A. The answer is unknown at this time. We're still "pushing the envelope" to the max!

Excerpted from the Daily News:

Two Veolia bus drivers filed lawsuits in May and June against the French firm, but the cases have been consolidated into a class-action lawsuit involving all the company's California employees, Brian Kabateck, a lead attorney in the case, said Friday.

"These drivers weren't being given meal breaks, rest breaks, and often not being given the opportunity to take a bathroom break," Kabateck said. "If they were hungry, they were told they could eat their lunch on their lap while driving."

The lawsuit, first reported by The Daily Journal of Los Angeles, also alleges drivers were not paid overtime after working eight hours and did not pay all wages when an employee's position was terminated.

The lawsuit seeks back wages, statutory penalties and changes in Veolia's working practices, Kabateck said.

Veolia, which contracts workers to Metrolink, provides bus, rail, taxi and other transport services throughout North America.

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Nothing like having modern-day working conditions similar to what slaves endured in the deep south a century ago.

Similar to the stunts they've been pulling with these bus drivers, Veolia / Connex is trying to see how much productivity they can wring out of a Metrolink employee during a given shift. Some of the Metrolink runs have ridiculously short turnaround time frames from when a crew brings a train into an end-point and is expected to reverse direction and get it back out on the road again. If the train arrives late at the turnaround end point, then that just eats into what is already a ridiculously short time that the crew is expected to get the train reversed and back out on the road.

Hopefully, the FRA, NTSB and the state PUC can find a way to investigate this cruel and unsual working condition, but don't hold your breath.

This is just one of the MANY problems that Metrolink has. When, or if, the housecleaning and reforms are ever instituted, hopefully someone can look into this.

And, in an unrelated note, the three-letter station code for Oxnard is OXN.