VIA Rail

[lenaitch]

Are you saying Via has their hands tied? Even for an assault? How do I get a job with Via if that is the case?

All employers "have their hands tied" to varying degrees - it's called labour law (legislation + precedent rulings). It is governed by factors such as the specific workplace and terms of employment, and would depend on all of the particular circumstances, not just what we see on a social media clip, employment history, etc.. If they tried to fire him out of the gate, it would no doubt be appealed. There are a number of alternatives below the nuclear option; suspension, demotion, letter of apology, additional training, counselling and on and on.

As for a class action, that is completely different from the action of an employee. No doubt some 'ambulance chaser' is already on the case. They would have to make a case establishing loss or impairment beyond whatever TC's compensation rules are. The amounts involved likely would keep it in the Small Claims Court realm and I don't know if you can try to certify a class action in that court (I doubt it). This ain't the US.

 

[micheal_can]

When you say “I can see this being”, is this based on any legal precedent which has proceeded to judgment? I don’t want to judge your legal expertise by the many vibes based ideas you have about rural rail transportation.

It is based on how litigious our society has become.Add to it a physical assault and you have the beginnings of most basic lawsuits.

Read the cases. There is certainly a line drawn beyond which workers can be fired. That line just isn't drawn where you want it to be.

More importantly, there is a process of fact finding and proof and representation before anyone makes a firing decision - quite unlike how social media decides things.

- Paul

Good to know that assaulting someone means your career continues unfettered.

All employers "have their hands tied" to varying degrees - it's called labour law (legislation + precedent rulings). It is governed by factors such as the specific workplace and terms of employment, and would depend on all of the particular circumstances, not just what we see on a social media clip, employment history, etc.. If they tried to fire him out of the gate, it would no doubt be appealed. There are a number of alternatives below the nuclear option; suspension, demotion, letter of apology, additional training, counselling and on and on.

As for a class action, that is completely different from the action of an employee. No doubt some 'ambulance chaser' is already on the case. They would have to make a case establishing loss or impairment beyond whatever TC's compensation rules are. The amounts involved likely would keep it in the Small Claims Court realm and I don't know if you can try to certify a class action in that court (I doubt it). This ain't the US.

Iknow labour laws and union contracts exist and are enforceable. I didn't realize they allowed employees to assault customers.

 

[evandyk]

I have some familiarity with this type of issue, and it's pretty unlikely that this guy could be fired for what has been described, unless he has a serious disciplinary record. There are plenty of people who have assaulted other employees, customers, members of the public, and even school students, who have been reinstated. That's labour law in Canada. It's starting to change, though, and arbitrators are finally coming around to the idea that a zero tolerance approach to violence in the workplace actually requires zero tolerance.

 

[micheal_can]

I have some familiarity with this type of issue, and it's pretty unlikely that this guy could be fired for what has been described, unless he has a serious disciplinary record. There are plenty of people who have assaulted other employees, customers, members of the public, and even school students, who have been reinstated. That's labour law in Canada.

I did not realize that was the case. Good thing to learn that I now may need to be ready to defend myself when traveling on Via.

 

[Mihairokov]

The post from a few days ago claiming that service standards had fallen in business class was still on my mind so I timed things out on my business class trip last night.

1730 priority and business pre-boarding
1745 emergency window run through and ticket scan
1748 depart Ottawa
1755 menu selection was confirmed as a Premier perk.
1805 drink cart (Fallowfield)
1855 dinner (Smiths Falls)
1920 dinner cleanup and drink cart (Brockville)
2025 drink cart
~2100 cleanup
~2200 cleanup (Oshawa)

Any time an attendant swings by for cleanup you can request another drink or item if you like. We were also given the snack mix prior to initial drink cart and theobroma chocolates post-dinner. Attendants relocated someone in the car to a different seat for whatever reason. Car was 70% full as there were two business cars (Car 1 & 2) on this trip. WiFi is much improved on the new trainsets but still dips occasionally in spots with poor reception (b/w Brockville & Smiths Falls, b/w Cobourg & Oshawa especially). Did not get up to 160kph on this trip. Arrived on-time at Toronto Union.

