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Comment by infecto | Hacker News Reader

Was this crash related to labor safety or mechanical? I got the impression that this might have happened because the conductor was told not to stop until it hit some sort of secondary wheel/axle temperature check, it had already failed one.

Not that I disagree with the busting of the strike but it is important to not conflate the two issues. If the above is true this could be more related to Trumps repeal of ECP brakes.

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They are running on skeleton crews to reduce costs and increased speeds to boost production. If there is no one there to pull the brakes it doesn't matter what kind of brakes they have.

The rail workers have been complaining for years.

There was a conductor though? I am not disagreeing that the labor practices going with rail workers is not right, especially with the ability the federal government has to jump in. Only pointing out that this appears to be a mechanical failure, not a labor safety failure.

The engineer was ordered by dispatch to ignore safety regulations when the warning tripped and did not have the labor protection to tell them no it is unsafe we are stopping and doing a safety inspection.

But he did/does belong to a union? So what are you talking about?

It's complicated. Rail workers are represented by a union but they are also transportation employees and heavily constrained in how and when they are allowed to strike without pulling jail time for disruption of Federal transit.

Rail workers work under a completely different set of labor laws than virtually every other industry. They do not have the same protections, workers compensation or union rules than other industries do.

I’m not an expert on the intricacies of it, but the way a guy explained to me is to he union cannot or will not protect members for safety work stoppages.

As a society, we allow these particular laborers to be forced to labor, even when it is unsafe for them. We are complicit. It will happen to us too, and we will have nobody to complain to.

This is a disingenuous argument. None of what rail workers have requested in their collective negotiations would have prevented this accident.

The engineer was aware of the bearing failure more than 20 miles before the accident site, reported it to management and the railroad’s management ordered him to continue moving. No amount of paid sick days will fix that kind of problem.

You could have 100 staff on every train and it wouldn’t prevent an accident like this one.

You are making exactly the kind of error I was trying to hedge against. If you think the rail workers were not asking for improvements in safety protocols and regulations, you allowed yourself to get duped by the union busters and their evergreen accomplices, corporate news media.

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