Thank you, Don.
Good afternoon, and thank you for the invitation.
My name is John Holliday. I've worked on the railway part-time since I was 15 years old and full-time since I was 18 years old. I've been in train service for 26 years. My father worked for the Pacific Great Eastern and the BCR for 32 years and on steam engines for the CPR for two years before that. He died of heart failure when he was 53 years old.
When you work a pool freight or a spare board type of job, it is quite the opposite to a Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 type of shift. You work nights, days, late afternoons, or early mornings, and your biological rhythms get quite confused. Working broken shifts disrupts your eating and sleeping patterns. It's like taking a rest/work schedule, putting it in a blender, and pouring it on a plate. Subsequently, it takes a toll on your health. It affects your brain—and pardon me for my industrial language—and you tend to get moody and bitchy. It affects your digestive system, your stomach, and your intestines. Many rail workers have stomach disorders. I have a small hiatus hernia and bad acid reflux for which I am prescribed medication. But it takes its real toll on your heart. You get heart palpitations. Many railroaders have died of heart failure—not heart attacks, simply heart failure.
Sometimes when the clock strikes high noon, I don't know whether to eat, sleep, have a crap, or wind my watch. I know many of you work in Ottawa and you experience jet lag. Multiply that by ten, divide by three, add a two-hour call, and away you go to work. Then you can get some idea of what we deal with on the railway.
The problem with the federal work/rest rules is that they are not comprehensive enough. Currently CNR would like us to work twelve-hour shifts, six days a week. This is part of the labour strife that we're experiencing today.