Canada’s major freight rail companies are fighting moves by the federal transportation regulator to curb “extreme fatigue” among railway engineers, a CBC News investigation has found.
CN Rail, CP and the Railway Association of Canada went on the attack at a “tense and heated” September meeting of industry, union and government representatives, according to a number of people present. The conflict was over research by Transport Canada that found high levels of exhaustion among workers driving freight trains, and proposals by the regulator to impose new limits on scheduling to help reduce their fatigue.
“The body language from industry was, ’You’re not going to push us around’,” said Rob Smith of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, recalling the meeting of the Fatigue Management Working Group, part of the federal government’s Advisory Council on Railway Safety. He said the industry was determined to discredit Transport Canada’s research and thwart the regulator’s proposals.
CBC News obtained internal Transport Canada documents, including meeting minutes and the working group’s draft report that details widespread fatigue among freight engineers and proposes mandatory restrictions on how workers are scheduled. The government report concludes that rail lags behind the airline and trucking industries in dealing with fatigue.
“Industry knows there’s a problem, but doesn’t want to address it,” said the TCRC’s Rob Smith. “They wanted to go back and open this up again and have their own researchers look into it, where they’ve had months and months to do this previously.” The reason, he says, is the “cost.”
Clinton Marquardt, a fatigue specialist who has worked with the Transportation Safety Board (TSB) on 91 accident investigations, most recently the 2013 Lac Megantic disaster in which 47 people were killed by a runaway oil train, says company demands for profit and efficiency have for too long been prioritised at the expense of the welfare of rail workers.
“I think Transport Canada has to step up and play a strong leadership role here and say, ’Enough is enough,’” Marquardt said, adding that it’s time for rail companies to be forced to put their employees’ need for sleep ahead of profits.