Canada’s largest private-sector union is warning that a recent amendment to the Canada Transportation Act, which would make locomotive voice and video recorders (LVVR) mandatory on trains, would be a violation of rail employees’ privacy rights and would not improve safety as intended.
A Sept. 11 media release from Unifor charged that Bill C-49, also known as the Transportation Modernization Act, would “constitute a landmark privacy violation.” The union added that the federal government had not provided sufficient evidence that LVVRs would improve upon the black-box data recorders that the rail sector currently uses.
“Recording workers on the job is not a safety tool, it is a surveillance tool,” Unifor national president Jerry Dias said in a press statement. “Managerial digital surveillance in the transportation industry is a dangerous precedent that will eventually spread to other sectors.
“This cannot become the government standard.”
Unifor rail director Bruce Snow said in his own statement that video and audio surveillance on trains would be “an invasive and unnecessary distraction” that might increase the stress and harm the performance of railway employees.
“Our members work onboard, so they have a unique and personal investment in railway safety,” said Snow. “But federal legislation must not furnish employers with surveillance powers outside the scope of public safety.”
Sponsored by federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau, Bill C-49 passed its second reading in the House of Commons on June 19. The proposed law “amends the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board Act to allow the use or communication of an onboard recording… if that use or communication is expressly authorized under the Aeronautics Act, the National Energy Board Act, the Railway Safety Act or the Canada Shipping Act, 2001,” the bill read.
Last year, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) published a report, Expanding the use of locomotive voice and video recorders in Canada, which concluded that the use of LVVRs on trains could potentially enhance rail safety and investigations of railway accidents. Involving numerous stakeholders in the industry, the study deemed that LVVR recordings would provide valuable information to TSB investigators, as well as help to prevent accidents by identifying and mitigating risks (COHSN, Sept. 20).
Unifor representatives met with senior Transport Canada officials on Sept. 5 to discuss the bill, according to the release. The Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities began hearings on Bill C-49 on Sept. 11.
Unifor represents more than 315,000 workers in every major industry across Canada.