Western Railroad Discussion > Senate Rewrites Hours of Service Law

From UP's Online News for 8/5/08:

Industry News
Senate Passes Bill that Rewrites Hours of Service
August 5, 2008 | 03:00 p.m. CDT

The U.S. Senate has approved the Railroad Safety Enhancement Act, which rewrites hours of service rules and mandates railroads implement Positive Train Control by 2018, reports Trains.com. The House of Representatives passed an equivalent bill last fall.

The bill requires an employee to be off duty for 10 consecutive hours of the past 24 before a railroad can call him or her on duty. The current standard is eight hours, unless the employee worked all of the allotted 12 hours, in which case he or she must have 10 hours off.

The bill also addresses "limbo time," the time an employee is waiting for transportation to arrive or being transported after completing a tour of duty. Railroads are now required to return an employee to an off-duty point by 15 hours after he or she goes on duty. It also prevents railroads from forcing an employee to report for duty if he or she has served 276 hours on duty or on limbo time in a given month.

The bill now goes back to the House, where leaders will reconcile differences between the House and Senate bills. The final bill will then go to the President's desk for a signature or veto.


Yipee! Now I'll only have to work 70 hours a week!-BMT

Does the 10 hours off rule start at the end of "limbo time" once the employee is transported to and reaches the "off duty" point, or does it immediately start when the employee runs out of HOS?

Probably the same as it is now, starts at tie-up, probably still has the hour
and a half call window, maybe 2. So it's still six hours max sleep if you eat,
finally get to sleep and get called.

Rest begins AFTER you have tied up at the final terminal or in a motel inbetween terminals which would be rare except for work trains and some locals. Since you are given between 1 and 2 hours call ahead of reporting to duty, the most rest you might get with a 90 minute call would be 6.5 hours of your 8 hours off. Take the drive home, clean up time, meal perhaps and some decompression from a hard day at work and the HOS 8 hours rest was closer to 5 hours of sack time. This should fix that as well as forcing the crew to tie up at only 11:59 on duty ahead of any limbo time so they will only need 8 hrs off upon tie up. The monthly total is new but think that most jobs work 160 hours per month to be full time jobs. The railroaders will usually far exceed that per month and there is commonly no provision for OT pay for any of those hours. The 276 hour per month figure means 4 work weeks of 69 hours or one or two weeks of even more hours followed by a couple of slack weeks or a lay off period. I have had limbo periods of more than 12 hours after a 12 hr on duty, performing service period. Some RRs have really cut some interesting ways to justify all that time away from home. The railroads will find some sharp pencil methods to minimize the 10 hrs off during the previous 24 hour period as well. The carriers can scream safety first all they want but in actuality they want to minimize in every way the time crews have off the job. One less employee hired trumps two employees with adequate rest between rest EVERY time. These are incremental improvements but are needed.

sfericsf Wrote:
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> Does the 10 hours off rule start at the end of
> "limbo time" once the employee is transported to
> and reaches the "off duty" point, or does it
> immediately start when the employee runs out of
> HOS?

It would start at the employees tie up time (the time they go off duty at home or away terminal). With "Limbo Time", you're still on duty but you are not allowed to do any work (although if you're sitting on a train, you are still in charge of it).-BMT

Now that the feds have gotten into the clash, is it now time for management and the union to formulate a guaranteed work week such as 4 or 5 consecutive 12 hour days with a day off? Certainly there are many variations that are in place. This is 2008, can't there be some common ground....perhaps where fatigued railroaders, civilians, ruined lives all are buried? Enlightened thought seems to work when the human costs are staring one in the face.

mustraline Wrote:
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> Enlightened thought seems to work when the human
> costs are staring one in the face.

Human costs are the employees' problems, those are hard to estimate and cannot be carried on the balance sheet. Labor costs measured in real dollars and cents and carried on a balance sheet are the carriers' only consideration. These must be minimized to make the bottom line look the best. This is why business school students do not take more than the required number of economics classes.

UPNW2-1083 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> Yipee! Now I'll only have to work 70 hours a
> week!-BMT


No, by the revised HOS law you only have to work 69 hours per week...


