The Source for Railroad Injuries & Whistleblower Protection
Talk about leveling the playing field. OSHA’s FRSA Whistleblowers have sent another powerful message to rail management: sorry guys, but the days of business as usual are officially over. Supervisors are no longer free to retaliate at will against employees who raise safety concerns.
It all started when a Union Pacific Railroad Company welder performing…
The coalition of unions on Metro-North Railroad, the Metro-North Labor Council, recently met with the top administrators and whistleblower investigators from OSHA’s Regions 1 and Region 2. Every craft on the Railroad was represented by at least one rail labor official. The spokesman for OSHA was Region 2 Supervisory Investigator Michael Mabee. It was…
You know the old saying, "One man’s meat is another man’s poison"? Well, one of the highlights for me at the last National Mediation Board’s "Conference on Labor/Management Relations at the Passenger Railroads" in Washington DC was the comment of William Murphy, Deputy General Manager Labor Relations on New Jersey Transit. Speaking on behalf…
On January 16, 2009, several changes to the FMLA regulations will go into effect.
The biggest change from a worker point of view concerns how and when employee give notice of taking FMLA leave. Before, employees had up to two days after an absence to notify employers they actually were taking FMLA leave. Now–absent…
You wouldn’t know it by how railroads treat it, but the FMLA is a remedial statute that must be broadly construed to effectuate its humanitarian purpose. And the purpose of the FMLA is "to entitle employees to take reasonable leave for medical reasons," and to help working men and women "balance the demands of the…
Welcome to Train Law Blog, where all things of legal interest to railroad employees and rail labor representatives are considered.
Railroad workers live in a subculture governed by a melange of esoteric federal statutes and agencies most people (and attorneys) have never heard of: the Railway Labor Act (RLA) and the National Mediation Board (NMB)…