SMART Union
AMARILLO, Texas (AP) – A Texas Panhandle collision involving three freight trains has left four BNSF Railway crewmembers hurt – two critically – and derailed up to 30 cars.
The Department of Public Safety says the accident happened before dawn Wednesday just east of Amarillo.
Click here to read more.
Railroad operator BNSF Railways Co. announced plans Monday to spend $125 million expanding and improving their system in Oklahoma.
The projects include a new bypass connection at the Cherokee Yard in West Tulsa and extending a siding area on their tracks near Mannford.
Read the complete story at the Tulsa World.
BNSF Railway Co. expects to begin moving unit trains of crude oil from a Carlsbad, N.M., transload facility later this year after an expansion project is completed at the facility.
The project at the Cetane Energy L.L.C.-owned facility calls for adding track to accommodate unit train loading, and creating additional rail-car loading stations and a long-term crude-oil gathering system.
Read the full story at Progressive Railroading.
ROCKVIEW, Mo. – Seven people were injured early Saturday, May 25, when two freight trains collided, spurring the collapse of a highway overpass.
Dispatcher Clay Slipis of the Scott County Sheriff’s Department said two vehicles were on the Highway M overpass about 2:30 a.m. when a Union Pacific train T-boned a BNSF Railway train.
Read the complete story at St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Spoon River College (SRC) of Canton, Ill., Carl Sandburg College (CSC) of Galesburg, Ill. and BNSF has partnered together to offer a new Rail Transportation & Power System Technology Certificate.
Students enrolled in the program will study circuits, hydraulics, welding, diesel tractor technology, engine systems, safety in the workplace and much more. Students will have classes at both SRC and CSC. CSC offers access to a BNSF switchyard where students will get hands-on experience. SRC and BNSF have donated equipment for students to use.
BNSF and SRC realized a while ago that current engine technicians (baby boomers) are getting ready to retire. BNSF’s business is booming and so they decided to take steps now to be ready for when the large number of employees retire.
Because of the distance (46 miles or about one hour) between SRC and CSC, the usual 18-week session that is standard for other degrees of this type at the college, has been condensed down into one eight-week session.
Students coming out of the one-year program (31 credit hours) will have obtained a certificate and the experience and training required to get a job with BNSF. Classes are set to start in the fall. SRC is accepting applications for the program now.
LINCOLN, Neb. — Hackers stole the identity of 18 local people — at least 17 of them current or past BNSF workers — and used their personal information to bilk an online company out of more than $11,000.
Twelve Lincoln residents and six more who live in Lancaster County got bills from PayPal for hundreds of dollars even though they had not opened accounts with the global commerce company that operates out of La Vista, according to Lincoln Police Department and Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office records.
Read the complete story at the Journal Star.
An on-duty Chicago Metra conductor received medical attention following an assault during a botched robbery attempt at a west side passenger station Oct. 22.
According to news reports, the conductor, whose identity was not released, was transported to a hospital with unspecified injuries.
The alleged robber, who was said by witnesses to have displayed a knife during the attempt to rob the conductor, was later captured by police.
BNSF operates that commuter service under contract with Chicago Metra.
In ice hockey, the scoring by one player of three goals is called a “hat trick.” In baseball, a player striking out four times in a single game is said to have earned a “golden sombrero.”
Norfolk Southern’s feat is to have earned from OSHA a still unnamed fifth significant sanction in recent months for violating – through harassment, intimidation and unwarranted discipline — the rights of injured employees or those attempting to report a safety concern.
While other railroads have earned one or more recent rebukes from OSHA, Norfolk Southern seems headed for a gold medal in this dubious category of employee harassment, intimidation and unwarranted discipline.
OSHA says the reason has been the railroad’s single-minded, if not narrow minded, determination to be declared the nation’s safest railroad – albeit through harassing, intimidating and disciplining workers not to report their workplace injuries.
Norfolk Southern denies the allegations and is appealing each of the OSHA actions.
BNSF, which also has been sanctioned numerous times by OSHA for similar violations of the rights of injured and safety-conscious employees, recently took the art of intimidation to a new level by attempting to coerce employee witnesses to its alleged violations to allow a BNSF attorney in the room when questioned by OSHA investigators. BNSF denies its intent is to intimidate those employees from being candid with OSHA investigators.
