STACIE HAMEL
Since the 1980s, most freight trains have been
operated by a crew of two - an engineer and a conductor.
That’s one too many, the nation s largest railroads
now say.
Eight railroads, including Union Pacific and BNSF
Railway Co., filed notice with the engineers and conductors unions of their
intent to negotiate one-person crews and to consolidate engineer and conductor
jobs into a single category: transportation employee.
Monday, the railroads requested that a federal
mediator step in, saying negotiations have stalled with the United
Transportation Union, which represents conductors.
The UTU filed suit against the railroads in March in
U.S. District Court in
The agreements require that every train have a
conductor, the UTU says, and the union would discuss one-person crews only if
that one person is a conductor and if safe and reliable technology is available
for computerized trains.
“It may be 10 years off. The technology is not
perfected enough today," said UTU spokesman Frank Wilner.
There’s nothing to wait for, said one railroad
official.
"We ' re ready now " Union Pacific
spokesman John Bromley said. "There are situations where one person could
safely operate a train. "
The railroads don’t agree that pacts negotiated with
the UTU in the ' 80s included a moratorium on reopening the issue of crew size,
Bromley said.
The other railroads are: Alton & Southern
Railway Co.,
The railroads could move to one-person crews without
renegotiating the UTU crew-consist agreements, Wilner said. The agreements
require only that every train have a conductor, not a certain number of
crewmembers.
The union won’t, however, discuss changing the
crew-consist agreement itself.
The UTU is not going to negotiate an end to a
protective agreement that would perhaps permit engineers represented by another
union to take work that is now guaranteed to the UTU."
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen
- now part of the
Teamsters -represents train engineers. A spokesman
for the BLET said no one was immediately available to comment on contract
negotiations.
Bromley said he had no information on how
transportation employee jobs would be divided among engineers and conductors.
Generally, engineers rank higher and have a higher
scale of pay than conductors.
The industry wants to lower labor costs as "it
struggles to fund the enormous infusion of capital needed immediately to
deliver service expected by our customers and to expand capacity," the
railroads' notice to the unions reads.
Current agreements require more employees than are
needed, producing "relentless labor cost inflation, " it continues.
Bromley said crew size would vary depending on the
conditions.
“If we determine that a one-person crew fits
whatever operation, we would do it in a safe manner. We re not saying there
would be one person in all situations. It would depend on what a train is going
to be doing. "
Wilner said the union believes the one-person crew
issue is tied to technology that would allow computerized train operations,
which is at least five to 10 years away, according to industry estimates.
The concept - called positive train control - is to
use sensors and global positioning systems to prevent derailments and other
accidents, even stopping a train remotely, if needed.
Some short-line railroads, Amtrak routes and other
rail uses already have one-person crews in place, Bromley said.
Alerters and restrictive signals long in use in some
situations require an engineer’s response. If there is no response, brakes to
stop a train are applied, he said.
Wilner said the UTU has deep reservations about the
safety of such a change, especially considering the possibility that a train
could be targeted by terrorists.
It is not inconceivable that one person on a crew
could somehow be incapacitated and a train with deadly chemicals be left
alone," Wilner said. "And it's not uncommon for the various
mechanisms that keep a train together to come apart, which would require the
one crew member to go investigate. That could leave no one in the cab of the
locomotive. "
Nonetheless, Wilner said one-person crews are
"highly probable" someday, and the UTU must move to protect its members.
"No union has ever stopped the introduction of
new technology and no union ever will," Wilner said. "As a union, we
would rather explain to our members why we have the work involving this new
technology than why we didn't get the work."
If one-person crews are likely soon, how far off
could unmanned trains be?
Bromley said, "On a freight train, I don t
think that's too likely in the near future."