Justice for Lac Megantic

July 11, Citizens for a Clean Harbor held a benefit for the Harding Labrie Defense Fund, and raised $135. Thank you to everyone involved!

Donate now to help ensure a vigorous 

and fair legal defense

For background on the case, listen to this radio interview from Your Rights at Work! via Pacifica Radio

Herbert Harris Jr (Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers &
Trainmen) reports on a local fundraiser to support Canadian rail workers being blamed for management’s mistakes in the 2013 Lac Megantic disaster.

Interview begins at 14.40

Our own Donna Albert sang this song for us.

Special thanks go to Fritz Edler of Railroad Workers United, for all his help and insightful discussion via Skype.

The Evidence is in: The Train Crew did not Cause the Lac-Mégantic Tragedy

Music Benefit for Lac-Mégantic Rail Worker Defense a great success!

Over $1700 raised kicking off fund drive for defense of the scapegoated rail workers and fighting for safe rails everywhere.

via The Harding Defense Fund

How many more have to die?

July 6th this year marks four years since a runaway train carrying volatile Bakken crude crashed and burned in the small town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, killing 47 and destroying half the town. It’s time to recommit to making sure tragedies like this don’t happen again. It’s also the right time to speak up against the criminal trial beginning September 11th this year, that unfairly and inaccurately hangs the Lac-Mégantic crash on two railroad workers, Tom Harding and Richard Labrie.

Railroad managers push hard to squeeze every dollar they can out of every train run. The Lac-Mégantic train had a dangerous cargo, overlong train, defective equipment, a single crew-member and work rules that cut the margin of safety down to just about zero. The result was a disaster that still impacts the Lac-Mégantic community.

Multiple government safety investigations and independent journalists looked at what happened in Lac-Mégantic and came to the same conclusion. Railroad management policies made this kind of runaway train crash likely to happen sooner or later. Lax government oversight looked the other way until it did.

You would think that four years later there would be stronger safety regulations on every railroad, with extra layers of protection for dangerous cargo. Sadly, this is not the case. Railroad policymakers are still cutting corners and government regulators are still looking the other way. They want people to believe that the big safety problem is a few careless railroad workers.  But in Lac-Mégantic, SINCE the wreck, the supposedly safely restored wreck curve has now deteriorated and keeps that community at risk.  Everyone there tightens up when a train passes now.

Even after all the reports and exposes, the Canadian and Quebec governments are still not going after the railroad policy makers and their unsafe policies. The managers who made the critical policies will not even get a slap on the wrist. That’s just wrong, and it guarantees that the danger continues. Every year since the crash, the number of reported runaway trains in Canada has increased. That’s a sign of a reckless culture, not the actions of two rail-road workers one night in Quebec.

Whether your main issue is the environment, community safety, rail safety, or worker’s rights, it comes down to stronger government regulations and stronger railroad safety policies, with real community and labor enforcement. The two railroad workers were not the cause of the Lac-Mégantic crash or any of the runaway trains since then. They are not the ones still running trains right through the town of Lac-Mégantic, ignoring the demands of the survivors for a simple rail bypass. The people in Lac-Mégantic know that sending Harding and Labrie to prison won’t address any of their problems with the railroad. But if that happens, you can bet the government will close the book as the official verdict on Lac-Mégantic and railroad management will be standing there with them.

When you hold public commemorations this year, we ask you to make this point your way. Blaming Harding and Labrie for the Lac-Mégantic tragedy weakens all of us and all our causes. So all of us have to speak up.

Donate now to help ensure a vigorous 

and fair legal defense

Justice for Lac-Mégantic requires Dropping the Charges Against Harding & Labrie

see page 2 for more from Lac Megantic

Rail Workers Revolt against Driving Solo- and more

 

LaborNotes  August 12, 2014 / Alexandra Bradbury

“There’s a real rank-and-file rebellion going on right now,” says Jen Wallis, a Seattle switchman-conductor for Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway. “People who’ve never been involved in the union, never went to a union meeting, they are showing up and they’re joining Railroad Workers United in droves.

“People are saying, ‘We have to take action now to stop it. We can’t let our union officers do this to us.’”

What’s all the fuss? On July 16, thousands of railroaders abruptly learned their union officers had held secret negotiations with BNSF, one of the country’s biggest freight carriers, and reached a deal to allow single-person train crews: a safety disaster.

Ballots on the tentative agreement went out in early August, and are due back in early September. If the vote goes up, huge freight trains could rumble through towns across the western U.S. with just an engineer onboard, no conductor...... 

.....“This vote will affect far more people than just the ones that vote on it,” said James Wallace, a BNSF conductor in Lincoln, Nebraska, and RWU co-chair, “because it is going to set a precedent for all freight railroads in the U.S., and potentially endanger the job of every conductor in this country.”

“This vote will affect far more people than just the ones that vote on it,” said James Wallace, a BNSF conductor in Lincoln, Nebraska, and RWU co-chair, “because it is going to set a precedent for all freight railroads in the U.S., and potentially endanger the job of every conductor in this country.” - See more at: http://labornotes.org/2014/08/rail-workers-revolt-against-driving-solo#sthash.OIn0czvy.dpuf

.....read more here

 

DOT Proposes Anticipated Safety Rule for Crude by Rail Transport

8/12/2014 by    King & Spalding

 

On July 23, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and its Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) announced a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to strengthen safety standards for rail transport of crude, ethanol, and other flammable liquids.....

 

.... Along with the proposed rule, DOT also issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on a related recommendation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). [2] In that notice, DOT seeks comment on whether it should expand the regulatory requirement for Oil Spill Response Plans (OSRPs) by lowering the threshold of transported crude oil that triggers the need for a more robust "comprehensive OSRP." A comprehensive OSRP differs from a basic OSRP by requiring a shipper or offeror to have additional training, documentation, coordination, and contracted personnel and resources available to provide emergency response in the event of accidents
.
Under existing rules, most shippers and offerors of crude oil are not required to prepare a comprehensive OSRP because the current threshold limit of 42,000 gallons of crude is measured on a per-package (or per-rail car) basis, and a typical rail car holds roughly 30,000 gallons. DOT proposes to redefine this threshold by aggregating amounts of crude oil transported on a single train. DOT seeks comment on an appropriate new threshold, measured on a per-train basis, and on the costs of such a change. Options under consideration include: 1,000,000 gallons (35 rail cars); 42,000 gallons (1.5 rail cars); 20 carloads; or another threshold..... read more here

 

“There’s a real rank-and-file rebellion going on right now,” says Jen Wallis, a Seattle switchman-conductor for Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway. “People who’ve never been involved in the union, never went to a union meeting, they are showing up and they’re joining Railroad Workers United in droves.
“People are saying, ‘We have to take action now to stop it. We can’t let our union officers do this to us.’”
What’s all the fuss? On July 16, thousands of railroaders abruptly learned their union officers had held secret negotiations with BNSF, one of the country’s biggest freight carriers, and reached a deal to allow single-person train crews: a safety disaster.
Ballots on the tentative agreement went out in early August, and are due back in early September. If the vote goes up, huge freight trains could rumble through towns across the western U.S. with just an engineer onboard, no conductor.
- See more at: http://labornotes.org/2014/08/rail-workers-revolt-against-driving-solo#sthash.OIn0czvy.dpuf

August 12, 2014 / Alexandra Bradbury

August 12, 2014 / Alexandra Bradbury