Departing Ottawa Tremblay Station

Smiths Falls Station

Meatball, potatoes, veggies dinner. Much better than the ginger beef I had a few weeks ago!

The sun looks softer this time of year. Nice sunset on this trip.

 

[crs1026]

Iknow labour laws and union contracts exist and are enforceable. I didn't realize they allowed employees to assault customers.

Your use of “aasault” is hyperbolic, and again, alleged but not tried or proven. And even if technically valid, this incident involved a very low level of harm.
I would say this case while inappropriate does not amount to anything near what you claim, and I dealt with lots of such cases over the years.

- Paul

 

[Urban Sky]

And even if technically valid, this incident involved a very low level of harm.

Let’s also not forget the extreme circumstances, of which the employee in question was a victim in a similar way as any passengers on board the train, as nobody should have found themselves in such a situation in the first place. I believe we can all agree that the behaviour shown in that video (which I still haven’t watched, as a disclaimer) was unacceptable, but I don’t think that this makes the employee irredeemable, assuming that he freely acknowledges and regrets his mistake and the negative consequences on other passengers and his employer’s reputation. Maybe also keep in mind that he is apparently a Locomotive Engineer and passenger contact thus neither belongs to the core of his duties nor of his training.

I genuinely believe that everything which needed to be said about this unfortunate interaction has already been said, but if some people here really insist on continuing this discussion, I would kindly ask to move it to the “General Railway discussions” thread, as this pertains Canadian labour laws and industry-specific arbitration procedures in a unionized railway environment much more than anything VIA-specific…

 

[evandyk]

I did not realize that was the case. Good thing to learn that I now may need to be ready to defend myself when traveling on Via.

This is the case I always drag out as an example. This guy lit his coworker on fire and was reinstated. A customer had to smother the fire, resulting in burns that needed treating.

Set your co-worker on fire? It may not be cause for dismissal

Employee set fire to co-worker's safety vest as a prank and customer was injured putting it out, but termination was too harsh

www.hrreporter.com

 

[Northern Light]

I genuinely believe that everything which needed to be said about this unfortunate interaction has already been said, but if some people here really insist on continuing this discussion, I would kindly ask to move it to the “General Railway discussions” thread, as this pertains Canadian labour laws and industry-specific arbitration procedures in a unionized railway environment much more than anything VIA-specific…

For the time being, I think the bolded is accurate. In the absence of new 'facts' or any resulting action by VIA that is publicly disclosed, there is no added value in rediscussing the same thing, ad nauseum.

***

I do think the discussion around VIA customer service policies, training and actions does belong in this thread, there is no other intercity passenger service in the country, and while there have been some questions about how certain commuter rail incidents have been handled, the issues are mostly non-comparable.

But...again, we've had this discussion, I think absent new information, its time to move on.

 

[Allandale25]

Ottawa gives Via Rail 30 days to make changes after passengers stranded

Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez has given Via Rail a deadline to make some changes following a train delay that left passengers stranded over the weekend.

www.cp24.com

 

[Urban Sky]

Ottawa gives Via Rail 30 days to make changes after passengers stranded

Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez has given Via Rail a deadline to make some changes following a train delay that left passengers stranded over the weekend.

www.cp24.com

Sure, but will he also provide the funding and mandate to implement the necessary changes? VIA is not Air Canada, he is the minister directly overseeing VIA and he should ask himself why VIA’s emergency response deficiencies which had become painfully obvious during the Christmas 2022 meltdown were apparently allowed to persist and to create very similar outcomes…

 

[reaperexpress]

Ottawa gives Via Rail 30 days to make changes after passengers stranded

Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez has given Via Rail a deadline to make some changes following a train delay that left passengers stranded over the weekend.

www.cp24.com

From the video: "Via claims the area was too remote to bring in shuttle buses".

