Lu, Ashley, and Levi Maurer

It's Your Life

2:00 p.m. White hot sun and pale sky merge. Too bright to look up. Rail and ties look wiggly in the heat.

Bank thermometer in the town 20 miles back said 108 degrees. Track's hotter.

No trees. No shade. No breeze. Nothing moves.

Humid. Just standing, shirt and pants get soaked in sweat. Breathing feels like sucking wet cement.

Perfect time to tear out and replace a crossing and 800 more feet of rail. Before sundown. Right?

Now's the only track time window we have. Besides, the roadmaster's standing right here. We got to do it. Right?

Ryan King believed he had to do it. So did his crew. He and several of his crew dropped from heatstroke. Because their work ethic told them they had to get the job done. At any cost.

As this goes to press, Ryan King lies comatose in a hospital. His mother and his father, also a maintenance of way worker, have to decide whether to pull the plug on his life support system. Is his current condition the result of work in unsafe conditions? His doctor says only an autopsy will tell for sure. But the railroad's claim agent outraced his family to the hospital.

Remember, you work for a corporation, not a person. In management, safety is a cipher. A profit and loss figure. How much it costs to replace you versus how much it costs to delay a train. The same way the per-sheet value of toilet paper in a railroad privy is measured.

Today roadmasters feel tremendous pressure to cut costs to increase rail profits. Pressure that can cloud their judgment on how and when to do a project.

But doing a job safely may mean not doing it at all. At least not until the weather breaks. Or you can get enough track time. Or the equipment to do it right.

You have to have the brains to see when starting a job isn't safe. And the guts to say no.

Only if you and your union brothers and sisters are smart enough, strong enough, and solid enough to run your work safely yourselves can you hope to keep coming home healthy. Your life is worth more than any job. More than getting the next train through 10 minutes earlier.

Karl Knutsen
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Talking About Contractors:

This is to relate an incident that may be of interest to you.

On the morning of July 28 at about 9:00, B&B gang 735 pulled up at a road crossing at MP-774 on the Amory sub. MP-774 is about 2½ miles north of the Alabama & Gulf Coast Railway. Our driver asked the dispatcher for a T&T permit and was told that there was a train about to enter the BN main from the NS as they interchange just a few yards south of this point.

At this time I saw a backhoe coming from the south hyrailing on the BN main. He came on across the NS and to the crossing where we were. The operator stopped and said, "I'm lost. Can you tell me where I am?" I said "you're on the BN Railway, where are you coming from and who are you?" He said he was put on the track at McMillan on the A&GC and was told to head north until he came upon a crew and to help them change a frog. He said he hadn't seen anybody until he got to us, that he worked for "Golden Railroad Contractor" and had never been on that line before.

I told him that he needed to get his machine off the track, that he had been on BN over 2 miles and a train was approaching. He did as he was asked and after getting directions, headed back toward McMillan by road.

Gene Colburn - Submitted by E. R. Spears
Springfield, Missouri

For one week beginning July 10 and ending July 17, 1999 General Chairman Paul Beard, along with Vice President Henry Wise and Director of Communications Sue Creswell, sustained a "whistle stop tour" of the Nickel Plate-Wheeling & Lake Erie Federation, holding lodge meetings at various locations along the way.

While Brother Beard answered questions and concerns over work rules and grievances, Vice President Wise explained how the national bargaining process works and what the results were of the recent survey taken on the membership's needs for the next round of bargaining. Sue Creswell helped members register to vote and diligently recorded each member's comments that chose to respond.

I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of the members of the Nickel Plate-Wheeling & Lake Erie Federation and myself to express gratitude to Brothers Beard and Wise and Sister Creswell for their dedication to the members and their unfailing effort to educate and promote solidarity among all union members.

I would also like to thank President Mac Fleming and Secretary-Treasurer Bill LaRue because under their leadership the BMWE has become the industry leader through their "hands on" approach--encouraging, informing and involving all members in union activities. Also, I would like to thank the members for taking the time to come out to the meetings and getting involved, especially the members of the T&S 34 and T&S 36 because of their solidarity and the courage it took being there, knowing the heavy hand of the supervisor of the T&S 34 and what they would face the next day. And I would like to thank Brothers Richard Hicks, Jerry Malone and Kevin Petty for organizing the largest meeting in the history of Lodge 1362 at a site in Eaton, Ohio.

Last, but not least, I would like to thank the law firm of Pratt & Tobin, P.C., for without their support this would not have been such a success.

J. J. Bainter
Muncie, Indiana