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The Militant (logo)
Vol. 79/No. 33 September 21, 2015
(front page)
Framed-up rail workers win
support in Quebec town
BY JOHN STUDER
LAC-MÉGANTIC, Quebec — After less that 15 minutes, Judge François Tôth
ordered further delay in the Canadian government’s frame-up campaign
against rail workers Thomas Harding and Richard Labrie, as well as
company operating manager Jean DeMaître. They are threatened with life
in prison, as scapegoats for the July 6, 2013, disaster where a crewless
Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway train carrying 72 cars of crude oil
rolled down a grade, derailed and burst into flame, destroying the
downtown here and killing 47 people.
Tôth set a Dec. 1 court “management hearing” where lawyers for the
government and the defendants would discuss potential witnesses and
possible trial dates, and debate a government proposal to move the trial
from Lac-Mégantic to Sherbrooke, a college town some 100 miles away.
“The crown doesn’t want the trial in Lac-Mégantic,” Thomas Walsh,
attorney for Harding, told the Militant, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
and other media after the hearing. “But it is the people here who were
affected. They are in the best position to judge. All they want is
justice.”
And many know Harding, who has been running trains through the area for
years. They think the wrong people are in the dock.
“The big bosses should be charged. They’re the ones that gave the orders
to the workers who had to carry them out,” Sylvie Carrier, an auxiliary
nurse at the local hospital and member of the Quebec nurses union, told
Communist League member John Steele from Montreal and this reporter as
we went door to door showing people coverage on the defense campaign
from the Militant and asking them what they thought.
“Tom Harding doesn’t deserve this, he isn’t guilty of anything,” said
Françoise Roy, owner of the Passion Chocolat shop a few hundred yards
from the center of the explosion. “Most of the population here thinks
like me. He has slept in the inn here on runs for years. The directors
of the MMA have to take the responsibility. We have to fight for justice.”
Workers said similar things at the motel where we stayed and at various
restaurants, including the rebuilt Musi-Cafe restaurant, where 27 people
died and the building was destroyed in the disaster.
“Lac-Mégantic is behind Tom Harding,” said Passion Chocolat server Aline
Savard.
Workers have stake in fighting frame-up
The fight against the frame-up has substantial stakes for rail workers
and the entire working class.
The 2013 disaster was bound to happen. In search of profits, rail bosses
have been pushing to run trains with ever-smaller crews. While it was
normal for a train to operate with a caboose on the back and a
five-person crew 30 years ago, today the caboose is long gone and crew
sizes are two and sometimes one.
The Canadian government’s Transport Canada gave Montreal, Maine and
Atlantic Railway a special dispensation to run cargo, including crude
oil, with only one worker on the train.
The workday on many rail lines has been lengthened to 12 hours.
Schedules are erratic. Fatigue is rampant. Track inspectors have been
cut and repairs postponed. Train lengths have grown.
Harding and Labrie are backed by their union, the United Steelworkers,
which has raised funds for their defense. Literature on the disaster,
the conditions facing rail workers and the defense effort are available
on the websites of the Transportation Division of the SMART union, which
organizes rail workers in the U.S.; the Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers and Trainmen division of the Teamsters; and the Tom Harding
Defense Fund, a site put up by a former co-worker of Harding who used to
make the Lac-Mégantic run and now works for Amtrak in the Albany area.
Since the disaster, Montreal, Maine and Atlantic declared bankruptcy.
The Canadian state chose not to file charges against MMA’s bosses.
The $72 billion Fortress Investment Group has taken over the railroad,
renamed it Central Maine and Quebec, and restarted operation. It says it
will run timber products, chemicals and fertilizers, grain and “energy
products and fuels.” The tracks are being relaid right through the
downtown area leveled two years ago. The company says it won’t ship
hazardous materials like volatile crude “until at least Jan. 1, 2016.”
Workers in the area are organizing. Noting that the company’s tracks are
riddled with rotting ties and torn up spikes, one group has begun to
circulate a petition demanding the city bar all rail transport of
hazardous material. They took us for a walk on the tracks and we could
see the dangerously eroded ties for ourselves.
“We started petitioning a little over a week ago,” committee leader
André Blais told us when we met with him and four other activists.
“We’ve got well over 1,000 signatures.” The official population of
Lac-Mégantic is 6,036.
“We are looking toward organizing a public march in October,” he said.
Harding’s attorney Walsh will attend the Sept. 19 Railroad Safety:
Workers, Community and the Environment conference in Chicago that is
being organized by Railroad Workers United and a number of area
environmental groups. The conference plans to discuss the Lac-Mégantic
disaster and the witch-hunt against Harding, organizer Mark Burrows told
the Militant.
John Steele contributed to this article.
Related articles:
Labor Day actions marked by fights against bosses’ attacks
On the Picket Line
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