Evidence of meeting #20 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was employees.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Coordinator, National Health and Safety, National Automobile, Aerospace, Transportation & General Workers of Canada
For us, yes.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Much of your focus is on the culture of fear and discipline. We had heard a lot of that about CN, not as much about CP, but now we're hearing more within CP as well, so that concerns me.
As you know, the Lewis report was just part of a much larger study that this committee is undertaking. We had hearings before that report was released. We'll continue to have hearings on that, and so despite its having, perhaps, some kind of a bias towards the railways, I think it's still a good launch point because most of the recommendations all of you do agree with, at least in part.
Let me drill down a little bit more on the culture of fear and discipline. I've asked this question of CN. I didn't get a satisfactory response, and many members of this committee have been highly critical of CN's performance.
If you had to pick two strategies you would implement to ensure that the culture of fear and discipline is dissipated within the various railways, what would those be? I would ask for just point responses, because my time is short, starting with Mr. Wilson.
Coordinator, National Health and Safety, National Automobile, Aerospace, Transportation & General Workers of Canada
I'm not sure if I understand what you're asking.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
If you had to pick two strategies that would address the issue of the fear and discipline culture within the railways, what would they be?
Coordinator, National Health and Safety, National Automobile, Aerospace, Transportation & General Workers of Canada
One would probably be anonymous reporting. They have a system down in the U.S. It's a pilot project done by the FRA. They have a close-call reporting process down there, by two railways. I think one is the Union Pacific and I think CP has just signed on down there. It's where a third party actually takes the calls. So anybody can call in a near miss, so there's a process that's going on there. We're actually exploring that at CP as well. What we're struggling with, again, is the anonymity of it. So that would probably be the first one.
The second one would be investigations for contributing factors rather than what happens in a lot of cases, I believe more on one railway than others. They get to one fault and they say that's it, whereas in any incident or accident there are contributing factors of five, eight, or ten items that need to be fixed, such that if you took any one of those out, it wouldn't have happened.
So I think that would probably be two items.
Conservative
President, Teamsters Canada Rail Conference - Maintenance of Way Employees Division, Teamsters Canada
I would have to agree with Jim with the close-call reporting. We're working closely with that at CP on the policy committee.
Reporting with amnesty is basically what it is. If you have a close call that could have been an accident but wasn't, you bring it up, you discuss it at workplace health and safety committee meetings. They have it at big safety meetings, so that everybody's aware of what can happen, and you don't get disciplined even if you made an obvious mistake or a rule violation to do so.
The second way, to keep it short, is to place education and involvement over discipline in respect to safety issues. If it's a safety issue, we don't look at discipline as the end-all and be-all of dealing with it. You educate and you involve all the employees into finding solutions to prevent it from happening to someone else.
Coordinator, Health and Safety, Local 2004, United Steelworkers
I would follow up with education and communication.
Following on Mr. Masse's question, with the new hires, we have to get them when they're young. We propose orientation courses. The problem is that we live in a do-now-grieve-later atmosphere with the union, thinking company/union issues, but with safety it's not do now, grieve later. You can't think that way.
Regarding safety, our guys who are hiring on have to know that they have the right to refuse, the right to participate, and the right to know, and that's why we have to get them once they hire on and give them that education right off the bat. The communication is just an effective system, top-bottom, as we were saying, with the policy committee to the grassroots worker.
Chair, British Columbia Legislative Board, United Transportation Union
Okay, well it's an off-the-cuff question, I suppose. It hadn't been thought of before, but a peer review or an experienced counselling of employees might work, which could lead to a just discipline system. By that I mean it may be not a bad idea to assign a new employee or a disciplined employee to an experienced crew.
Chair, British Columbia Legislative Board, United Transportation Union
Just discipline system.
Conservative
National Legislative Director, Teamsters Canada Rail Conference - Local Engineers, Teamsters Canada
I'll be very brief.
For once I think CN has done it right. It has assigned a vice-president to safety. I try to work with the safety management system, and I think this is one area in which there needs to be more focus, and actually that even includes at VIA. At VIA Rail, CN and CP, there hasn't been a focus. I'm not saying we can't do that, but I think with their assigning Paul as a vice-president we can now focus on safety.
I actually would like to see CP do that, although they have their system. But with the SMS, I'd like to see more focus, and perhaps if we had somebody at CP in charge, we could focus. It seems to me when we're working with it as a group--and I have worked with them at CN as a group--it is just to pick out the things and separate them so that we can deal with them. It just seems like too big a global thing, and I think that might be a positive. And I think maybe we should start looking for positives here.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
It is a little bit unfortunate, because I believe SMS has been required for some seven years. The implementation obviously hasn't gone the way it should have, and we've now seen within the airline industry, under Bill C-7, that we've become much more prescriptive in what's required to implement SMS. It's unfortunate, because the railway industry is now going to attract similar legislative and regulatory changes to make sure that implementation happens properly.
I get a general consensus here that you want some kind of non-punitive reporting system, whether it's immunity or whistle-blower, something along those lines, a close-call program, something that all of you would support. It's unfortunately something for which CN didn't really come out with strong support. I asked that question, and they sort of hummed and hawed, and they said it might be nice, but there are problems with it. Is it something you would support?
Chair, British Columbia Legislative Board, United Transportation Union
You want a system in which you're going to learn from your experience and not just simply be removed from your career or your life.
Liberal
John Maloney Liberal Welland, ON
I'd first like to address fatigue management. Is there a maximum number of hours that could be suggested, and what would you base that maximum number of hours on? I know you have long runs and short runs. Is there something that you suggest and the basis on which you--
President, Teamsters Canada Rail Conference - Maintenance of Way Employees Division, Teamsters Canada
Do you mean operating or non-operating?
National Legislative Director, Teamsters Canada Rail Conference - Local Engineers, Teamsters Canada
That's a pretty difficult question. There are a lot of systems built. We keep hearing about the 18 hours, and certainly it is out there. There's no doubt about it, but I think if you took the reality of it, it's not being abused.
Although it's in the mandatory rest rules, the guys can certainly do it. Sometimes it's helpful. For example, if you get a crew that's ordered for six in the morning and you get to the away-from-home terminal at two in the afternoon, that's eight hours in and they've still got ten hours left on their clock. You're going to take them off the train at two o'clock in the afternoon and then put them back on another train at eight or nine o'clock at night. So it can be useful.
They're entitled to book personal rests if they're tired. I had a situation I was dealing with on a railway in which the crew had been set up in a job that was working somewhere about 16 or 17 hours a day on a two- or three-hour basis, and I guess one of the guys got a little fed up and gave me a call. I called the manager of that railway and told him he just couldn't do that. He said it was within the rules. I said no--it's against the spirit of the rules.
We had a disagreement. I called Transport Canada. Transport Canada called me back five minutes later and said the situation....
We're definitely going to look at those mandatory rest rules, but I don't know that we want to get away from the 18 hours. The guys can book personal rest. From my point of view, I don't really think it's abused for the most part. I know it sounds scary as heck, and it's certainly not something you'd want to see crews do all the time. Maybe we're going to have to manage that.
I don't know if that answers your question or not.
Liberal
John Maloney Liberal Welland, ON
One of the briefs had some pretty grim descriptions of your layover facilities. I'm not sure which brief it was--
National Legislative Director, Teamsters Canada Rail Conference - Local Engineers, Teamsters Canada
That was mine.
