(The following story by Melissa Mancini appeared at NewsDurhamRegion.com on February 11.)
WHITBY, Ontario — Union officials and local councillors are frustrated a planned workload study of rail traffic controllers has been shelved.
The study was to come out of a Transportation Safety Board of Canada report on the catastrophic January 2004 Whitby derailment that left two women dead when train cars fell from the Garden Street overpass on top of their vehicle. Kathleen Kellachan, of Whitby, and her niece, Christine Harrington, of Keswick, were killed instantly.
The report, released in 2006, outlined a series of events it said resulted in the derailment. Included as a possible cause of the derailment was a heavy workload for rail traffic controllers across the Belleville subdivision at the time leading up to the event.
Transport Canada is not going to commission a workload study because it would be “redundant” when it is already aware workloads are high, said Transport Canada spokeswoman Tina Bouchard. Transport Canada representatives met with representatives from the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference on Jan. 11 and were told about high workloads experienced by rail traffic controllers, Ms. Bouchard said.
“We are developing protocols for addressing peak periods of workload and the resulting stress to operators,” she said.
The new protocols, which would include new training and qualification rules, are being developed as a result of the agency’s knowledge of the high workloads, she said.
But Jim Ruddick, Teamsters Canada Rail Conference chairman, said the study is still necessary.
“They (Transportation Safety Board) thought it was important at the time to conduct the study and for 10 months to follow,” Mr. Ruddick said. “Why, all of sudden, is it no longer a priority?”
The Teamsters group represents about 500 rail traffic controllers with Canadian Pacific Railway, Canadian National and Ottawa Valley Railway.
“Our organization has concerns about the (rail traffic controller) workload,” he said.
Mr. Ruddick wrote a letter expressing his organization’s concern about the cancelled study to Town Council and Whitby-Oshawa MP Jim Flaherty’s office. When the letter was received as information by council on Jan. 28, Councillor Don Mitchell raised a motion to endorse the letter and send it to the appropriate federal office.
Councillor Gerry Emm said a stronger step was needed.
“It is certainly important that we take every effort to ensure they follow through,” he said.
Council voted for staff to prepare a follow-up report on the issue.
Mr. Ruddick said he does not believe having a third party perform a study about workload conditions would be redundant. Rail traffic controllers’ workloads vary, from times when everything is working properly to situations where there are huge snowstorms or other issues, he said.
“A rail traffic controller’s workload is extremely heavy at the best of times,” Mr. Ruddick said. “There is value in a study to get to the root cause of the workload.”