Locked out rail workers are demanding improved safety
Locked out rail workers are demanding improved safety
For the first time in Canada’s history, both its major rail companies have stopped operating after employers shut out workers.
The teamsters have been fighting for safety provisions regarding fatigue and for CN workers to be able to stay with their families. According to the union’s website, CPKC wants to gut fatigue provisions which would mean crews have to stay awake longer, increasing the risk of derailments and other accidents.
CN is also targeting fatigue provisions. As well, it wants to implement a forced relocation scheme, which would see workers ordered to move across the country for months at a time to fill labour shortages.
The Transportation Safety Board has put fatigue on its watch list since 2016. Crews often work long and irregular schedules which can make it difficult to get restorative sleep, according to the safety board’s website. The board wrote it is concerned about how fatigue can affect the performance of crews and therefore the safety of operations.
I wanted to drive trains for a long time. I love big machines and I love trains, so when I got a gig as a conductor I was excited. I excelled in the training and devoured everything I could in the CROR and the movements of equipment.
When I hit the yard, there were lost time accidents every day, multiple derailments, and when coming into work one day I was late because an engine hit a 52' trailer and flipped it into another engine at a crossing in the yard, in front of the train masters office.
My shifts were 4-12 hours long, but often I'd have to get a taxi across town after a shift to get my car then drive home and go to sleep, only to get woken up by a phone call giving me two hours notice for my next shift. That shit was bananas.
It was explained to me early on that the work lists that we were given weren't physically possible to do in a safe/perscribed manner. Like, they don't actually give you time to move the train forward, stop it, flip a switch, move back and decouple, so often conductors would call out multiple movements and hustle behind the train to get everything done without stopping. Which lead to some dude getting his legs cut off.
I didn't do that for very long. I loved working on the trains, and I was very good at it, but I quit without another job lined up before qualifying since I didn't want to feel trapped working for cn.
Your safety comes at the expense of our profits.
-owners
Disappointing they've been sent to arbitration. Just a good reminder that the Liberals are not the party for unions/workers.
No party is. Canada was created as a way to extract resources for the ruling class, that has never changed.
Not to take anything away from your derision of the LPC, but they were locked out and the arbitration was to force CN back to the table to sort it out instead of hamstringing the employees.
In case you were wondering why CN and CPKC are fighting so hard against this... It amounts to a rounding error on their balance sheet at the end of the year. They've spent nearly $10 BILLION on stock buybacks since the start of the pandemic.
They could double the number of unionized workers, and it would make practically no difference to their bottom line. They could triple the union's demands, and again, the real-world cost in dollars in negligible, but the real-world improvement in safety and standard of living for the workers would be incredible.
But they won't do it without being forced, because... greed.
Why the hell did we ever privatize train tracks...
The financial titans of the day invested in and built them.
Govt helped by donating land for right of way.
Sometimes they didn't get built and lost money. Cornelius Vanderbilt's New York Central tried to compete with the Pennsylvania at one time, but the route became the PA Turnpike after he abandoned the effort.
They all ran their own passenger service until Amtrak was formed to bail them out.
The NYCentral and Pennsylvania merged and then went bankrupt, there's a book about the fall of the Penn Central.
There have been many failed railroad companies in the US.