Good Morning, so I got several e-mails from Metra today saying that two or three trains were annulled on the UP North Line because of,“man power issues,” what do you think happened and why do some commuters blame the unions? Can someone please explain why this is, thanks.
Happens often. NJT has it happen at least once a month in fact. Guy gets sick at last minute, too late for the two hour call can be a real problem. Heard of cases where the caller forgot to make the call or the assignment. Or change of schedule or whatever confuses crewman. Many reasons, more excuses I am sure. But it happens at all levels.
Freight carriers and I will also assume commuter rail carriers have their manpower bases pared to the bare minimum that is required to sustain ‘normal’ on going operations. Virtually any happening within that manpower base can end up having a affect on operations.
A unexpected death or hospitalization of personnel. A crew being allowed ‘critical incident’ time off account having struck a vehicle or trespasser. Run of the mill ‘missed calls’ and/or last minute mark offs. A crewman being involved in a traffic accident while enroute to work. A crew being taken out of service because of rules violations. Then throw in ‘system failures’ in the crew calling system - person legitmately off but the calling system does not show a vacancy to be filled.
I would expect, with METRA and most all other commuter rail carriers - all the Regular jobs for the Regular personnel are so called ‘Show Up’ jobs - the regular personnel ARE NOT called on a daily basis for the job - they show up at the designated starting time and location. If someone is marked off on one of these jobs and the calling system doesn’t show the vacancy, it is not discovered until the normal person does not report for their assignment - once that vacancy becomes known it will take 1.5 to 2 hours to call and get another person to the work location (IF there is someone available on the extra board). Extra board personnel are the only personnel that get called to fill known vacancies.
With more commuter rail carriers going to non-railroad personnel (Bombardier etc.) to staff their trains - the calling and staffing of these trains is outside the responsibility of the railroads.
BaltACD,you are correct.
Of course, problems like this never happened when there was an assistant engineer (aka: fireman, aka: engineer-in-training).