CALGARY—Just over a year ago on a CN freight train near Pickering, Ont., an anonymous CN conductor facing an uphill climb in Toronto’s east end with a fatigued crew put his foot down — literally.With VIA trains lined up behind him, the conductor can be heard telling his supervisor, a chief rail traffic controller, that they won’t move the train any further until Transport Canada or his health and safety representative signs off on it. The conductor says the crew has been on-shift for more than 10 hours and warns they’d be handling the train in an unfit condition if forced to continue.“I need you to know that we’re past my rest time here,” the conductor tells his supervisor in the radio calls from Oct. 2018, released by a railway union on Monday. “My engineer is exhausted. I’m exhausted. I told you we were exhausted right from the get-go. We warned you.”Fatigue was one of the major factors behind a recent weeklong strike by 3,200 CN workers represented by the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference. According to fatigue experts and past research, railway crews awake for more than 17 hours can be as impaired as a drunk driver with a .05 blood-alcohol volume. A full 24 hours without rest is closer to .10.Despite warnings from unions, fatigue experts and even a ministerial order from Transport Minister Marc Garneau, workers continue to handle long shifts at all hours of the day or night with no regular schedule, or even the opportunity to nap in the cab. Transport Canada expressed concerns about fatigue in the rail industry shortly before the 2013 Lac-Mégantic rail disaster. Though it wasn’t found to be a cause or contributing factor in that crash, experts say it takes a brutal toll on workers’ bodies. “You can’t recover,” said Joseph De Koninck, professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa’s School of Psychology. “You’re always sleep-deprived.”Rai ...
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