New Rail Deal May Still Be Doomed Over Scheduling Issues

Aaron Hiles, a locomotive engineer, told his wife he “felt different,” though he couldn’t say exactly how. He made an appointment to see a doctor, his family said. But then his employer, BNSF, one of the largest freight rail carriers in the nation, unexpectedly called him into work.

Failing to show up would invite penalties under a new attendance system BNSF had adopted just a few months earlier, a policy that unions have decried as the strictest in the nation. So Hiles, 51, delayed his doctor’s visit, his family said, and went into work.

A few weeks later, on June 16, Hiles suffered a heart attack and died in an engine room on a BNSF freight train somewhere between Kansas City, Mo., and Fort Madison, Iowa — a tragedy that helped fuel a labor standoff that last week nearly shut down the U.S. economy.

It was the railroads’ cruel attendance policies that almost led to a nationwide rail strike last week before a last-minute tentative agreement was reached with President Biden’s intervention.

And as Hiles’s death showed, the policy isn’t just stressful, it can also be deadly.

“This policy is pretty cruel. Everybody is worried about points,” said Joel Dixon, a BNSF conductor and Hiles’s best friend of more than two decades. “It’s always a question whether Aaron would still be around if he made that doctor’s appointment. Him and I talked every day. We were brothers.”

 “It’s always a question whether Aaron would still be around if he made that doctor’s appointment. Him and I talked every day. We were brothers.”

The rail companies defend their policies arguing that they are “committed to working with employees when ‘extenuating circumstances’ arise but that the points-based policies are necessary to keep the trains running during a challenging worker crunch.

Points-based attendance policies date to 2020, when Union Pacific, one of the country’s largest carriers, rolled out new rules to help ensure staffing during the pandemic. Under these policies, employees are granted a certain number of points, which are deducted when they miss a request to come into work or call out of work unexpectedly. If their point totals fall too low, penalties can apply, up to and including termination.

These are the same companies who argue that the best way to ensure worker safety is to illegally punish them when they get injured on the job.

The railroads didn’t make any friends among workers by telling the Presidential Emergency Board that “The Carriers maintain that capital investment and risk are the reasons for their profits, not any contributions by labor.” and that there’s no reason that higher profits should not lead to higher worker compensation.

A reduction in labor costs and the draconian attendance policies are part an efficiency drive that began in the 1990’s.  Wall Street loved the new efficiency model known as precision scheduled railroading, cutting back on equipment and employees and running rigid, consistent schedules.

And it’s been working, if you’re just measuring by the profits of the rail companies:

The Threat of a Strike May Not Be Over

But the threat of a strike isn’t over. Union members still have to ratify the tentative agreement that their leadership reached with rail management and that may not be a slam dunk.

According to the Washington Post: