As the clock ticked down after Thanksgiving toward a possible U.S. rail strike, union members at North Platte’s Bailey Yard were pushing Congress to endorse their North Platte-generated solution to a key issue: paid sick leave.

Congress wound up imposing September’s contract agreement without any changes, though both houses did give majority support to a separate bill that would have granted seven days’ paid sick leave to railroaders.

It failed because, to break a likely filibuster, they needed 60 votes instead of a simple 51-vote majority to get that bill through the U.S. Senate.

Understandably, our railroading neighbors are angry there weren’t enough Capitol Hill lawmakers willing to grant something many (though by no means all) of us enjoy ourselves.

But events the past week indicated their lobbying may be making inroads with Union Pacific Railroad management – albeit alongside evidence that said managers still don’t get it on another safety-related issue.

Trains magazine reported Wednesday that U.P. CEO Lance Fritz had told federal regulators the railroad wants to address the sick-leave issue, along with providing more predictable work schedules than the current 24/7/365 “on-call” system.

“We definitely want to address sick leave and certainty in time off in terms of scheduling … There’s a host of ways we can get there,” the story quoted Fritz as telling U.S. Surface Transportation Board member Robert Primus.

“There’s economics that are available to make that happen. And we are committed to making that happen this coming year.”

U.P. and the engineers union are in the midst of a pilot scheduling program in Kansas toward that end, the story added.

Well. One can hardly predict whether anything comes of this. Even so, we’re gratified as we think of our Bailey Yard union members, three of whom lobbied Capitol Hill after finding a decade-old executive order saying firms that contract with the federal government — including railroads — must provide paid sick leave to their employees.

Unfortunately, it seems railroads won’t yet recognize another inescapable problem with their strong desire to cut train crews from two people to one.

That won’t happen under the imposed agreement, which runs through 2024. But another Trains story Tuesday quoted another U.P. executive telling another set of federal regulators his line is still keen on the idea.

Rod Doerr, vice president of crew management services and interline operations, told the Federal Railroad Administration that U.P. wants unions to agree to test the one-person crew concept in four parts of its system.

Instead of on-board conductors, the railroad would employ “expediters” who would respond in ground vehicles when mechanical problems are detected on trains subsequently stopped by remote “positive train control” systems.

The first pilot program, should the unions happen to agree, would be conducted on U.P.’s Nebraska Panhandle branch line that includes the South Morrill yards near Scottsbluff.

Stephens wrote that response times of expediters and on-board conductors would be compared in that first-phase pilot program. Future phases would be conducted on U.P. lines in Colorado, the Pacific Northwest and Kansas.

Would ground-based expediters — whom U.P. says also could go home at night and have more fixed schedules — be more efficient at getting troubled trains running than in-cab conductors?

Maybe. But the story said nothing about the reason we’ve called for maintaining the two-person crew minimum: the risk of an on-board life-threatening medical emergency in western Nebraska or rural America.

It could happen to either the engineer or conductor. Either now can provide immediate medical aid to the other, which could make the difference in living or dying when even the swiftest ambulance crews might be 10, 15 or 20 minutes away in remote rural areas.

U.P.’s Powder River Basin branch line through the Panhandle happens to be one of the areas we’re most concerned about. Will this pilot program the railroad wants to run there also account for this most human factor?

Maybe, but quite frankly, we have yet to hear railroads indicate that anything else matters to them but the amount of money they can save by employing (presumably fewer) “expediters” rather than on-board conductors.

Just because something can be feasibly done doesn’t mean it should be.

We hope railroad leaders will come to recognize that, as they maybe — maybe — are doing in regard to whether granting paid sick leave makes for a better railroad.

This editorial first appeared in the North Platte Telegraph on December 18, 2022. It was distributed by The Associated Press.