Vol. 81/No. 8 February 27, 2017
Court rules rail workers can strike against
‘one-man crew’
“The nationwide fight over operating crew size is far from over,” said Dennis Pierce, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen president, in a union newsletter. “But this victory helps to ensure that union contracts requiring two crew members are enforceable by the union, even to the point of a strike.”
In September 2013 over 100 BLET members struck the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway. Workers set up picket lines at the railroad’s main terminals in Ohio and Pennsylvania, shutting it down.
Carrier bosses were using management personnel to run trains alone in defiance of the union contract. Under convoluted and anti-labor provisions of the Railway Labor Act, rail workers can’t strike if the bosses commit “minor” violations of their contract. The Wheeling and Lake Erie bosses went to court, saying the one-man crew was a minor issue and the strike was illegal.
The high court said no.
“The court decision gives BLET members some room to organize against other railroad companies that will continue to press for a single operator of a train or run trains with no operator,” said Dan Crocker, a locomotive engineer on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe working out of Lincoln, Nebraska, and president of BLET Division 98.
Rail bosses have been pushing to boost profit rates. Thirty years ago union contracts set the crew size at five. The bosses have whittled away at this, claiming new technologies make it safe to eliminate workers.
The July 6, 2013, derailment of a Montreal, Maine and Atlantic oil train in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, which exploded in flames killing 47 people and destroying the center of the town, brought the dangers of the one-person crew to attention all across North America. Under special dispensation from Transport Canada, the train was crewed by a single person, engineer Tom Harding.
Harding, along with train controller Richard Labrie, has faced a ferocious anti-worker campaign by the rail bosses and Canadian government to blame him instead of the bosses. The rail workers each face 47 frame-up charges for the disaster and a possible life sentence. Their trial is set for September 2017.
“The WLE bankrolled Ed Burkhardt’s failed one-person operation on the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic to the tune of a $25 million loan,” Pierce said when union members went on strike against the U.S. carrier.
Resistance to the one-person crew exploded Sept. 9, 2014, when SMART union members employed by BNSF Railway across the western two-thirds of the U.S. voted by a clear majority to reject the bosses’ proposal to implement it on their freight trains. Workers organized public protests, mobilizing both union members and residents who lived along the BNSF’s tracks.
“Two workers on all trains are needed to protect rail workers’ safety and the general public,” Dan Crocker said.
“Rail workers that operate the trains handle some of the most hazardous materials that exist, including combustible oil and other chemicals,” he said. “As advanced technology is developed to use inside the cab of the engine to operate trains, workers can give less human attention to what is happening outside the cab, to check your train. This is why you need more workers not less to operate a train.”
Joe Swanson contributed to this article.
Related articles:
On the Picket Line
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