(Bloomberg News circulated the following story by Angela Greiling Keane on September 27.)
NEW YORK — Norfolk Southern Corp., the fourth- largest U.S. railroad, may have to house traveling track workers in hotels, not so-called camp cars, under legislation advancing in the U.S. Congress.
A rail-safety bill that the Senate Commerce Committee approved today would make it harder to put workers in mobile quarters. Camp cars would be banned as part of a measure already approved by the House Transportation Committee.
Norfolk Southern is the last large U.S. carrier using camp cars, once the industry standard for track crews. Other railroads now lodge workers in hotels instead of converted rail cars or travel trailers. Union workers say the movable lodging, housing six to eight employees, sometimes lacks flush toilets.
“This is the only major railroad in the United States that still warehouses its employees in substandard facilities,” said Gary Cox, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Southern System Division, who wants a camp-car ban.
Norfolk Southern, based in Norfolk, Virginia, supports the Senate version of the bill, spokeswoman Susan Terpay said. That legislation would require U.S. rail regulators to write new standards for camp-car living.
The camp-car provision is part of a broader rail safety push in Congress, where Democrats took control of both the House and Senate this year. Lawmakers want stricter rules to curb rail-operator fatigue and caps on so-called limbo time, the period between when workers’ shifts end and when they actually go off duty.
Dueling Videos
Norfolk Southern is lobbying Congress with a camp-car video showing new, four-person units with private bathrooms for each occupant, while the union, a Teamsters affiliate, videotaped workers pointing to sewage outside their quarters and busy railroad tracks nearby.
“These camp cars have been used by railroads for many years, and NS uses them in isolated areas where access to motels and restaurants is limited,” Terpay said.
Terpay said about 800 of Norfolk Southern’s 7,000 track- maintenance employees are in traveling work parties, and of that group, about 530 stay in camp cars. The carrier is spending $1.4 million to refurbish 141 camp cars into the four-person models, she said.
The union says 2,000 to 2,500 employees regularly use camp cars. Improving the housing, a change once sought by workers in talks with the railroad, isn’t enough, the union said.
“You can raise that standard, but you’re still parked between two crossings with a train horn,” said Samuel Alexander, vice chairman of the union’s southern division, who like Cox is a Northern Southern employee on leave.
Norfolk Southern rose 7 cents to $52 at 4:27 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.