By Nolan Madden In an effort to promote industry safety, railroad unions across the country are lobbying in support of House Congressional Bill 1763, a proposal to eliminate one-person train crews. In April 2015, The Safe Freight Act (H.R. 1763), introduced by Congressman Don Young (R-Alaska), called for two crew members–one certified locomotive engineer and one certified conductor–on all freight trains. The newly-introduced legislation mirrors its predecessor, H.R. 3040, but has been revised with a new legislation number, as Ellis Laird, who is a legislative representative for SMART, the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, and representative for United Transportation Union Local 113 in Winslow, recently explained to the Holbrook City Council. “We feel this is a very important issue to our communities, for their safety,” said Laird, citing a freight derailment that occurred in a rail town in Quebec, Canada. The disaster happened in the town of Lac-Mégantic, on July 6, 2013, when an unattended 74-car freight train carrying Bakken crude oil rolled down a hillside and derailed downtown, resulting in fire and the explosion of multiple tank cars. According to reports, 42 people were confirmed dead, with five more missing and presumed dead. More than 30 buildings in the town’s center were destroyed, and all but three of the 39 remaining downtown buildings were set to be demolished due to petroleum contamination. Laird said environmental clean-up costs for the accident totaled $7.5 million, with a court-assessed settlement paid by the United States-based Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway (MMA), which owns the railway line passing through Lac-Mégantic, totaling $445 million. Laird also noted the derailment of an Amtrak passenger train in Philadelphia, Pa., in May 2015, which federal authorities said was clocked traveling at 106 mph–more than twice the speed limit–before jumping off its tracks, killing seven people and injuring more than 200. That same month, a crude oil train derailed and caught fire in a rural area of central North Dakota, prompting the evacuation of a nearby town. No injuries were reported. Laird continued, “There was one man operating these trains, and we do not want to see a disaster like this happen in our community. “We get called to work at all types of hours. We work long hours on long trips. We aren’t permitted to listen to music, or to read. When you’re on that train, you’re dedicated to your assignment, and it’s easy to become very tired. “We feel that, for the safety of our communities and our workers, we need to have two men on board,” he said. UTU Local 113 received the Holbrook council’s support of the rail legislation in 2014, and the council again offered its support of the bill by letter last week. Councilwoman Francie Payne, and Councilmen Tim Dixon and C.J. Wischmann voted in support of the letter, while Vice Mayor Wade Carlisle recused himself from the discussion and vote because he is an employee of Burlington Northern Santa Fe. Mayor Bobby Tyler was absent from the meeting due to family obligations. However, Councilman Richard Peterson expressed to the union representatives and fellow council members his opposition to the bill. “Jobs are important, who could be against jobs? But I did read about the accident in Quebec, and it’s really a stretch to say that the accident was due to being operated by a one-man crew,” said the councilman. “Most of it was due to poor policy and maintenance than to a one-man crew; the engineer was actually asleep in a motel while the accident happened. “A conductor would have been a second man on the crew, so you would have had more expertise there. But having more than one person on a crew has never been a federal law. It’s just been a matter of union negotiation for years. “I realize that there are two separate unions, one for conductors and one for engineers. But they negotiated not to have two-member crews. So after this accident in Canada–in a foreign country, before there was even a complete investigation, two months later–House Resolution 3040 was dropped. The investigation was not completed, so it would be hard to say that it was because of a one-man crew.” Peterson referenced the National Transportation Safety Board’s push for GPS-aided Positive Train Control, designed to make freight rail transportation safer by automatically stopping a train before certain types of accidents occur. He continued, “Going to the legislature isn’t going to accomplish the collective bargaining of a federal mandate. One of the problems is that the smaller railroads will have a harder time absorbing the costs of Positive Train Control and also having to maintain a second crewman who isn’t necessarily needed. By the way, the smaller railroads are more likely to be non-union,” he said. “Safety is an amorphous thing… You could take any step and call it safety, such as slowing the trains down. There is a statistic that there are about 1,000 railroad deaths per year. Most of these are because of people being on the tracks in the path of a train, or there is debris on the track, or the cross ties become rotted and cause a derailment. All of these things have nothing to do with a one-man crew. “But I’m sure most of us who own a business would feel put upon if the federal government made it law that you had to have a certain number of employees. He concluded, “It seems to me that, the way to have more jobs–and we all want more jobs–is not to have it regulated by the heavy hand of the government, which has caused the industry to be not competitive.”