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Vol. 79/No. 12      April 6, 2015

 
Rail workers, community
members discuss safety

 
BY EDGAR FOOTE
AND JACK PARKER  
OLYMPIA, Washington — Rail and oil workers and other unionists, environmentalists and others discussed and debated “The Future of Railroads: Safety, Workers, Community, and Environment” at two West Coast conferences in March. The conferences were called to discuss how to protect workers and the general public from the deadly effects of the bosses’ profit drive, including their campaign to further slash train crews.

Around 110 people attended the March 14 conference in Richmond, California, a center of rail yards and refineries, and some 95 people came together at Evergreen State College here March 21. The conferences were sponsored by Railroad Workers United and the Backbone Campaign.

Railroad Workers United includes union workers from different railroads who joined in the successful fight against the imposition of one-person crews by BNSF Railway last summer.

Backbone Campaign, a group based on Vashon Island in the Puget Sound near Seattle, supports “shifting the economics of rail transport away from heavy fossil fuel commodities.”

Environmental groups, including members of Sunflower Alliance, Sierra Club and 350 Bay Area, came to the conference in Richmond. Members of Land Owners and Citizens for a Safe Community in Longview and Rising Tide joined the Washington gathering.

RWU initiated the conferences last summer after a growing number of oil train derailments, explosions and fires became a concern across North America. Before the Richmond event Ron Kaminkow, general secretary of the RWU, told the Militant that everyone can agree that oil trains, and any trains, need to move safely and securely.

Fight against one-person crew

At the Olympia conference, he recounted how rail workers overwhelmingly voted down the BNSF proposal for one-person crews last fall. Mike Elliott, the legislative spokesperson for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen in Washington state, spoke about how striking refinery workers, organized by the United Steelworkers, were fighting for safety on the job and in surrounding communities, and how railroad engineers were refusing to take oil trains into struck facilities.

“Twenty-five rail workers and 10 refinery workers from Chevron and Tesoro participated in the Richmond conference,” Gifford Hartman, conference organizer, told the Militant March 20. “About a third of the participants were workers on front lines talking to environmentalists and others about issues that are of common concern.”

“The conference brought diverse groups of people together,” J.P. Wright, co-chair of Railroad Workers United and an engineer in Louisville, Kentucky, said in a report he posted on YouTube. “When the oil refinery workers talked about the community coming behind them it was inspiring. RWU received a little bit of criticism working with environmentalists. We were able to educate them about our core issues.

“We know a train traveling behind us at 50 miles per hour does not need to come off the rail. When environmentalists heard about incredible fatigue schedules, how much the jobs had been cut, the inadequate amount of people to inspect the trains, the poorly maintained track and equipment — we won their support.”

“Whenever there is an accident, the railroad companies spend millions on public relations campaigns to come up with new safety slogans rather than addressing the safety issues,” Herb Krohn, a former legislative representative for United Transportation Union Local 1348, now part of SMART, told the Washington conference.

Abby Brockworth of Rising Tide in Seattle said she would be going to trial on charges from her participation in protests against oil trains traveling through populated areas in Everett, Washington.

Unionists fight for safety

“I have worked in logging, construction and the refineries. None of these jobs were safe,” said Steve Garey, president of Steelworkers Local 12-591, on strike against Tesoro in Anacortes, Washington. “Being a union member has given me a chance to make meaningful changes to protect workers safety.”

He said that in 17 years 14 people had died at Tesoro, seven in a 2010 explosion. “The explosion was avoidable, but the company did not take the measures necessary to prevent it from happening. With regards to the hazardous materials that we work with and that are transported by rail, I care as much about the community that can be affected as I do about my union brothers and sisters,” Garey said.

“The biggest thing I am learning about is how unsafe the trains are,” Guy Berliner told the Militant. He works with 15 NOW in Portland, Oregon, fighting for higher wages for fast-food workers. “We need these rail workers to speak out everywhere.”

Justin Hirsch of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 19 in Seattle attended the conference with a half dozen other area longshoremen. “The conference was positive and it was great to see constructive dialogue between labor and the environmentalists, where each side worked hard to see each others’ positions,” he said.

“When the companies say ‘safety’ they mean blame us,” RWU leader Kaminkow told the Olympia conference. “When we say safety, we mean get rid of the hazards. We have to build alliances in the community and we have to replicate these conferences in other cities across the country and in the Midwest.”
 
 
Related articles:
Oil workers still on strike at 3 holdout companies
Bosses, union settle at Shell, Tesoro
Mexican farmworkers strike for better wages, conditions
On the Picket Line
 
 
 
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