Thursday, May 23, 2013

CP Rail spill in Saskatchewan

I was reading an article about the CP Rail oil spill in Saskatchewan and I started to wonder if all the recent cost cutting and layoffs at CP Rail might be to blameShares go up, safety of the Canadian environment now goes down?  I don't know.  But it doesn't SEEM that any of the major media outlets are even considering mentioning the fact. 

A telling quote on one of those links attributed to CEO Hunter Harrison:

“One thing that has marked this past nine months, or year, is change, and if you don’t like change at Canadian Pacific it’s not the place be,” CEO Hunter Harrison said. “We’ve had a lot of change and there’s going to be a lot more.”
Change.  A lot more.  How is this change going to affect you?  I don't work for CP and never have, fortunately.  But perhaps we're going to pay for their under staffing and pushing employees around all the same.  All in the name of shareholder value. 

From the comments page of the same Financial Post article:


"As a CP Employee...Running Trades. WE ARE NOT EMBRACING THE CHANGES. We are worked to exhaustion, we are told safety is paramount, however, the company does NOTHING to ensure the equipment or track is maintained. I work out of Toronto Yard, also known as Agincourt Yard. Its a complete mess, managers are using intimidation and bullying to try to get us to either work faster, or to push us and using our job security as "motivation" to get the job done. Well, when you're too tired to move, you don't get the job done, and you don't get it done safely. I've seen crew after crew get blamed for derailments, that were preventable if the crew wasn't stretched thin, or told to do it if they don't want to get fired.
Hunter, congratulations on making a Canadian Icon, an employer of hellish proportions. I truly, desperately hope you burn in hell. Because not even your millions can help you there.
Sincerely,
961***"
Posted 2 Months ago.  Prophetic perhaps, this anonymous employee 961***.

Will CP be held accountable for this?  Will this accident be seen as something more than just a freak occurrence that has nothing to do with the culture being installed by this current CEO and shareholders?  Or will the stock going down because of this spill push even more layoffs and perhaps end up in more environmental damage, or God forbid, deaths to Canadian citizens.

Makes you wonder.  Kill the Unions, kill the Jobs, for what?  for who?

This is an aside and not really reflecting the above article about CP, but sometimes I wonder if people heading multinational corporations should be tried for treason for selling out the country or bribing politicians.  And politicians taking bribes should have the same done to them.  Because these executives don't seem to actually care about the environment, or people.  No loyalty to the country means we shouldn't allow them to operate here, shouldn't it? 

The way our rule of law and society is centered around who has the most money is going to bite our society in the ass eventually.  Hopefully we get people in charge of our government who can do something about it one day.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The spill was caused by tracks that are a hundred years old and falling apart. They won't tell you that however, they never do anything wrong. The stuff said about the employees being over worked and tired so all true. I am very close to someone who works with CP right now. They never know when they are going to work. They try to rest around what the train line up looks like but because it is such a mess all the time it's impossible. It is very very very common to have people running these trains who have been awake for more than 24 hours. Not safe for anyone. Some of the new 'changes' that have happened have caused everyone to fear for their jobs. They will be told to do something that goes against the safety policy and if they say no they are fired on the spot. Told to go complain to the union. The union is so back logged it can take years for a complaint to get looked at. Management will go down the line firing whoever will not do whatever it is they ask until they find someone willing to do. When something goes wrong, and/or someone gets hurt it is now the employees fault for going againt the safety policy.
I am shocked everyday that they are allowed to get away with the things they do. I hate unions, I don't trust them, however because the govenment can and will send them back to work if they strike, and the union is so full and trying to get through so many complaints, they employees are treated like garbage and are forced to risk their safety as well as everyone else sharing space with these trians. If the company could be punished somehow for how it's being run maybe there would be chages for the better but it seems that as long at this new a-hole is running things the only changes will be the shareholders pocket books getting larger. Funny how people don't talk about him calling the Canadian workers 'snow ni**ers'. I can't think of too many employers who would get away with that either.
I have to be anonymous because if this were linked back to the person I know it could cost them their job. It has happened before and I'm sure it will happen again.