Charlie Goetsch

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Amtrak’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) is supposed to investigate and remedy retaliation against employees who blow the whistle on contractor fraud or safety hazards. But in a ruling that raises serious questions about Amtrak’s commitment to whistle blower protection, OSHA has found Amtrak terminated one of its own OIG Supervisors for raising concerns about

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In a major decision with national implications, the Administrative Review Board confirms that Federal Rail Safety Act subsection (c)(2) does indeed protect treatments for non-work related medical conditions. Williams v. Grand Trunk Western Railroad. In so doing, the ARB explicitly rejects the 3rd Circuit’s holding in Bala v. PATH, which imposed a work

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Recognizing it’s hard to blow the whistle once you’ve been gagged, OSHA has issued new guidelines prohibiting the use of gag and confidentiality clauses in settlement agreements. See Policy Guidelines for Approving Settlement Agreements in Whistleblower Cases.
OSHA reviews settlement agreements between whistleblowers and their employers “to ensure they are fair, adequate, reasonable, and in

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Another Circuit Court has clarified the standard for awarding punitive damages to rail whistleblowers, this time in the context of jury instructions.
 After Springfield Terminal Railway Company fired Jason Worcester for raising safety concerns, he filed a Federal Rail Safety Act whistleblower complaint in federal court.  The district judge instructed the jury that:
 you can

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You can tell a lot about a workplace culture by how managers react to employee safety complaints. Enlightened managers welcome safety complaints, benighted managers suppress them. Enlightened managers view such complaints as a valuable opportunity for improvement, and underscore the first importance of safety by publicly thanking those employees. Benighted managers view such complaints as…