ST. LOUIS — Two unions and the nation’s six largest rail carriers are wrangling over new technology in switching yards, reports the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
The unions aren’t protesting the introduction of the technology. They’re squabbling over who gets to hold the remote control. The device, contained in what’s known as a belt pack that includes a shoulder harness, operates a computer onboard a locomotive.
By pushing buttons, the operator can start the locomotive, control its speed, stop the train and sound the horn – all while in the rail yard.
Canadian railroads have used some form of the technology for nearly 10 years. Carriers began introducing remote control in U.S. rail yards in 2002, after the Federal Railway Administration approved its use and set certification guidelines for operators.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers says running locomotives is its job, whether it’s by pushing a button on a remote-control device or by pulling a lever inside the cab. But the United Transportation Union and the railroads negotiated an agreement in 2001 that hands the controls to switchmen or supervisors in the yards. The union and carriers argue that onboard computers have replaced the engineers and that the remote control unit is simply a communications device. Because the switchman gives commands to the engineer while a locomotive is in the yard, the carriers and the UTU contend that operating the remote control falls under jurisdiction of yard employees.
Representatives of the unions and the carriers will meet with an arbitrator Monday in Atlanta to learn the results of a hearing held in November.
Analysts have estimated that the technology might save the industry as much as $250 million a year, mostly through reduced labor costs. It also would mean fewer accidents, they say.
Hundreds of jobs seem at stake, in addition to representing workers who use advanced technology. The issue echoes the jurisdictional fight that was at the heart of a dispute last fall between West Coast port managers and the dockworkers union. The dispute closed those ports for 10 days.
“Why the railroads would choose to de-skill a position and deny people the work they spent a lot of money training them for, I can’t figure it out,” said Don M. Hahs, president of the railroad engineers union.
While the rail companies portray the dispute as a representation matter, the engineers union has raised safety questions in a public-opinion campaign. The union says the equipment is not so sophisticated that it can replace an experienced engineer.
Shreveport and Baton Rouge, La., and Detroit have passed nonbinding resolutions calling for limits on the use of remote technology, especially in areas where a locomotive would cross a public road or would handle rail cars containing hazardous materials.
Such limitations “sound good politically, but in the real world, they’re not an issue,” said John Bromley, a spokesman for Union Pacific Railroad Co., the largest of the six carriers. The others are Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Co., Consolidated Rail Corp. (Conrail), CSX Transportation Inc., Kansas City Southern Railway Co. and Norfolk Southern Railway Co. Norfolk Southern is the only carrier using the technology in the St. Louis area. Union Pacific plans to introduce it here.
Much of the jurisdictional argument is based on labor agreements, arbitrations and court cases. With individual exceptions, workers are not likely to lose their jobs, the carriers say. In fact, the companies are struggling with a national shortage of engineers, caused by a wave of retirements after federal law eased eligibility rules. Most engineers who would lose switching-yard jobs would find road jobs waiting, railroad spokesmen said. Many carriers are promoting, training and hiring to get more engineers to operate trains on the road.
Engineers and conductors are at the top of a progressive career ladder, with entry-level switchmen on the bottom. Engineers start as switchmen and retain their seniority. All switchmen are required to train to become engineers.
Safety first
The companies say the new technology is safer and more efficient. There’s less chance of accidents caused by communication problems because the locomotive operator and the switchman would be the same person. And the same work can be done by fewer people, eliminating one person from two- or three-person crews.
Preliminary data from CSX, one of the rail lines, indicate that reportable and minor accidents have been cut 48 percent in rail yards where remote technology is used, compared with yards operated conventionally, said Gary Sease, a company spokesman. CSX began using the technology in February, and it has installed it at 70 locations. That includes Chicago but not East St. Louis, the railway’s western terminus.
Bromley, of Union Pacific, said his company also has seen a reduction in cargo damage because remote-controlled locomotives go slower when coupling cars, so the contents get less banged about.
Hard data on safety comparisons from an independent source are difficult to find. The carriers argue that the technology has been tested thoroughly in Canada. But the major user there, Canadian National, makes and sells the remote devices.
Furthermore, not all U.S. carriers plan to use all the technology typically found in Canadian rail yards. The difference, the engineers union says, is in technology designed to “protect the point,” the front of a forward-moving train or the back end of a train traveling in reverse. Engineers and yard workers in conventional teams protect the point by looking and listening inside the locomotive cab and on the ground and communicating by radios.
In some yards with remote technology, sensors on the tracks and sometimes on the switches take over some of that function. But while all U.S. carriers seek to reduce the number of people on a switching crew, not all the carriers are replacing those workers with point-protection technology.
Norfolk Southern and CSX use only the remote device and the onboard computer. Union Pacific is the only U.S. carrier, Bromley said, to use a full system of track sensors, additional signaling to alert one train about the proximity of another and video cameras at certain road crossings.
Canadian National pioneered the technology in Canada. But it hasn’t put any of the technology into place in its U.S. yards.
In the carrier’s Canadian operations, spokesman Jack Burke said, the equipment differs in the two kinds of switching yards. In “hump yards,” locomotives push cars to the top of an incline, and workers use gravity on the other side to move the cars through switches and to sort them onto the right tracks. Canadian National uses sensors known as transponders to control speed and to prevent cars and locomotives from overriding a stop. In “flat yards,” locomotive power alone pushes and pulls cars around. There, when a locomotive encounters a corner or a curve that blocks the remote operator’s view, Canadian National workers hop back in the cab and operate the conventional controls, Burke said.
So, the engineers union says, someone still needs to be there to drive the train.
From the arbitration briefs
Sophisticated technology being introduced into U.S. rail yards is “a computerized application of remote locomotive control that eliminates the need for an engineer.”
National Railway Conference, representing the nation’s six largest rail carriers
Characterizing the technology as replacing engineers with computers is “pure hoax. These microprocessors have not assumed the engineer’s judgments, duties or responsibilities necessary to operate the locomotive – all that has been transferred to the remote-control operator.”
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers
The agreement negotiated between the carriers and the union representing switchmen and other rail-yard workers to allow them to operate the remote technology “trumps (the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers’) lame claim of an implied agreement.” United Transportation Union