“Railroad workers throughout this country have the right to report an injury without fear of retaliation,” said Cindy Coe, OSHA’s regional administrator in Atlanta. OSHA, she said, “will continue to protect” rail workers from employer retaliation, and employers found in violation “will be held accountable.”
As reported by the Norfolk, Va., Virginian Pilot newspaper, four of the five OSHA-determined violations were announced within months of Norfolk Southern’s winning the railroad industry’s E.H. Harriman gold medal safety award in May for the 23rd year in a row.
“The Harriman program, in place for nearly 100 years, quietly ended with this year’s awards, though news releases about this year’s winners from Norfolk Southern and the Association of American Railroads did not explicitly state that the program was over,” reported the newspaper. “The industry group did not say why it ended.”
A Norfolk Southern spokesperson told the newspaper there was “no connection” between its OSHA-determined violation of employee rights under federal law and the ending of the Harriman program.
The UTU and other rail labor organizations have long held that the Harriman awards program encouraged carrier supervisors to harass, intimidate and discipline injured and safety-conscious employees in an effort to earn cash bonuses and promotions in conjunction with their railroad’s winning of a Harriman gold, silver or bronze medal.
The award is named after the late railroad baron Edward Henry Harriman who, during the late 19th and early 20th century, held financial control of Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, Illinois Central, Central of Georgia, plus other smaller railroads, a steamship line and Wells Fargo Express.
The UTU documented in 2007 that a Norfolk Southern supervisor posed as a clergyman to enter the hospital room of an injured worker. Once there, according to obtained evidence, he tried to convince the attending physician not to prescribe a particular medication, which would have required reporting the injury to the Federal Railroad Administration and putting the winning of a Harriman gold medal at risk.
The Federal Railroad Safety Act of 1970 extended whistleblower protection to employees who are retaliated against for reporting an injury or illness requiring medical attention. The Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 added additional requirements ensuring injured workers receive prompt medical attention.
Their purpose is to protect rail workers from retaliation and threats of retaliation when they report injuries or illness, report that a carrier violated safety laws or regulations, or if the employee refuses to work under certain unsafe conditions or refuses to authorize the use of safety related equipment.
An employer is outright prohibited from disciplining an employee for requesting medical or first-aid treatment, or for following a physician’s orders, a physician’s treatment plan, or medical advice.
Retaliation, including threats of retaliation, is defined as firing or laying off, blacklisting, demoting, denying overtime or promotion, disciplining, denying benefits, failing to rehire, intimidation, reassignment affecting promotion prospects, or reducing pay or hours.
UTU designated legal counsel have pledged to investigate and assist UTU members in bringing complaints under these laws.
A rail employee may file a whistle-blower complaint directly with OSHA, or may contact a UTU designated legal counsel, general chairperson or state legislative director for assistance.
A listing of UTU designated legal counsel is available at:
https://www.smart-union.org/td/designated-legal-counsel/
or may be obtained from local or general committee officers or state legislative directors.
To view a more detailed OSHA fact sheet, click on the following link:
www.osha.gov/Publications/OSHA-factsheet-whistleblower-railroad.pdf
The UTU and the Sheet Metal Workers International Association (SMWIA), along with two other rail labor organizations, have filed a complaint with the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), alleging BNSF has expanded its harassment and intimidation of injured workers to include the targeting of witnesses.
In recent months, OSHA has imposed millions of dollars in sanctions against railroads – including BNSF – for violating federal laws that provide protections for injured rail workers and those reporting safety violations.
The UTU and the SMWIA – now combined as the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART) — along with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen — filed a complaint with OSHA July 31 alleging that BNSF officials in Montana are attempting “to interfere with an OSHA investigation into possible violations of the Federal Rail Safety Act” as reported by BNSF employees.
BNSF has written to possible witnesses, asking if they would “object” to having a BNSF representative present during their interview by OSHA investigators.
