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Canada orders dangerous oil cars off its railways

by Junepps1b Posted on April 25, 2014

Canada orders dangerous oil cars off its railways

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Oil industry train tickets are about to expire in Canada.

Canada’s transportation department on Wednesday announced a suite of new safety rules, motivated by the horrific oil-train explosion last summer in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, which killed 47 people. The rules heavily target DOT-111 rail cars, which are widespread across the continent but are vulnerable to puncture and explode. (The U.S., meanwhile, is being outrageously slow in updating its oil-train safety rules.)

The Ottawa Citizen reports:

About 5,000 DOT-111 tanker cars are to be removed from Canadian railways within 30 days. Another 65,000 DOT-111 cars must be removed or retrofitted within three years, a timeframe rail industry experts are calling “ambitious.”

The measures didn’t fully satisfy [New Democratic Party] leader Tom Muclair. “What happens in the meantime in all those communities where this very dangerous material is being transported today?” he asked. “You can’t tell us you know that they’re dangerous and yet you’re going to continue to allow them to roll through these communities.”

[Transport Minister Lisa] Raitt said, however, that the DOT-111 cars are just one of several risk factors contributing to rail crashes. “There’s not just one aspect in mitigating risks, there’s many.”…

Effective immediately, Transport Canada will conduct risk assessments of routes where dangerous goods are transported, and establish speed limits of 50 miles per hour or less in areas that are built up or near drinking water.

Good for Canada. But what will happen with all those dangerous rail cars that are retired in Canada? Some fear that they could end up over the border, hauling explosive crude through American communities.


Source
Transport Canada orders 5,000 tanker cars off the rail system, Ottawa Citizen
Canada to phase out old railway oil tankers; won’t wait for U.S., Reuters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Elizabeth Warren Introduces Bill to Prevent Employers From Discriminating Against Poor People

by Junepps1b Posted on December 17, 2013

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and six of her colleagues in the Senate introduced a bill that would prevent employers from using credit checks in the hiring process, a practice that disproportionately hurts poor people.

Over the past few decades, credit reporting bureaus have begun selling their services not just to lenders, but to a wide range of employers. Forty-seven percent of employers check applicants’ credit history as an indicator of their employability, according to a 2012 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management. But research shows that a person’s credit score has nothing to do with her likelihood of succeeding in the workplace. The Equal Employment for All Act—co-sponsored by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.)—would prohibit the judging of applicants by this metric.

“A bad credit rating is far more often the result of unexpected medical costs, unemployment, economic downturns, or other bad breaks than it is a reflection on an individual’s character or abilities,” Warren said. “Families have not fully recovered from the 2008 financial crisis, and too many Americans are still searching for jobs. This is about basic fairness—let people compete on the merits, not on whether they already have enough money to pay all their bills.”

The bill, which is backed by over 40 community, financial reform, labor and civil rights organizations, would be a boon for low-wage workers, minority communities, and women. Credit checks used in the hiring process disproportionately disqualify people of color. Divorce tends to hit women’s finances harder than men’s, and women are also more likely to receive subprime loans than men.

Chi Chi Wu, a staff lawyer at the National Consumer Law Center in Boston, told the New York Times in May that most of the people who contacted her group complaining that they’d been denied a job because of poor credit were low-wage workers applying to big retail chains. “Someone loses their job,” she said, “so they can’t pay their bills—and now they can’t get a job because they couldn’t pay their bills because they lost a job? It’s this Catch-22 that makes no sense.”

There is ample support for the senators’ bill. In 2011, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) introduced a similar bill in the House. Nine states have adopted legislation that curbs the use of credit reports to in the hiring process.

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Elizabeth Warren Introduces Bill to Prevent Employers From Discriminating Against Poor People

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