Railroad staffing plan 'backward,' Hare says
Reduction could mean up to 300 lost jobs in Galesburg area
Thursday, August 31, 2006
BY KEVIN SAMPIER
OF THE JOURNAL STAR
"This community has had enough of jobs leaving," said Democratic candidate Phil Hare. He is running against Republican Andrea Zinga for the 17th Congressional District seat held by U.S. Rep. Lane Evans, D-Rock Island. Evans is retiring at the end of his term.
Hare said the country's major railroad companies want to switch from two-person crews to one-person crews to operate their freight trains.
Hare said the move would not only harm local economies but would present a national safety threat, because one person wouldn't be able to monitor an entire train alone.
Hare said one train car of ammonia rigged with explosives could kill about 100,000 people in Chicago, and he added other hazardous materials move by train all the time. He said these trains could be targeted by terrorists and should be watched by more people, not fewer.
"This is priority backwards as far as I'm concerned," Hare said. "I'm more than angry about it."
In addition to safety concerns, Hare said the plan would mean between 200 and 300 lost jobs for the Galesburg area. That would be another blow to the city that suffered economically when Maytag closed its plant.
"I'm really angry that they would even remotely propose this," he said.
Burlington Northern Santa Fe, which has its second-largest train yard in Galesburg, is among the national companies that would reduce staff from two to one person per train if the plan is approved.
However, there are still many steps before it comes to that point.
Bud Linroth, a conductor for BNSF and a legislative representative for the United Transportation Union, attended Hare's news conference.
Linroth said a contract drafted in 1980 requires BNSF to operate with at least two people on board each train until all those people protected under that contract are no longer working.
Several hundred protected people are working in Galesburg, Linroth said.
The National Carriers' Conference Committee represents the railroad companies during contract negotiations and is pushing for the reduction, Linroth said.
BNSF spokesman Steve Forsberg said the focus should be on the committee and its decisions, not the individual railroads.
"BNSF isn't doing anything on its own," Forsberg said. "The individual railroads don't negotiate contracts."
Forsberg disputed Linroth's numbers, saying it is still too early to know if 200 to 300 jobs would be lost.
"They don't know that, we don't know that," he said. "We're not going to speculate."
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Quentin
Have fun with your trains
Mechanical Department "No no that's fine shove that 20 pound set all around the yard... those shoes aren't hell and a half to change..."
The Missabe Road: Safety First
Really the most stupid argument for a good cause. A only one person crew in America is , beside some special cases (commute trains?), not realistic.
But you need to bring forward much better arguments that this one, or it will be counterproductive.
No one can make me believe that a mile long train can be even half efficiently be secured (while standing on some unlit siding or moving slow etc) with less that 20 armed and trained people. It does not need much to place a time bomb on a tank car.
Just think to the ww2 resistence in france/italy/Russia/Jugoslavia. Not even armored cars in front and behind were enought to avoid attacs on trains.
Lets be honest. the only way to avoid that is to give to no 'right minded' people the reason to even try. Our societies are like so, they work on trust, or everything come to a stop..
sebastiano
Murphy Siding wrote: Holy cow! You don't suppose the fact that this man is running a political campaign has any effect on his newfound concern for railroad safety from terrorism, do you?
Of course that's what it is. With the election coming up in November, he suddenly has developed a selective concience based on a topic's appeal to the largest block of voters. Not that one-person train crews are a good idea, but in an effort to call attention to himself he decided to push the magic, attention-getting "terrorism" button while making a statement about preserving jobs, a potentially volatile combination punch -- which surprisingly can have a great effect in heartland cities like Galesburg (which would still be corn and soybean fields if it weren't for the railroads).
Let us also consider that his town is trying to build a multi-million dollar National Railroader's Hall of Fame tourist trap... er, attraction -- and want the nation's railroads to pay for it, natch.
One person crews are the norm in more places than they're not nowadays, and these other places don't have problems.
You will conform to the majority eventually.
Hmmmm... this one-person crew concept begs another question:
Would railroads then cut shipping prices if this happens, or would they keep the extra profits in-house?
There are several reasons to have more than one crew member on a train. First, I think the most important is a derailment or train seperation. Who is gonna walk the train and whose gonna call for help you cant do both, hand held radios rarely can talk to the dispatcher, having someone relay that information is imperative. Or are the railroads gonna issue sat-phones? Unlikely since the railroads have the same disease every other company has. We dont know how to make our product better so why dont we just cut staff till we cant make any product.
Second, will you have to stop the train to copy a mandatory directive. i.e. track warrant, track and time, speed restrictions, crossing warning notiofications. That is really gonna help the velocity of the railroad. I realize that it will come to one man crew someday, but, I want everyone to understand that this is for the company to save money, not for safety, not for efficency, this is simply a money saving concept.
There are many reasons why one man crew should be scrutinized before its implementation, safety is a concern I just think we try to use the topic of the day such as terrorism to justify blocking it, when the answers are sitting there satring at us.
