CP Rail staffer abandons train against instruction
A locomotive engineer was fired after he improperly parked and then abandoned his train.
Rob Hewitt, a locomotive engineer at the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, was fired after 29 years of service.
Hewitt and his crew departed Smiths Falls, Ont., bound for Toronto. Should they fail to make Toronto’s outer switch limits within 10 hours, the collective agreement dictates that the crew would be relieved.
But if the train did cross that threshold, the crew would be required to yard the train as directed.
The train reached the Toronto yard just after 3 a.m. Hewitt was instructed to yard the train.
Although it was long enough to accommodate the whole train, Hewitt stopped the train short.
The supervisor on duty prompted Hewitt over the radio and then asked him about his non-compliance with the instructions.
When prompted, he told his supervisor he did not follow instruction because he was refusing unsafe work. The employer investigated the incident and Hewitt was fired.
The employer argued that termination was warranted. Hewitt had deliberately refused to follow instructions on yarding his train. He abandoned his train with the result that emergency access routes were blocked and a number of trains were delayed. He then left company property without proper authorization.
The Teamsters union argued that the company had failed to conduct a fair and impartial investigation according to the terms of the collective agreement. The union said that the discipline should be declared null and void.
In his decision, arbitrator Michel Picher disagreed, saying that termination was excessive in view of Hewitt's long service, however, discipline was warranted.
"A review of the facts leaves the clear impression that the grievor was engaged in a degree of game playing when he abandoned his train. While I accept that [Hewitt] and his crew were suffering from fatigue, it appears that in fact the grievor proceeded under the impression that he could unilaterally cease all work after the expiry of 10 hours. I simply cannot agree. The right to refuse unsafe work under the Canada Labour Code is an extremely important employee protection. The invoking of that right involves a commensurate obligation on the part of the employee involved to be clear and methodical in the manner in which a work refusal is undertaken and executed. At a minimum, the employee must make a clear declaration of a refusal and assure himself that the employer well understands that the code is in fact being invoked."
That did not happen in this case, the arbitrator said.
"In the circumstances at hand...they simply did not make a clear and unequivocal declaration to the effect that they were refusing unsafe work under the protections code. Nor is it clear that the grievor and his crew would have been unable to operate their train for a matter of a few more minutes to yard it as instructed rather than leave it in a location which obviously impeded yard operations and the movement of other trains."
In the circumstances, the arbitrator said that Hewitt and the crew should have observed the "work now, grieve later" principle and taken the extra few minutes it would have taken in order to yard the train as ordered.
The arbitrator said that Hewitt seemed more intent on making a statement of principle rather than addressing a legitimate safety hazard. Hewitt's actions exposed him to a very serious level of discipline, Picher said. As such, Hewitt was reinstated on a last chance basis, but was not compensated for lost wages.
Reference: CROA No. 4180. Canadian Pacific Railway Company and Teamsters Canada Railway Conference. Michel G. Picher — arbitrator.
