Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As of February 19, 2008, I have been the health and safety coordinator of USW, Local 2004, for one year. This company-paid and unionized position represents approximately 3,200 railway maintenance workers across the country. In my role, I act as a liaison between our members and the company in handling issues regarding health and safety, and I sit on the joint health and safety policy committee.
I previously spoke in front of this committee on April 30, 2007. Subsequent to that appearance, my remarks were the subject of numerous critical comments made by senior CN officials toward me and about the future of this position. The suggestion was that it was inappropriate for the health and safety coordinator to speak publicly or to criticize CN's performance. This has been an ongoing theme for the past year.
I believe this position has been proactive in improving the health and safety of the USW members we represent, and it demonstrates the effectiveness of including workers in the safety management system. Conversely, CN risk managers have a tendency to be reactive about safety issues and are generally unavailable to our membership, as they are often asked by the company to operate trains, to the extent that our members do not even consider calling them on health and safety issues.
Our presentation today will be a brief overview of our thoughts on the RSA review. Although the panel did support our view on numerous issues, we do have three areas that we would specifically like to address today: the speed of trains, the hours of work, and the escalation process. I'll end with a few thoughts on the culture of fear and discipline.
Our first point is about the speed of trains and our workers. This issue was first raised at the standing committee one year ago, and later as part of the steelworkers' RSA submission, which you've received. I refer to page 4. We are disappointed that the RSA panel did not address this concern in their review. However, subsequent to an employee's work refusal in March 2007, and based on his concern, a work-clearing procedure agreement was negotiated for employees working on multi-track territory, restricting the speed of trains passing a work site to a maximum of 30 miles per hour if safe clearing areas are not available within flagging limits.
We continue to request that train speed restrictions near workers be included in the Railway Safety Act. It's unfortunate that an issue as important as this, which has been raised for many years at multiple levels, had to fester into a work refusal before there was any movement.
Our second area of concern is hours of work and emergencies. We are pleased that the RSA review recognized the need for improved fatigue management in the railway industry. Although the focus of the panel's recommendations was generally on transportation employees who are operating trains, we feel that similar issues occur among maintenance workers.
In a study published in September 2000 by the British journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, researchers report that sleep deprivation can have the same effects as being drunk. The study found that people who drove after being awake 24 hours were comparable to those with a blood alcohol content of 0.10%, which would be above the legal limit in Ontario. Our concern is that CN has a zero tolerance drug and alcohol policy, but the same policy does not prevent employees from working, driving and operating machinery while completely exhausted, with similar symptoms to someone under the influence of intoxicants.
The concern for us is that our members are sent to derailment sites after an accident to fix and repair a track so that trains can again safely pass. Often, crews are flown in many miles from their own work sites, and work excessive hours at these accident sites, without proper shelter, food, or sanitary facilities. An example can be found on page 7 of our submission, where you will see that on November 24, 2005, a CN train derailed in an isolated area in northern Ontario, approximately 145 kilometres away from Geraldton. To facilitate repairs, 25 maintenance workers—based in Newmarket, Ontario, at the time—were flown on short notice at 8 p.m. to Geraldton, and were then bused three hours, on mostly logging roads, to the accident site. Upon their arrival at 1:30 p.m. the following day, having been on duty for approximately 13 hours, several workers were concerned about their lack of rest and their safety, but a CN official boarded the bus to brief the employees and stated, “I'm not going to accept you not going to work”, and “if you don't [go to work], tell me now and I will lay out the consequences after”.
After the briefing, all employees did work. These men spent 30 hours on duty in their first shift, 16 hours in the next, and had no shelter and no proper personal facilities in mid-winter conditions. They were required to continue working long after the emergency conditions were over so that trains could again be brought to full speed.
We have recommended that USW Local 2004 health and safety reps be present at major derailments to alleviate any similar safety issues on site. We believe that the Canada Labour Code allows for the presence of an employee representative. This recommendation is currently at the policy committee, and we are awaiting the company's response.
Our third issue is the health and safety escalation process. This past year, I've attended many local health and safety committee meetings to evaluate their effectiveness in resolving or escalating health and safety issues. The trend seems to be that management representatives at the local level unilaterally decide what concerns will be documented in the minutes, almost as if they do not want anything escalated to the policy committee.
