(The following story by Karisa King appeared on the San Antonio Express-News website on April 28.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal law that requires railroad companies to relieve workers for at least eight hours between shifts fails to guarantee that crews get enough rest, rail union officials said Wednesday.
Case in point: A Union Pacific engineer who was at the controls last year during the deadly derailment of a chlorine tanker south of San Antonio had maintained an erratic work schedule for months. Yet his schedule fit within the bounds of the law.
“The reality is that they’re totally understaffed,” said John Tolman, legislative director for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. “They don’t care how much you work.”
As a federal probe into the cause of the crash focuses on the possible failure of the crew, the exhausting schedule that engineer Art Cadena kept has brought scrutiny to the way Union Pacific guards against fatigue.
Railroad officials at a National Transportation Safety Board hearing this week have faced questions about how crewmen can take time off if they feel too tired to work. But their answers often conflict with what union leaders and Cadena described as the unforgiving demands of the job.
Although the law provides at least an eight-hour break between hauls, Union Pacific routinely calls crew members two hours before a shift starts. That means that if an engineer leaves work at midnight, the railroad can call him back at 6 a.m. with instructions to return to the post at 8 a.m.
The time it takes to drive home, eat and unwind before bed also cuts into the eight hours.
Before Cadena reported for duty the morning of the June 28 crash, he had been off the clock for more than 13 hours, and the conductor, Heath Pape, who died from the chlorine fumes released from a punctured tanker, had been off for 25 hours.
A review of the crash by the Federal Railroad Administration found that Union Pacific had not violated the law. And as long as crews have the required time off between shifts, the FRA plays no role in how companies manage fatigue.
In the 10 days before the crash, Cadena worked eight shifts, which included part of each day in that time frame. And it was nothing unusual. In the previous six months before the wreck, Cadena worked an average of 22 out of 30 days.
“You’re allowed personal days off, but a lot of times when you ask for them, you’re denied,” said Cadena, who was fired for his role in the derailment and chlorine release, which killed three people.
After five years at the railroad, Cadena had earned two weeks of vacation every year and two days of personal leave.
NTSB investigators, who expect to release their findings in six months, are particularly interested in how the railroad handles workers who feel they’re too tired to manage a train.
The railroad doesn’t track how often crews ask for time off because of fatigue. Instead, anyone who claims that as a reason for skipping a shift is counted as sick, Union Pacific officials testified.
“We seem to be getting the impression that the safest thing a tired person could do would be to claim they were sick,” NTSB investigator Vernon Elingstad said.
Tolman, the union leader, said workers face tough consequences if they take that approach. Without a doctor’s note, Union Pacific counts the absence as unexcused.
But Kathryn Blackwell, a company spokeswoman, said workers can ask managers to excuse the absence, no doctor’s note required.
Tolman disputed that workers have that choice.
“You can’t call up and tell them you’re too tired to go to work,” he said. “They will tell you that you either have to mark off sick or you can’t have it off.”