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The proposed amendment would confer jurisdiction upon the federal district courts over all such controversies, thereby weakening the existing jurisdiction of the National Railroad Adjustment Board over such controversies, which are known in the railroad industry as "minor disputes."

Section 7 of H.R. 6497 proposes to add a new paragraph (5) to Section 2(a) of the Hours of Service Act. The new paragraph would make it unlawful for a railroad to fail to provide transportation for its employees to available lodging at a designated terminal such that the employees will arrive at the lodging facility within 30 minutes after their release from duty. A designated terminal is statutorily defined as an employee's home and away-from-home terminal. In some circumstances, it is physically impossible to transport an employee to lodging at his home or away-from-home terminal in

30 minutes.

The identity of an employee's home and away-from-home terminal and the employee lodging facilities at each have been and continue to be the subject of collective bargaining. The railroads believe that employee lodging should continue to be handled as part of the collective bargaining process. The purpose of the Hours of Service Act is to promote railroad safety.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the distance of

an employee's lodging from his home or away-from-home terminal

bears the slightest relation to railroad safety. It is strictly a matter of labor relations which should be dealt with under the procedures set forth in the Railway Labor Act. Section of H.R. 6497 amends the FRSA by adding a new Section 213 which protects the reemployment and seniority rights of railroad employees who go to work for the Department of Transportation or the Interstate Commerce Commission. Section 6 of the bill adds a new Section 214 to the FRSA to specify that railroad safety inspectors and railroad safety specialists be classified as not lower than grade GS-12 and grade GS-13 of the General Schedule, respectively. The railroads support both of these provisions. The industry believes that it is to its advantage to attract railroad safety personnel of the highest caliber to the Department of Transportation and Interstate Commerce Commission, and we think that these provisions will help such personnel.

Hazardous Materials and Emergency Response

Within the Association of American Railroads, the Bureau of Explosives is charged with the duty of advancing the railroad industry's superb safety record in the transportation of hazardous materials.

The Bureau operates with a field force of 19 inspectors in the U.S. and Canada, a headquarters' professional staff of 8 and a laboratory staffed with three chemists. The field force

spends most of its time performing safety audit inspections on railroad facilities and at the production and shipping sites of the Bureau's over 500 member plants. During the course of a visit to, for instance, a member plant's tank car loading rack, the Bureau inspector will not only verify compliance with applicable DOT regulations, he or she will meet with the loading rack personnel to explain new regulations and to stress the importance of following the safest possible practices, whether or not codified in the regulations.

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These visits also occur between the Bureau inspectors and railroad employees working in yards, stations, stores departments, and in train and engine service. Because of their special proximity to hazardous materials cars, a special tape/slide show was developed by the Bureau of Explosives Steering Committee for train and engine service employees. program is designed to make it easier (and therefore safer) for operating employees to understand and follow the rules on inspecting, switching, handling, and train placement of cars of dangerous chemicals. Several major railroads used the format and content of the Bureau program to produce their own, in order to meet the unique circumstances whether by reason of

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special carrier rules, yard layout, traffic patterns or geography and climate

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on individual railroads.

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In performing their other major activity, members of the Bureau's force of inspectors assist railroads in the mitigation of damage following derailments. Often the outcome of a discharge of hazardous commodities can be materially affected by the early steps taken to clean it up; sometimes, the safety of the wreck clearing personnel can be greatly enhanced by a proper ordering of the priorities assigned to the rerailing, lading transfer or venting of the cars involved in the derailment. The Bureau personnel on scene at a derailment report to and work through the senior railroad official present. Nearly seventy five years of experience in helping the railroad industry and shippers of hazardous materials has proven the worth of this method of emergency response.

Among the many functions of the Bureau's headquarter's staff is the collection of data on the movements of hazardous materials and on accidents involving them.

Bureau of Explosives data shows that the transportation of dangerous commodities by railroad is not a casual business. A quick overview of the major statistics will demonstrate:

In 1978 the railroads moved about 1.1 million carloads of hazardous materials, 80 percent of those were tank cars

42 percent of the hazardous materials traffic is made up of just five commodities: Liquified petroleum gases, caustic soda, anhydrous ammonia, sulfuric acid, chlorine

The "Top 100" dangerous commodities account for 98

percent of their total traffic

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• About half of the nation's 200,000 and some tankers are not only assigned to specific commodities most tank cars would fall into that category they spend virtually all of their economic lives rolling between the same two points, often on a set time schedule. What these numbers show is that the shippers and the railroads should be intimately familiar with each others' operating needs and have worked out safe practices to accomplish the necessary commerce in dangerous chemicals. That is the fact.

Of the 1.1 million cars of regulated hazardous materials transported in 1978, only 698 were reported to the Bureau as being in any way derailed and only 151 of them lost lading as a result of a derailment. This means that the railroad industry accomplished a derailment/product loss ratio of .014 percent. Another 852 cars were reported to have leaked or splashed some product. These did not all result in an injury, but the railroads are very concerned about "leakers and splashers" because almost always they result from someone at a shippers' loading point failing to secure the fittings or dispatching a car with defective gaskets or seals and because almost

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always it is the railroad employee who is injured as a result of someone else's carelessness.

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