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- Rail workers were “floored” by company’s attempt to shift to one man crews.
Say you’ve got this massive freight train hurtling through Washington, maybe passing through downtown Seattle. How many people do you want running that train?
Back in July, Burlington Northern Sante Fe (BNSF), the company that operates trains carrying lots of things through downtown Seattle every week, proposed having one-person crews on many of its trains.
“We are obviously floored by this,” Jen Wallis, a BNSF train conductor, told me at the time. The downsized crews would effectively cut BNSF’s workforce in half and create a massive public safety hazard, she said.
In Quebec last year, a single crew member didn’t properly set the handbrake one evening, according to investigators, allowing a runaway train to speed downhill into Lac-Mégantic and blow up—killing 47 people in the town center. Canada proceeded to ban one-person crews on oil trains.
Today, Wallis is savoring a victory. Seattle was the first place where rail workers organized a picket in front of the meetings where this contract was discussed, she said, “and then it spread like wildfire all over.” With unusually strong turnout for the vote on Wednesday, railworkers with the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers union rejected the one-person-crew contract.
BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas says the company is going to respect their choice.
The company insisted its proposal would not apply to trains carrying oil or hazardous materials. But, Wallis says, “there was nothing in the contract that prohibited that.” The next step, she says, is to push for legislation banning one-person crews.