<g>

~~~

"Railroads are now required to return an employee to an off-duty point by 15 hours after he or she goes on duty."

It will be interesting to see the exceptions and penalties when and if it becomes law.

sphogger

espeeboy Wrote:
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> UPNW2-1083 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> >
> > Yipee! Now I'll only have to work 70 hours a
> > week!-BMT
>
>
> No, by the revised HOS law you only have to work
> 69 hours per week...
>
>
>

Or you could work 79 hours one week and only 59 hours the next week. I wonder if the RRs will find a way to use the carry over hours like some of the cell phone companies are dowing with roll over minutes of talk time. Perhaps the month can be a rolling date with each day going back 30 days to define a "rolling" month instead of each measuring period having a fixed start date which varies with the employee in order to keep the employees all coming up short on the same day and date with their 276 hours. We will have to read more after the conference committee works it over.
>
> ~~~

sphogger Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Railroads are now required to return an employee
> to an off-duty point by 15 hours after he or she
> goes on duty."
>
> It will be interesting to see the exceptions and
> penalties when and if it becomes law.
>
> sphogger
Yes, that's the part of the new rules that I'm most interested in. This may cause absolute havoc if the penalties are steep. Crew often die on the HOS more than three hours from a terminal. Can you imagine all the broken calls that are going to be made now because the DS wasn't quite sure if the train was going to make it or not. The dispatchers are going to be under the gun, because it will be their butts' if a dead crew's ride isn't there in time to bring them back to the terminal in under 15 hours. In the end it may mean shortened crew districts and smaller dispatching territories. Hey Al, can you image Plains being your new home away from home?

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

Do you mean Plains as the terminal like it once was? No, I don't expect any terminal changes from this. Actually, MRL has done an exceptional job of getting crews to the final terminal within 12 hours for the last decade or so. This should be an example to the other railroads that it can be done if it becomes a priority in their operating plan.

I would almost go so far as to say MRL is in compliance with the new law already. It will take application of the reporting requirements to see if that is true. The railroads will scream and gnash teeth over this but compliance should not be any huge leap for them either. They still get to work their employees an average of 69 hrs per week so their productivity should not take a hit in the long run. Any employer who expects more than that from employees is just draconian. Let us not forget the employees who will be saddened to not be able to work more than that in order to reach a standard of living which is actually beyond their means. They will shed crocodile tears as well.

Sure glad us train dispatchers can only work 9 hours max.

Trying to figure out all that hours per month and extra pay would give me a headache.

But then again, they turn most of those claims down, right? <g>

This will never work unless the transportation contract vendors get their act together, supply sufficient manpower and vehicles, and provide their management with a better idea of how things "work," and in most cases, if the city is in central or mountain time!

We (well, most of us...) can dispatch trains to get them somewhere tied down out of the way and get that crew in on 12 hours, but only if we can be assured that the transportation will be there. When the ride is delayed an hour, or never called due to no drivers (and we aren't told), the DS is left holding the bag.

chilli Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> snip
>
> This will never work unless the transportation
> contract vendors get their act together, supply
> sufficient manpower and vehicles, and provide
> their management with a better idea of how things
> "work," and in most cases, if the city is in
> central or mountain time!
>
> We (well, most of us...) can dispatch trains to
> get them somewhere tied down out of the way and
> get that crew in on 12 hours, but only if we can
> be assured that the transportation will be there.
> When the ride is delayed an hour, or never called
> due to no drivers (and we aren't told), the DS is
> left holding the bag.

The transport question is often based on what they pay drivers. If they pay drivers 10 cents over minimum wage, you get what you pay for.

If the railroad decides that the cost of leaving two $40 an hour valued employees on a train for another hour is too high, they'll bump the contract to assure that a driver is waiting at the meeting point. All it takes is a few dollars. If they don't give a $h&*, things will be about what they are now...

Maybe this is why the UPEEE burned the East LA Yermo pool and now burns two crews on all trains east out of LA? At least sitting on the etra board pays for sitting on yer ass !

The "held-away" thing always amazed me, couldn't figure out how to
get you out on a train but for damn sure at 15:59 you were on something
even if it was a deadhead.

Ted: "In the end it may mean shortened crew districts and smaller dispatching territories."

For a while a few years ago they had to have at our off duty point within our 12 statutory hours *period*. It was rather nice for us. It might have increased costs for the railroads but it didn't break any districts. I think that was after a Ninth Circuit decision that was later revised by The Supremes with the new definition of "Limbo" time.

sphogger

Here's a novel concept, just get the DAMNED train over the road within 12 hours! I don't know about some of the other railroads, but the UP runs trains by how much time the crew has to work, which just perpetuates the problem of HOS relief.-BMT

rehunn Wrote:
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> Probably the same as it is now, starts at tie-up,
> probably still has the hour
> and a half call window, maybe 2. So it's still six
> hours max sleep if you eat,
> finally get to sleep and get called.


The Senate version of the bill calls for 10 hours of undistrubed rest, which means the railroad couldn't contact you for any reason until the 10 hours are up.

Yes, I would like to thank all of those that wrote there senators and congressmen. I am so glad that there is now more ways to make less money.