Dear editor,
C.B.C. is reporting, C.P. Rail’s C.E.O., Hunter Harrison is having the company train office staff to replace engineers and switch yard workers.
“The company is allowed to use office staff when there is a shortage of professional unionized workers to ensure the trains continue to operate.”
People working as train engineers usually go to school for six months and then spend an extensive period of time under the guidance of an experienced engineer prior to being able to run a train on their own. Now that is all changed? Don’t we have laws in Canada about that?
A lot of Canadians lost their lives in Lac Megantic and the government has spent millions to rebuild the town. These locomotives are immense, the cars stretch for hundred of yards behind the engines. It can take a mile to stop a train. The trains are loaded with oil, poisons, explosives, etc. Now we have a CEO who wants to run those trains with office staff?
In an effort to save Canadian lives I am requesting the federal government look into this immediately. I’d hate for one of those trains to blow up in Montreal, Vancouver, or any place people live. If one of those huge trains run off the tracks and winds up in a river, these goes the fish stock.
E. A. Foster
Comox