Vol. 80/No. 10 March 14, 2016
Fight against frame-up of rail workers wins support
If convicted, the two United Steelworkers members could face life in prison, as could former Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway train operations manager Jean Demaitre.
As he had done many times, Summers recounts, Harding — the sole crew member under a special government dispensation to protect rail bosses’ profits — parked the train that night in Nantes, up the hill from Lac-Mégantic, and went to town to sleep.
Due to faulty company maintenance, a fire broke out on the engine. The railroad called Harding “about the fire in the train and he said ‘should I go down there?’ They told him no,” Walsh said. “What more could he have done?”
When firefighters put the fire out, they turned the locomotive off, inadvertently allowing the air brakes to bleed out. A company representative untrained on locomotives signed off on the train and they all left. The hand brakes Harding set couldn’t hold the train by themselves, and it rolled down the hill, derailed and exploded.
“Thomas Harding is a guy who is the salt-of-the-earth,” Walsh told the Daily Star. “He comes from a railway town and his father and his uncle both worked on the railways. He has been doing that run for time immemorial. He is not a slacker. But you have got a guy and you wear him down. He has got s***y equipment and s***y conditions and every time anyone threatens to complain they threaten to lay them off.”
Summers reported that a few days after the disaster Montreal, Maine and Atlantic boss Edward Burkhardt visited Lac-Mégantic trying to put the blame on Harding, questioning whether he set enough hand brakes.
Harding is being made a “scapegoat” for the railroad and faces a “show trial,” Walsh said.
Walsh will be speaking at the March 31-April 1 convention of Rail Workers United in Chicago a few days before their next hearing in Lac-Mégantic April 4.
“If you care about railroad safety you must defend Tom Harding,” says the front-page commentary in the latest edition of Highball, the RWU’s paper.
“I am not asking for a change of venue. I am insisting [the trial] takes place in Lac-Mégantic because they have lived through this,” Walsh told the Star. “They have the best moral claim to be the jury. It’s their family and friends who were lost.”
“It’s not the workers who caused this,” Jacques Breton, who works at the Bestar furniture plant in Lac-Mégantic, told the Militant Jan. 27. He is president of Unifor Local 299 and mayor of Nantes.
Many in the area view Harding as a hero. After the explosion he helped area workers uncouple and move tank cars full of crude oil away from the burning fire to prevent further destruction.
Send solidarity messages for the Tom Harding and Richard Labrie defense to their union, USW 1976 / Section locale 1976, 2360 De Lasalle, Suite 202, Montreal, QC H1V 2L1. Email: info@1976usw.ca; copies to: Thomas Walsh, 165 Rue Wellington N. Suite 310, Sherbrooke, QC Canada J1H 5B9. Email: thomaspwalsh@hotmail.com.
In Canada, send contributions to help the legal defense to Syndicat des Métallos, 565, boulevard Crémazie Est, bureau 5100, Montreal, QC H2M 2V8. In the U.S. send checks to Tom Harding Defense Fund, First Niagara Bank, 25 McClellan Drive, Nassau, NY 12123.
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