(The following article by Gregory Richards was posted on the Virginian-Pilot website on February 16.)
NORFOLK, Va. — To reduce train accidents, the federal agency overseeing railroad safety wants new authority to regulate railroad workers’ schedules, particularly the amount of time train crews rest between shifts.
The Federal Railroad Administration wants to replace the 100-year-old laws governing train crews’ work time and replace them with modern, scientifically based regulations, under a rail safety reauthorization bill submitted this week to Congress. Fatigue has been cited as a cause of several major train accidents.
“Rail employees need work schedules that reduce fatigue and promote safety,” Joseph H. Boardman, the agency’s administrator, said in a statement.
He proposes to replace current laws with new regulations jointly developed by his agency, railroad companies and labor unions.
The railroads are “amenable to a thorough review” of the existing legislation, said Tom White, spokesman for the Association of American Railroads, which has members including Norfolk-based Norfolk Southern Corp.
Under the industry’s hours of service laws, train crews and signal workers can work 12 hours straight with 10 hours of rest. But if train employees work one minute less than 12 hours, the law only mandates eight hours of rest.
James Brunkenhoefer, national legislative director for the United Transportation Union, which represents about 45,000 train workers, said he is “ecstatic” that the government is addressing fatigue.
But he said his union is worried that repealing the current laws will leave railroad workers without work limits and guaranteed rest. If the new law doesn’t have limitations in it, he said, presidential administrations that aren’t “worker-friendly” could either reduce the hours of rest or increase the hours of work, he said.
“We want to make sure that we keep the minimum safeguards today,” said Brunkenhoefer, who said he believes that issue can be worked out.
Brunkenhoefer said he prefers adding new standards to the existing rules.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board, fatigue has been a probable cause of 16 major train accidents – some involving fatalities – during the past 23 years.
The rail safety reauthorization bill, which would cover through 2011 if approved this year, is now before congressional committees, said railroad administration spokesman Warren Flatau.
Brunkenhoefer said the federal government has previously tried to reduce railroad worker fatigue, most recently in the early 1990s, but those measures failed. He has more confidence this time that changes will take hold, owing to increased public pressure and more research on the effects of fatigue.
“We have found no studies that say ‘Don’t change it,’ “ he said, “and there’s a library full of studies that say it needs to be changed.”