In my experience working 9 years in the Mechanical Department, there are plenty of old heads that don’t know what they are doing. They have been going through the motions throughout their careers and have been able to do so due to the fact that nobody can touch them. They have been allowed to not learn how to actually be a craftsman.
The management knows who these people are and have to strategically put these individuals on jobs in which they can’t mess something up. I blame the unions for not forcing these “craftsmen” to learn their jobs, or be let go, as well as the management for not having the juevos to force these types of individuals out.
Reality is, these types of individuals are in abundance at UP and create a toxic work culture as the intelligent, hard working people, get overloaded with most of the work loads and eventually get burnt out as they see their “Brothers” getting away with doing very little due to their incompetence.