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.