The Source for Railroad Injuries & Whistleblower Protection
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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…
A federal judge has confirmed the principle that “adverse action” prohibited by the Federal Railroad Safety Act is any action that would dissuade a reasonable employee from engaging in FRSA protected activities (such as reporting injuries or safety hazards or following a treating doctor’s orders). It is not limited to the actual imposition of discipline,…
For years, railroads have argued that a worker’s pursuit of collective bargaining agreement arbitration constitutes an “election of remedies” defense to a Federal Rail Safety Act claim. But after being rejected by half a dozen judges, that bogus defense was on life support. Now, in a devastating decision, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has…
Responding to my recent post about Metro North Railroad’s Spuyten Duyvil train derailment, Colin O’Keefe of LXBN interviewed me regarding the culture of rail safety on our nations railroads, and the external and internal factors that make it so subpar. Rail employees are the eyes and ears of safety on the property, but recently Congress and OSHA’s Whistleblower Directorate have confirmed…