Reader Comment 11-24-08

I’m late getting to this reader comment posted earlier this week about my October 20th blog "Escort Procedures for Rail Crews”. I apologize for the delay, but I’ve been sick this week and haven’t read or written anything until Thursday afternoon. In any case, Anonymous made the following comments:

“This is an excellent discussion of rail crews and TWIC. It also illustrates the severe problems that smaller faciities (sic) run into with trains and TWIC. Or rather, with escorting and TWIC. Economic hard times have pared many smaller facilities down to the bare minimum number of people needed to perform the business operation. No extras for escort. No extras to post at the gate to monitor that non-TWIC crew member because the facility doesn't have a CCTV system. However, the regulations apply across the board no matter the size of the employee workforce, and escort has to be performed.”

While the TWIC rules only apply to maritime facilities, the same comments could be made about the ‘attendance’ requirements for facilities under the Rail Transportation Security rule recently published by TSA. There will be other less obvious personnel requirements as facilities begin work on their site security plans. Security costs money. Security takes people. Take those two things together and the security guard companies are going to learn quick to have ‘rail gate guards’ available cheap. They will be paid the same type minimum wages that most unarmed guards are paid. They will have to have a little more training because of the federal rules, but not enough to make them high paid positions.