(The following article by Brian Gray was posted on the Toronto Sun website on January 4.)
TORONTO — GO Transit is jeopardizing its safety record by reducing the size of its train crews, the union representing locomotive engineers said yesterday.
As of last Saturday, Canadian National, which supplies engineers under contract to GO, started to implement a change in staffing on board GO commuter trains. Trains used to operate with two engineers along the busy Lakeshore corridor but now, because of a cost-reduction request, there will only be one engineer aboard each train, said GO Transit’s Ed Shea.
Joe Lucifora, local chairman for Teamsters Canada Rail Conference for Toronto South, said cutting 34 positions will endanger GO passengers.
“We’re not going to lose our jobs over this,” said Lucifora, adding engineers serving GO are senior employees with 20-40 years experience and will likely land in CN’s freight service. “But we won’t even be able to go to the bathroom anymore without causing a delay.”
Now, if the lone engineer is incapacitated on the job, there will be no one left to safely pilot the train, Lucifora said, comparing it to sending a commercial airliner into the sky with only one person on board who is capable of flying.
Shea said GO is not concerned the move will cause a safety issue.
“Rail service is federally regulated and Transport Canada has said it is okay for there to be one engineer and CN has agreed,” Shea said.
Lucifora denied any assertions the delays this week were caused by job actions by engineers.
“This is absolutely not a job action, it’s not a work-to-rule,” said Lucifora. “If we did that, we would be subject to discipline and, in my case, possibly jail.”
EQUIPMENT PROBLEMS
The large number of train delays on Tuesday were reduced for yesterday’s morning commute.
There were four interruptions because of equipment problems on the Lakeshore line yesterday and only one because of crewing issues, he said.
CN spokesman Mark Hallman said the crew changes caused minor delays akin to “teething problems.”
“This has been a challenging situation but (yesterday) was better than (Tuesday) and (Tuesday) afternoon was better than (Tuesday) morning,” Hallman said, stressing the changes were made at GO’s request. “We expect things to improve again (today).”