“Plainly,” states the rail organizations’ complaint, “any employee receiving a communication like this, however innocently couched from the company, will be intimidated by the knowledge that the company is looking over his/her shoulder insofar as providing information to OSHA is concerned.”
The Federal Railroad Safety Act of 2007 extended whistleblower protection to employees retaliated against for reporting injuries, illnesses or safety concerns.
The complaint filed with OSHA says, “We do not know how BNSF was able to identify these employees as witnesses,” as OSHA previously rejected a BNSF demand that OSHA disclose to BNSF the names of employee witnesses. OSHA told BNSF that “such requests are wholly inappropriate and that OSHA will not comply with them.”
OSHA previously has made clear that “the safety of railroad employees depends on workers’ ability to report injuries, incidents and hazards without fear of retaliation.”
The rail labor organizations urged OSHA to “immediately contact BNSF and sternly rebuke the carrier for this inappropriate conduct. The confidentiality protections in the Federal Railroad Safety Act’s governing regulations and OSHA’s Whistleblower Investigations Manual require nothing less.”
Additionally, the rail organizations cited a June 1 OSHA letter to BNSF stating that “OSHA assumes that BNSF [legal] counsel would be well aware of the conflict of interest that would inevitably arise if BNSF’s attorney were to represent both the corporation and non-managerial employees in a whistleblower case.” The complaint says, “Apparently, BNSF did not see fit to explain that conflict of interest when approaching these employees and offering to be their ‘liaison’ with OSHA.
“No railroad employee [should be] intimidated from filing a complaint initiating an OSHA investigation or from participating in such an investigation, or in any way retaliated against by his/her employer for doing so,” said the rail organizations in their complaint.
Between 2007 and 2012, OSHA received more than 900 whistleblower complaints under the Federal Rail Safety Act.
BNSF has a history of attempting to violate federal laws protecting workers. In March, following a complaint by the UTU and the SMWIA to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), BNSF rescinded a proposed new rule that would have required its employees to provide highly personal medical information.
The UTU and the SMWIA told the EEOC that the BNSF would be in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Civil Rights Act and other federal statutes by requiring employees provide the railroad with doctor’s notes, diagnostic test results and hospital discharge summaries that could disclose non-workplace injuries and illnesses. BNSF rescinded the proposed new rule prior to EEOC action.
During the month of May, one UTU member was killed in North Dakota in a rail switching accident, another was murdered on his bus route in Los Angeles, and another lost a foot in Missouri in a yard switching accident.
On CP Rail (Soo Line) in Kenmare, N.D., conductor Robert J. Glasgow, 38 (UTU Local 887, Harvey, N.D.) died May 28 while setting out cars as part of a two-person crew at a CP yard. Kenmare is some 50 miles northwest of Minot.
Initial reports are that Glasgow had mounted the lead car of 28 cars being switched conventionally when the lead car sideswiped other cars. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital following evacuation by a local emergency medical crew. The Federal Railroad Administration is investigating.
Glasgow, of Minot, N.D., who had six years’ service as a maintenance-of-way employee, had been a conductor for some 10 months.
Los Angeles County Metropolitican Transportation Authority (LACMTA) bus operator Alan Thomas was shot to death May 20 aboard his coach in Los Angeles. Click on the following link to learn more about that fatal shooting:
https://www.smart-union.org/news/utu-member-bus-driver-murdered-in-los-angeles/
On BNSF in Crystal City, Mo., some 40 miles south of St. Louis, brakeman Mike J. Bolen, 50, reportedly tripped while walking alongside eight cars being conventionally switched and suffered severe trauma to his right leg when struck – but not run over — by one of the moving cars. Hospital physicians reportedly later amputated the brakeman’s right foot. The FRA is also investigating this May 28 accident.
Bolen, of Jackson, Mo., had eight years’ service and is a member of UTU Local 947 (Chaffee, Mo.)
Glasgow is the second UTU rail member killed on duty in 2012. Local 1383 (Gary, Ind.) member Michal M. Shoemaker, 55, was killed in a switching accident Jan. 30 in Gary, Ind.
Ten UTU rail members were killed on duty in calendar year 2011, eight in 2010 and eight in 2009.
For information on rail safety — including rail yard safety — click on the following link: