BY CRAIG HONTS AND BARRY FATLAND
LOS ANGELES - A near gridlock on railroads in Texas and California is causing dislocations throughout the economy of the southwest, as shippers are unable to deliver cargo on time by rail. The crisis stemming from the merger of the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific Railroads last year led the federal Surface Transportation Board (STB) on October 31 to declare a "transportation emergency" from California to Oregon and the Midwest to the Texas Gulf. The list of deaths and injuries from train wrecks is also getting longer as a result.

Problems on the railroad have clogged California ports, stranded grain crops in the Midwest, and closed some Gulf Coast petrochemical plants that are unable to get needed materials. A U.S. Agriculture Department official warned of a potential disaster if Union Pacific doesn't pay more attention to grain shipments in this record harvest year.

In Los Angeles the breakdown in rail service tied up vital sectors of the city's economy November 3, leaving 16 ships backed up in the outer harbor unable to reach the docks to be unloaded. The crisis is even more acute in Texas. The estimated cumulative impact on that state since UP's service problems began is in the range of $300 to $400 million.

The meltdown in service began early this summer, just months after the Union Pacific bought out the rival Southern Pacific Railroad, forming a massive 36,000-mile system with more than 150,000 freight cars. The merged railroad was projected to carry 80 percent of all traffic to and from Mexico and 75 percent of the petrochemical goods produced along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

UP spent $5.4 billion on the buyout. One of the first things the merged railroad did was cut the overall workforce by more than 2,000. The drive to squeeze as much work as possible out of fewer workers lies behind the safety disaster unfolding in Texas.

Growing safety disaster
Nine rail workers have been killed since June 22, as a result of numerous major rail accidents. In the last week of October two major wrecks occurred within 4 days of each other. "What we have on the UP Railroad is a case of the chickens coming home to roost," said James Solomon, a conductor who worked on Houston area railroads for 35 years. He was referring to UP's drive to get the freight over the road at all costs with a disorganized management and a work force stretched to the point of exhaustion.

Rail workers in Houston, who asked that their names not be used, report that UP trains are sitting back to back without moving over vast stretches of track in the state of Texas. Workers told a Militant reporter who visited the Englewood yard November 6 that crews sometimes sit on trains for 12 hours at a stretch without moving, with their relief crew doing the same. Exhaustion develops from being called out to work with as little as eight hours' rest.

On September 10 the Federal Railroad Administration issued a report that stated that the UP Railroad is suffering from a fundamental breakdown in safety procedures, primarily from deficiencies in training, dispatching, and employee fatigue. The FRA Report documents that 75 percent of all crews work the full 12-hour limit, and most crews wait an additional three or four hours to be picked up in a van and returned to their home terminal. One van driver said "she worked 18-20 hour days. She recounted sleeping in her van between calls in truck stops and roadside parks off and on for as many as five days in a row because she was simply too tired to drive home after dropping a crew off .. All but one driver admitted that train crew members periodically drive the crew vans because they were too fatigued to drive safely," the report stated.

The FRA also documented long layovers in terminals away from home, often for as long as 30 - 48 hours. One crew was stuck at a terminal away from home for five days.

Many of the workers in Houston were former employees of the Southern Pacific, where they had won pay and work conditions over the years that were superior to those on the UP and other railroads. Workers said that under the SP they were allowed to take up to 18 hours of undisturbed rest after a trip - a right that is about to be taken away under the terms of the merger. This has created a mood of resistance, with workers looking for ways to push for their rights, refuse to do unsafe work, and take off the time they need to rest.

California rail workers hold sick-out
Other carriers are looking at the crisis on the UP Railroad are trying to take advantage of the situation to get more of the market, especially the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF), UP's main competitor. Facing significant crew shortage problems themselves, the BNSF has combined harassment with limited pay incentives to keep workers continually working. One incentive offered to Los Angeles crews caused a sharp reaction, as Bakersfield crews demanded the bonus as well. After workers staged a sick-out, the company quickly backed down and granted the Bakersfield crews the same incentive as Los Angeles.

When crews in Needles, California, a town on the border with Arizona, heard this they decided to stage their own sick-out to force management to treat all the workers equally. The BNSF immediately threatened to run the trains with management personnel. Union officials said they would seek strike authorization to prevent that. The sick-out proceeded on October 30, with around 70 percent of the workforce not coming in to work. According to one local chairman of the UTU, this amounted to 53 engineers and 30 conductors not coming in to work that day at Needles.

BNSF top management then sought and received an October 31 court injunction from a U.S. district court judge in Fort Worth, Texas, to stop the action. The restraining order says in part, "that BLE and UTU, their officers, agents, employees and members, and all persons acting in concert with them, be and they are hereby temporarily restrained from" participating in any form of sick-out, strike, or work stoppage in California or Arizona or picketing company property or "in any manner interfering with .. any person employed by BNSF from performing his or her work.." The unions were directed to appear in court again on November 12.

The BNSF canceled all pay incentives to remain available to work seven days a week, and instead threatened to send Federal marshals to workers' homes to serve them with the court injunction.

Nearly 150 wives and children of BNSF workers held a rally November 2, protesting the "unreasonably long and potentially hazardous work hours imposed on their husbands," the Bakersfield Californian reported November 5. "According to BLE records, BNSF engineers and conductors for whom Bakersfield is home base are working as many as 273 hours a month, with time off only to sleep... `To get time off they have to call in sick,' said Sherri Sherrer, whose husband is a conductor," the article stated.

According to Steve Benson, chairman of the Bakersfield chapter of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE), during October engineers there worked 12 or more hours a day 28.6 percent of the time, 11 or more hours 42 percent of the time, and 10 or more hours 55 percent of the time.

Interviewed by the Californian, BNSF spokesman Richard Russack "said by telephone from corporate headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, he thinks the issue is simply one of wives wanting to spend more time with their husbands. `This is not a safety issue,' " Russack asserted.

Barry Fatland and Craig Honts are members of the UTU in Los Angeles.  
 
 
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