On the other hand, as a policy committee member, I can also see that the policy committee is disconnected from the grassroots worker. The majority of employees are unaware that a policy committee even exists. In fact until I became a member of the policy committee, I did not know that there was such a thing or what its function was.
The steelworkers are currently educating our membership on this process, and I've seen more issues resolved as a result. Our goal is to create an effective communication system for health and safety that is consistent nationwide.
Finally, I'd like to end on a few thoughts of what we see now as the war on fear and discipline. Common sense is defined as sound practical judgment derived from experience rather than study. Common sense tells us that railway companies should encourage those who work in the field to be proactive in guiding the processes that help build a culture of safety.
The Railway Safety Act review panel would agree with this. An effective safety management system starts from the bottom up, utilizing the experience of front-line workers and embracing their input to develop safer processes. The perception is that CN is discouraging employee input by putting the fear of God into them. If you speak up, you'll be disciplined. If you speak too much, you'll be fired.
We believe that the Railway Safety Act review panel is correct in their assessment that CN is building a culture of fear and discipline. The mindset of the employee is at the point where employees are more fearful of receiving discipline or losing their job than getting injured or worse. This must change.
CN will tell you that the vast majority of accidents are caused by human behaviour. In other words, they believe accidents are the fault of individual bad workers only. This isn't true. If it were, CN would be able to discipline its way to safety, and the culture of fear and discipline would be an effective approach. As we've seen, it's not.
Accidents are the result of the combination of failures in policy, procedure, human action, and equipment. To focus solely on one aspect of cause is counterproductive to accident prevention, as doing so would allow the other aspects of cause to become prevalent without solution.
For the worker, the most effective way to fight the war on fear and discipline is with knowledge. The Canada Labour Code is a bible for health and safety, outlining employer responsibilities and employee rights. It's not a guideline; it's the law. Those whose safety depends on its contents should learn it, and those who must adhere to its law must be held accountable.
A culture of fear and discipline can successfully reduce the likelihood that a worker will call upon their basic rights under the Canada Labour Code. A company can combat a worker's right to know by not providing education or training. They can combat a health and safety committee's right to participate by keeping them in the dark on concerns, accidents, and injuries. They can combat a worker's right to refuse with pre-emptive disciplinary measures.
All of these can be a successful strategy for a company that values statistical data over reality. The thought is that everything must be okay because no one's reporting anything. However, with this panel's findings, the “catch us if you can” attitude is no longer viable.
CN's method of safety has been 100% compliance to their rules 100% of the time. My question is, where do their rules come from? Who develops them? Are employees involved with the rule-making process?
Under CN's five guiding principles, safety is the employee's responsibility. Yet the employee is not involved with the development of the rules that are supposed to protect them. Their only involvement in the rules process is through the employee investigations that occur subsequent to alleged rule non-compliance.
The employees who actually perform the work in the field must have involvement with the rules and processes that are applied. The steelworkers believe that safety is everyone's responsibility, not just one group's. This is common sense.
There's a strong connection between the health and well-being of workers and their work environments. When workers feel valued, respected, and satisfied in their jobs, and work in safe, healthy environments, they're more likely to be more productive and committed to their work. When the workplace is unsafe, stressful, or unhealthy, ultimately both the company and the workers are hurt. Everyone benefits from a safe and healthy workplace.
The objective for creating a safe work environment must be to instill confidence back in the health and safety system. Disciplining targeted workers, either directly or indirectly, for speaking up about safety issues is an action that demonstrate to employees that production is more important than their well-being. Employees are continually told that employee behaviour is a cause of accidents.
The paradox is that the disciplinarians are employees too, and their behaviour in the form of intimidation, bullying, poor decision-making or rule-making can be just as easily blamed for accidents.
We have to change attitudes ubiquitously. Trust, open communication, and commitment to safety are the first steps in instilling employee confidence back into the health and safety system and negating current negative perceptions among employees.
If I may borrow and conclude on this idea from Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense, the long habit of not thinking that this culture of fear and discipline is wrong has given CN Rail the superficial sense that it is right. I suggest in this circumstance that we seek common sense for guidance.
Thank you.