I agree with the thoughts of some others that a one man crew scenario could work provided the following:
1. There absolutely has to be a backup of some kind - video assistance from the home base comes to mind - where constant feedback aids in detecting operational anomolies.
2. Automation should be the primary operational dynamic, with the one man crew acting more as an on board monitor rather than the de facto driver. With automation it is possible for the crew member to take those occassional breaks without having to stop the train.
3. Regardless, the feds should only allow one man operations under scheduled conditions, not call up conditions. Fatigue issues are bad enough with two man crews, thus a separate set of working rules for one man crews to ensure full rest and physical replenishment of the one man crew member.
Hugh Jampton wrote: One person crews are the norm in more places than they're not nowadays, and these other places don't have problems. You will conform to the majority eventually.
I know an Indiana shortline that are running one man crews. They have a rover that comes to trains in distress. But that wouldn't work on a 22,000 mile system! It's more efficiant to have the cornductor to drop off and walk it out, then to wait for some guy to come out. Just think of the train delays.
And before you say the engineer will get off and walk, well that doesn't work either example...(1) I would have to tie the train down. (2) start walking (pray your not on a coal train) (3) found problem-broken knuckle/air hose (4) walk back to the headend (again, I hope this ain't a 133 car coal drag) (5) Get knuckle/air hose w/wrench. (6) walk back to problem car (7) fix problem (8) (I would assume the engines are remote control) couple train back together (9) walk back to head end (10) call dispatcher and request limo because by now your either "hogged out" or your about to!...and I should add so is everyone else!!
....Are the profit margins so close on a mile long freight train that {if possible}, the railroad must eliminate one crew member to make the freight run viable...!! If it is, they better shut the system down and get into some other line of work....
Balancing one and two member crew status against the safe operation of a class one freight train should play over to the use of two bodies on the train.
I'm sure genuine railroaders {on here}, can cite {rear world}, multiple conditions {with today's technology}, why two crew members are superior in the safe and efficient running of such trains.....
Perhaps some day when conditons and technology have changed it will be safe to do such an operation.
Exactly, Modelcar, and as a railfan and enthusiast, I truly fear that one day, the system may indeed be shut down, and the "other line of work" will be the only one that exists. If (or since) technology is advanced to the point where one crew member is enough, how long will it be until/before the technology replaces the one guy? Since profit margins appear to be ever growing in importance (I'm probably revealing my political stripes here, but oh well), how long will it be before, as has been suggested elsewhere on this board, a Maersk or a Hanjin will snap up a US transcontinental RR and, ahem, liquidate the assets? Call me crazy if you like, but it's hardly outside the realm of possibility, is it? I truly hope it is.....
Riprap
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
How many disasters will it take to prove that the Management of Transportation Corporations are cutting the number of employees to below a safe level?
There are no flying robots to monitor loads, make repairs, and check the brake lines. They have not found a way to replace all the employees yet. Nobody is that efficient.
The railroad does not actually run itself after the locomotive engines are started.
Andrew
Watch my videos on-line at https://www.youtube.com/user/AndrewNeilFalconer
To everyone saying "It won't work", "It won't be safe", "It won't be efficient", etc.
One person crews do work, they are safe and they are very efficient. Besides being a very normal thing in other countries, the Indiana Rail Road has operated with one person crews for years. And they operate everything up to, and including, unit coal trains with one person crews.
It's been a very successful operation in its 20 years of existance - turning a decrepit ex-ICG line running south and west from Indianapolis into a raging success. The Indiana recently expanded by acquiring the CP operation between Chicago and Louisville. They aren't exactly a 'short line'.
Now the Indiana doesn't have high traffic density and that mitigates some of the potential drawbacks to one person operation. But given the right set of circumstances, in the right situatiions, one person crews will be just as effective on the UP as they have been on the Indiana.
It seems the unions should be negotiating the conditions and situations where one person crews may be used. They could protect their members by seeing that there were no layoffs due to one person crews, for example. But no. The unions don't even want the issue on the barganing table.
It is a proven fact that one person crews can operate some trains in a safe, efficient manner. For the unions to try to block the idea from even being on the table is a return to the days when they insisted on diesel locomotive "firemen".
I agree with you that the whole idea of a one-person crew is totally stupid and can be extremely dangerous. For example, what if the engineer should have a heart attack or something like that? If this plan goes through, like the railroads want, then there'll be no conductors to help them. Or better yet, what if there's a derailment and the engineer gets killed, who's going to inform their families? This whole idea is full of baloney and I think the railroads, if this plan goes through, will rue that day very much.
Rob Knight
Cuba, MO
1435mm wrote:One-man crews are feasible, practical, and inevitable, for most of the road jobs in North America. S. Hadid
While I agree it is feasible I doubt it is really practical. It has been feasible since they put stokers on steam engines but the challenges of the application would not have been pretty.
