US, Ideas and Action - On RailCon15: the Future of Railroads By Tom Wetzel

More than 120 people attended the Future of Railroads Conference (RailCon15) in Richmond, 
California, March 14th, organized by Railroad Workers United, with support from local 
environmental groups and others. ---- Ron Kaminkow of Railroad Workers United talked about 
the history of railway worker attempts to build industry wide solidarity and unity, going 
back to the American Railway Union of Gene Debs in the 1890s. These efforts were stymied 
by the persistence of the conservative craft unions. The railroads are able to play one 
craft union off against the other to the detriment of rail workers. Railroad Workers 
United is an effort to build solidarity and unity of the workers across occupations and 
unions. ---- At present operating crews belong to two remaining unions, Brotherhood of 
Locomotive Engineers and United Transportation Union (mostly derived from the former 
Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen). BLE is now affiliated to the Teamsters union and UTU 
recently merged with the Sheet Metal Workers union to form SMART.

When the UTU recently signed a concessionary agreement with Burlington Northern-Santa Fe 
(BNSF) in one of its regions, this would have allowed BNSF (owned by Warren Buffett’s 
venture capital firm, Berkshire Hathaway) to go to one-person crews. This would have iced 
out the engineers union, stabbing them in the back. The RWU organized a “Vote No” campaign 
among conductors, brakepersons and other UTU members which soundly defeated this 
destructive proposal by seven to one.

The move from four or five person crews in the 1980s to the two-person crew of today was 
also brought about by the same type of railroad management strategy of getting one union 
to sell out the other.

One major focus at the conference was on the railroad industry push for converting to 
one-person crews for over-the-road freight trains. This would mean the engineer would be 
all by himself on a mile-long train hauling perhaps 17,000 tons.

A number of railroad workers explained exactly how destructive this would be. Collisions 
with vehicles at crossings occur all the time. Last year 900 people in the USA died in 
grade crossing accidents. At present the second person on the train can deal with the 
situation on the ground and summon emergency responders while the engineer deals with the 
train and reporting to the dispatcher, which is the first requirement under their rules. 
Without the second crew person, it would be harder to respond to the emergency.

With engineers often on-call 24/7, long hours and unstable shifts lead to problems of 
fatigue which make for a more dangerous situation. Having a second person in the engine 
helps to keep the engineer awake and alert.

Railroads also have very complicated rule books. As a former engineer explained, it’s all 
designed so that the railroads can say “It’s your fault” if an accident happens. This in 
turn helps to ramp up the stress that workers are under.

All of this reflects the fact that the railroads are not designed to be run in a safe way, 
but to make profits for the owners.

Another issue discussed was the problem of excessive train length. As a former rail worker 
explained, this leads to huge forces on the couplers that link the cars, which makes 
trains more vulnerable. Shorter trains would be safer…but require more crews. Companies 
oppose this because it would raise their labor costs.

There was also a contingent of oil refinery workers involved in the current oil refinery 
strike. A worker from the former ARCO refinery in Los Angeles talked about how safety is 
the most important issue for refinery workers. The unionized refinery workers currently 
have a rule where they can shut down a maintenance process if they believe it is not safe. 
But the oil companies would prefer workers to not have the right to stop the job. He 
discussed the recent explosion in Torrance and pointed out that, despite Exxon’s 
re-assurances, in fact the explosion dumped highly toxic chemicals over the surrounding 
neighborhoods.

To make a point about this, the refinery workers had a load of horseshit dumped in front 
of the door of the local Exxon headquarters.

The Empire Logistics study group from San Francisco discussed the way that workers are 
linked around the world through the movement of goods along the supply chains. To get 
people thinking about this, each table in the conference was asked to look at how, if they 
were oil refinery workers, they might look at the supply chain to their refinery to gain 
solidarity. I was sitting at a table with refinery workers. At the refineries in Los 
Angeles, the oil typically arrives through pipelines from tankers that unload at the 
harbor. Gasoline is typically distributed by trucks, but other refined products are 
shipped by rail. An engineer who is a member of RWU explained how the Railway Labor Act 
does not ban “hot cargo” — the act of workers refusing to handle struck goods. So he was 
explaining how refinery workers could picket the train crew to not pick up or deliver cars 
to the refinery. This would mean positioning the pickets at the point where the private 
spur of the refinery meets the railway line.

A large portion of the conference was devoted to speakers from environmental groups and a 
discussion of issues like a “just transition” away from fossil fuels in a way that would 
take account of the needs of workers, and disadvantaged communities. At my table A member 
of the IWW talked about worker control as something to fight for. A retired refinery 
worker responded by saying that he was always told by management “You have no right to 
have a say over how we run things.” He expressed the view that a just transition is not 
likely without seizing the assets of the industry…a switch to socialism.

Andres Soto from Communities for a Better Environment in Contra Costa County (location of 
numerous oil refineries) gave a good explanation of how the state bureaucracy, in the form 
of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, acts to simply provide cover for the 
toxic pollution of the petroleum industry. The courts also play a role. Thus the air 
quality district did not give public notice of a new railroad oil terminal and the enviro 
groups sued when they found out. But the judge tossed out their suit because state law 
says there is only a 180 day statute of limitations. If you don’t uncover hidden 
machinations within that time, you’re out of luck in the legal framework.

After the speaker from CBE a man from United Native Americans (a member of the Lakota 
tribe) gave a talk in which he talked a little bit about the basis for an indigenous and 
union alliance, from an indigenous person’s viewpoint.

Since I’ve been an advocate for railroad mainline electrification, I was glad to see a 
discussion of this proposal, and its environmental and economic advantages. The basic idea 
is that electricity can be generated without fossil fuels, using renewables. Even as it is 
today, a ton of freight hauled by rail uses less energy than a ton of freight hauled the 
same distance by truck. If the railway mainlines were electrified…as they are in Europe, 
Russia, China…a ton of freight shipped by rail would use only five percent of the energy 
it takes to move freight on diesel trucks. If electricity is generated through renewables, 
this would mean a big drop in the carbon footprint of freight transport.

The particular vision proposed would have grade separated high-speed electrified railway 
mainlines, making them safer, more efficient and less polluting.

If this kind of electrified, high speed, low-carbon railway arrangement were done in the 
context of a socialized and worker-managed railway, we can see what it could do. But I’m 
skeptical of this happening any time soon in capitalist USA.

RailCon15 was a step towards bringing different groups of workers and environmentalists 
together to encourage future solidarity activities.

http://ideasandaction.info/2015/03/future-railroads/