The status of fatigue in the Canadian freight rail sector

The majority of on call freight rail crews in Canada can be called for work at any time (day or night) and there are no limits on this, unless they have booked additional time off (“booked rest”) as per their collective... [ view full abstract ]

The majority of on call freight rail crews in Canada can be called for work at any time (day or night) and there are no limits on this, unless they have booked additional time off (“booked rest”) as per their collective agreements or are under mandatory rest as per the federal work rest rules.

This leads to chaotic and often unpredictable schedules. An analysis of two studies will be presented to give a picture of the status of fatigue in the Canadian freight rail sector. In order to evaluate the theoretical fatigue levels of employees, schedule data from 500 workers at 6 different rail terminals at two different companies were analysed using the FAST fatigue analysis software. The results show that employees are fatigued (77.5% effectiveness) before the conclusion of their shift approximately 40% of the time, and nearly every employee in the sample was fatigued at work at least once during the month of analysed data. This data triangulates with the results of a voluntary online survey of rail crews across Canada carried out by their union. Those responses indicate that a high percentage of employees report for work in a fatigued state and 78% report falling asleep at work during the past month.