Most of the trips I make over the road could certainly be done solo but how lonely and unfulfilling they would turn out to be. I can think of dozens of miles on my route where the rover/utility employee in a pick up is not going to get to my train at all. Then you run into the issue of who is going to train the next generation of employee. The railroads found out about that after they eliminated the fireman's position. Sure, engineers' training programs have been implemented and they turn out qualified engineers but some of the polish has been lost. I listened to a dispatcher a couple of nights ago trying to talk a crew through a set of double crossovers with instructions to handline some of them. In frustration, he finally told them to just sit still and let the signal maintainer come out rather than risk the crew running through the switches. Pretty basic stuff but obviously no real comprehension on the train of what needed to be done.
I am not looking foreward to implementation of one person operation. The railroads will not be nearly as well prepared for it as they promise to be. You always hear from the railroad about how two, three, four or five employees dropped the ball and the accident happened inspite of the full crew. You never hear of the times where the second employee reminded the other of an upcoming event and saved an accident or injury from happening. Since no metal was bent those events are not recorded. Socialogically one person crews will make railroaders even more alienated from the rest of the population than they are now.
Sometimes the implementation of a possible application just does not make much sense but if it will "save" money the railroads will go broke trying to make it work.
....Is the "raging success" of said railroad due to one man crews.....just eliminating one person's benefits in a train crew....?
I'm not a railroader but for the operation of trains I believe people would still feel a bit more comfortable with at least two man crews operating the train passing through...
Management, including railroad management has a bad habit of hitching their cart to a horse and riding that horse into the ground. If eliminating one person on a five person crew, i.e. the fireman, then eliminating another must be a good idea as well. Low and behold, eliminating the fireman saved the railroads some money and improved the bottom line. Eliminating the rear brakeman saved some money and improved the bottom line. So let's eliminate the other brakeman and save some money. But did it improve the bottom line? Likely not, certainly not as much as eliminating the first two jobs. Well, if that did not improve the bottom line as much what did we do wrong? Obviously, based upon past experience, we did not eliminate ENOUGH jobs. So they proceed to eliminate the conductor's job as well since, in their mind, that will improve the bottom line. The will eliminate jobs until it no longer makes any sense and beyond that. The will ride that horse right into the dirt.
Need proof? Look at the railroads in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and into the 1990s. Eliminating "excess" capacity was the horse to profitability. They eliminated "excess" capacity to the point that when business did pick up they could not handle the volume any more. Imagine how much profitability could improve if the railroads were not dogcatching so many trains since all that earlier "excess" capacity had been eliminated. They will do the same with employment levels.
The argument for the one man train crew goes like this:
RRs have impending labor shortage and want to reduce operating costs.
Gov't wants PTS - badly - but won't pay for it.
RR can't afford PTS w/o offesetting savings to generate sufficient ROI.
RRs propose win-win-tie.
Win: Gov't gets added safety from PTS. Saftey from 1 man + PTS > 2 men + no PTS
Win: RRs avoid labor shortage, use some savings to pay for PTS
Tie: RRs offer lifetime employment for all current T&E employees.
Unions reject.
Stay tuned!
P.S. Is "one man crew" oxymoronic?
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
Here's another perspective.
In June 1977 Union Pacific served a Railway Labor Act "Section 6" to the United Transportation Union U.P. Eastern District General Committee to establish crew consist manning levels along the lines of what The Milwaukee Road achieved a year or two earlier. Generally this change involved dropping one brakeman from through freights, work trains, and locals plus eliminating one must-fill yard helper postion from switch engines.
It took the Railroad 7-years to reach the Agreement and another 8-years before it was fully implemented, when, on February 1, 1992, all brakemen were eliminated from through freight operations and the second brakeman/yard helper positions were dropped altogether. But do remember this: the Carrier always has retained the right to fill any job they want, at any time they want, with a "standard crew," e.g., a conductor and two brakemen or a yard foreman/footboard yardmaster and two yard helpers.
Congress passed the Staggers Act in 1980, legislation which largely deregulated freight tariffs but also made cartel pricing sanctioned by the Interstate Commerce Commission illegal. For the first time since the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, the railroads had to compete on price as well as service. It took a while before the railroads fully understood and strategically implemented their newly found pricing incentives, but when they did it led to a downward pricing spiral.
The implementation of sophisticated information technology eliminated the necessity of mindlessly transferring information from one piece of paper to another resulting in the severe downsizing of the clerical ranks. Better roadway machinery, better track maintenance techniques, and better track components - not the least of which was the widespread implementation of welded rail - helped downsize the maintenance of way ranks. And then there was the merger movement of the 1980s and '90s that allowed railroads to combine back office operations for further savings. But as the railroads were able to achieve each of these cost savings, it helped their profitability for only a short while. As multi-year rate contracts expired, the customer would pit the incumbent against his competitor until one said "uncle" and the other got the business - but almost always at a lower tariff! ITEM: From 1980 to the mid-1990s railroad rates rose only 16% in nominal dollar terms, but fell sharply when adjusted for inflation.
So what does this all means in 2006? The Carriers are just doing what they've done since 1977: seek to eliminate what they consider to be a redundant position in order to achieve temporary, but ultimately elusive, gains in profitability. Maybe their aim is to get the RIGHT to operate trains with just one person crews and then go after the technology and regulatory approvals to make such an operation possible.
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