I beg your unbelievable pardon? The train was only an hour outside Québec City! That's within commuting distance! And it was literally right next to a public road, adjacent to a highway interchange on Autoroute 20! It was pretty much best-case scenario as far as shuttle bus access within the QC-W corridor. If they can't get a shuttle bus to Laurier-Station, then where can they get one??

 

[rbt]

Sure, but will he also provide the funding and mandate to implement the necessary changes?

There's some chance the cost, due to lost future revenue, of these stories in the press is higher than the cost of whatever emergency system they implement. Of course, there's going to be a multi-year period where they absorb the cost of both but non-trivial passenger growth will require going a while without catastrophes.

 

[Urban Sky]

From the video: "Via claims the area was too remote to bring in shuttle buses".

I beg your unbelievable pardon? The train was only an hour outside Québec City! That's within commuting distance! And it was literally right next to a public road, adjacent to a highway interchange on Autoroute 20! It was pretty much best-case scenario as far as shuttle bus access within the QC-W corridor.

I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but maybe when they say “remote” they mean “inaccessible”? When you look at the location where you tracked the train from 11:04 to 13:43, this seems to be quite possible. As for the period where the train was at Laurier-Station, it might have appeared reasonable to believe that towing the train by #24 would solve the situation, thus obviating the need to call for buses…

If they can't get a shuttle bus to Laurier-Station, then where can they get one??

Maybe the problem wasn’t where to send the buses to, but where to get them from? Bus driver shortage is a serious reality in the industry and accepting additional assignments without the necessary time to assess the operational risks on your regular assignments can make any dispatcher reluctant to commit any buses and drivers…

There's some chance the cost, due to lost future revenue, of these stories in the press is higher than the cost of whatever emergency system they implement. Of course, there's going to be a multi-year period where they absorb the cost of both but non-trivial passenger growth will require going a while without catastrophes.

You seem to assume that VIA as a public corporation dependent on government funding has the liberty to spend money at will on whatever it deems to be in its medium-to-long-term interest, as if it was a private company with sufficient backing by its investors. I’m afraid that the reality I saw while working at VIA was fundamentally different from this ideal: I entered VIA believing that CN was its biggest enemy and I left with the realization that that was TC instead…

 

[reaperexpress]

I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but maybe when they say “remote” they mean “inaccessible”? When you look at the location where you tracked the train from 11:04 to 13:43, this seems to be quite possible. As for the period where the train was at Laurier-Station, it might have appeared reasonable to believe that towing the train by #24 would solve the situation, thus obviating the need to call for buses…

Maybe the problem wasn’t where to send the buses to, but where to get them from? Bus driver shortage is a serious reality in the industry and accepting additional assignments without the necessary time to assess the operational risks on your regular assignments can make any dispatcher reluctant to commit any buses and drivers…


You seem to assume that VIA as a public corporation dependent on government funding has the liberty to spend money at will on whatever it deems to be in its medium-to-long-term interest, as if it was a private company with sufficient backing by its investors. I’m afraid that the reality I saw while working at VIA was fundamentally different from this ideal: I entered VIA believing that CN was its biggest enemy and I left with the realization that that was TC instead…

Whether or not they thought they could fix the train or tow it does not affect whether the location is remote. Nor does the availability of buses in Québec.

None of the locations where the train stopped were remote or inaccessible. They were all within walking distance from a public roadway crossing, and the location where it stopped longest was directly alongside a public road.

Just as I want advocates to point to the actual issues I expect Via's communications to do so as well. Claiming that the train was in a remote location is a lie that is presumably intended to deflect blame by making the external factors seem more significant than they actually were. Instead they should be accurately portraying the reasons they didn't send a bus, such as the reasons you described here.