Culture of fear rules safety at CN

Railway takes ‘blame and punish’ route to safety management: Union

A culture of discipline and fear is at the heart of safety problems at Canadian National (CN), and improving safety records would require a cultural shift at the Montreal-based railway, a government panel report said recently.

“CN’s strict adherence to a rules-based approach, focused largely on disciplinary actions when mistakes are made, has instilled a ‘culture of fear and discipline’ and is counter to an effective safety management system. CN needs to acknowledge this openly and take concrete steps to improve,” stated the advisory panel, created by the federal minister of transportation in February 2007 to review railway safety.

The transport minister ordered the review following a five-year period that saw rail collisions and derailments on a steep increase. Among them were serious main-track derailments, including an August 2005 derailment that spilled 1.3 million litres of heavy bunker fuel oil into Wabamun Lake in Alberta; a June 2006 derailment at Lillooet, B.C., that killed two crew members; and a January 2007 derailment at Montmagny, Que., that nearly knocked over a train station. All involved CN trains.

Both the panel report and a parliamentary committee reviewing it raised concerns about a safety management system (SMS) introduced in 2001 that gave the railway companies more responsibility over safety. The goal of SMS was to move away from a compliance approach and toward a proactive approach in which companies assess and mitigate risks on their own initiative.

To work properly, SMS needs employee involvement. Employees at the front line are often the best sources for identifying hazards and for reporting incidents or near misses.

But in the nearly seven years the system has been in place, employees were largely unaware of the system.

“The fact that employees who were at the front line of implementing SMS had, in many cases, very limited knowledge of SMS and what their role in this system was, makes it inconceivable how SMS can be successfully implemented,” said the parliamentary committee.

A safety system that’s based on a company’s ability to identify risks and take corrective action has to rely on good communication and information sharing at all levels in the organization, noted the panel report. It cited passenger rail company Via Rail as having such a culture. Via’s implementation of SMS is successful because the company makes safety management important to all employees. While there are certain cardinal rules that lead to disciplinary action if broken, Via also has processes to build openness and trust between managers and employees.

“For instance, employees are observed at regular cycles, and corrective coaching takes place immediately when errors are observed,” the panel report noted.

In contrast, CN manages safety through an “antecedent, behaviour and consequences” process, which the panel said is based on a traditional rule and discipline model. It quoted United Transportation Union leader Sylvia Leblanc’s description of CN’s attitude towards safety as one that “seems to be ‘blame and punish’ instead of ‘educate and correct.’

“Frequently, employees involved in accidents… are simply blamed for errors without followup or root cause investigation. They are then punished without any other corrective action taken on the part of the railway to prevent reoccurrences.”

A management culture that relies on discipline, or threat of discipline, to enforce rules has “a tendency to instil fear, and to stifle employee participation and reporting,” the panel report stated. “A significant mistrust of management develops. People stop communicating — and that can have a detrimental impact on safety.”

However, the lack of a safety culture was not the only culprit named for the safety records of the rail industry. The parliamentary committee also placed the blame on the regulator, Transport Canada, for not being accountable enough in enforcing safety regulations, harmonizing regulations across the regions and conducting safety audits in a timely manner. CN did not reply to an interview request by Canadian HR Reporter.

While the Canadian Auto Workers union, which represents 1,800 shopcraft workers at CN and 2,100 shopcraft workers at CP Rail, criticized both the advisory panel and the parliamentary committee for their silence on maintenance issues, the union agreed with the finding of a fearful culture at CN.

A culture change was clearly underway after CN, then a newly privatized company, purchased Illinois Central Railway in 1998 and brought the latter management team into its fold, said Bryon Debaets, president of CAW Local 100, which represents 1,200 shopcraft workers at CN.

“That brought an American attitude in terms of how things are done,” said Debaets, adding that employees felt the culture change most markedly after 2003 when Paul Tellier left his CEO post and was replaced by the former president of Illinois Central.

The day-to-day treatment of employees became such an issue that when union negotiators took a tentative agreement to its members in 2004, the workers voted it down, resulting in a 29-day strike.

“The hostility toward the treatment going on at the workplace was such that we ended up with a good contract getting defeated. So that was a strike that was literally called by the members because of the treatment,” said Debaets. “That was when we went back to CN and said, ‘You have to revisit your human resources system and the way you’re dealing with employees.’”

At the Teamsters Canada Railway Conference, national legislative director Mike Wheten agreed that the purchase of Illinois Central ushered in a different way of managing employees. The Teamsters represents locomotive engineers at all three major rail companies, as well as trainmen, yardmen and yardmasters at Calgary-based Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR).

To illustrate the stark difference in management culture, Wheten pointed to the workload of the union’s general chairman in Western Canada, who looks after the collective agreements for the region. At any given time, he would handle about 50 to 75 grievances at CPR West. The grievances at CN West, which comprises a similar sized workforce, number more than 2,000 most of the time, said Wheten.

“At CPR, if you do something wrong, you’re not necessarily disciplined for it, depending on the infraction. A supervisor may discuss the matter with you verbally and point out your mistakes. In a similar circumstance at CN they will probably bring you in for an investigation.”

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