typically a mostly male-dominated industry but credits her background of working with men that made that transition smooth.

She’s also quick to praise her union brothers.

“Most of my guys are really great,” she explains. “They will help out one of my favorite members. She’s 4’10”, 120 pounds, and she has a really hard time throwing switches, but she comes up there and she has a great attitude, and she puts in the effort. If the guys see her struggling, they will instantly go over there and help her out.”

However, things were a little different when she became a local chairman.

“I did have a hard time with some of the managers accepting me at first,” she remembers. “I have great other local chairmen where I’m at, so they would have to come in with me and they would literally say the exact same thing I would say or they would pass my ideas along, and it would happen. So that took a couple of months for people to understand that I had the same title, and I deserve the same respect.”

Leadership: Be the Person Who Can Help

Sister Snide’s decision to pursue a leadership role can be traced to one major factor: her dedication to fighting for her members.

“I chose to get into a leadership role because of seeing how people helped my dad or didn’t help my dad in certain situations. I wanted to be the person that people could go to when they had an issue. It’s terrible if you’re going through something and you don’t know who to reach out to, so I wanted to be that person to help in those moments.”