(The following story by Lindsay Peterson appeared on the Tampa Tribune website on May 2.)

TAMPA, Fla. — Bobby Lightfoot braced himself as the train engineer hit the brakes in the Polk County rail yard, but the hard stop rippled through the railroad cars to where Lightfoot stood, throwing him over a railing and onto the pavement 8 feet below.

On the way to Brandon Regional Hospital later, one of Lightfoot's bosses at CSX Transportation told him what to do - to keep the company from having to report his injury to the federal government.

"Don't let them give you a prescription," Lightfoot says he was told. When a nurse gave him a sling, he gave it back. Not because he didn't need it but because the sling would also trigger the reporting requirement. "If my supervisors saw me in that, they'd go into orbit," he said.

Lightfoot's experience in 2003 mirrors several detailed in a Federal Railroad Administration report released last week.

The report said the actions of certain CSX supervisors sent the "chilling" message throughout the CSX system that workers who reported on-the-job injuries and sought medical treatment would be penalized.

Florida transportation officials are proposing a partnership with CSX as part of a multimillion-dollar deal to buy CSX tracks for an Orlando commuter rail system. The commuter trains would share the tracks with CSX freight trains, and the state would take the liability for accidents on the line, even those caused by CSX.

The liability provision requires the approval of the Florida Legislature and has passed in the House. It was stripped out of the Senate's transportation bill, but supporters of the deal say it could be restored before the session ends today.

Last week's federal report repeated the findings of October's draft report, adding details of 19 cases from Georgia to New York in which federal officials say CSX's harassment and intimidation of injured workers violated safety rules.

CSX pays bonuses to supervisors who keep injury reports low. The company boasted to shareholders last year that its "reportable injury" rate had dropped 40 percent in three years.

Federal regulators say that stifling injury reporting can disguise serious safety problems, and the rail administration report recommended that the company be fined.

Based in Jacksonville, CSX is a Fortune 500 company that operates in 23 states with about 35,000 employees. It controls about 1,700 miles of tracks across Florida.

In response to the federal report and other harassment allegations, spokesman Gary Sease said the company "does not tolerate intimidation or harassment of injured employees."

The company has implemented measures to correct the "isolated instances of this behavior" that federal inspectors found, Sease said.

"We will remain vigilant to ensure that all managers and employees continue to adhere to CSX's rules and ethics, including the proper care for employees who are injured and the correct reporting of that injury consistent with company and federal requirements."

Charges that railroad companies harass injured workers go back decades, federal officials say. It was so bad in the 1990s that in 1996 the federal government required companies to adopt detailed anti-harassment programs. In 2003, the Federal Railroad Administration addressed renewed problems at CSX.

Its report last week said that it was particularly concerned when it received complaints from two railroad unions in August 2006 that CSX officers were harassing workers, trying to "manage the injury reporting numbers, instead of managing safety."

After a yearlong investigation, the rail administration's safety office found that many of the union complaints were valid.

Worker Fired After Making Report

The report describes CSX supervisors telling workers that reporting an injury could end their careers. One worker was fired after making a report.

In case after case, supervisors told injured workers to return prescriptions they'd received and have their doctors remove medication orders from their records. In one case, a man who had injured his leg and foot in a derailment was told he couldn't have crutches. The railroad is required to report all injuries serious enough for the worker to need prescription drugs or medical equipment, including crutches and slings.

In the 2006 derailment case in Russell, Ky., the injured man was prevented from going home after being treated at the emergency room. Instead, he was driven to CSX offices, where supervisors lifted him into an office chair, rolled him into a room and questioned him for four hours.

In a 2005 case in Atlanta, a man who had damaged his wrist moving a piece of equipment was discouraged from seeing his doctor. He was also told that the way his supervisor "earns his pay is not to have any reportable injuries," the federal report said.

Several of the injury cases the federal agency investigated involved larger safety problems, such as a derailment, defective equipment and leaking chemicals.

Five CSX workers in Florida interviewed by the Tribune said employee harassment continues. The federal legislative director of the United Transportation Union, which represents (some) railroad workers, agreed.

"We know this is still a continuing problem and hope there's improvement," said the union's James Brunkenhoefer.

Supervisor 'Chewed Me Up'

Lightfoot, 54, said one of the first things he thought after flying off the train south of Bradley Junction was that he didn't want the trouble he knew would come with an injury report.

In 1990, he was badly shaken up when the train he was conducting hit a pickup. An emergency room doctor gave him prescription drugs, but his bosses told him to return them, and he did.

Six years later, he complained about a loud ringing in his ears after a hose popped near his head. Instead of taking Lightfoot to a doctor, he said, a supervisor took him to a drugstore for medicine.

Lightfoot already had a reputation for calling the CSX hot line to report safety problems he saw on the tracks. Bosses called him "Hot Line Lightfoot," he said. After a knee injury in 2001, he said, a supervisor took him into a room and lambasted him as the "most unsafe" employee he knew.

"He chewed me up one side and down the other," Lightfoot said. "They say they want you to report things, but when you do, they don't like it."

In 2003, Lightfoot was in the middle of his shift when he was thrown off the train, landing on his feet. His back began to hurt, but he hoped it would ease up, so he finished his shift. The next morning, he could barely move his shoulder, which was twisted as he lost his grip on the rail car railing. He called a supervisor, who took him to the hospital in Brandon.

By the end of the next weekend, Lightfoot's back was worse. Soon diagnosed with a sprain, he left his conducting duties for physical therapy. After returning to work five months later, he hurt his back again pulling hard on a rail switch to shift rail traffic from one set of tracks to another.

This time, Lightfoot said, his supervisor in Tampa was so angry at the news that he brought Lightfoot into a room, saying Lightfoot couldn't leave until he explained in detail what had happened.

The conversation became heated and Lightfoot said he finally left the room. His medical records show that discs in his middle and lower back had ruptured.

He hasn't been back to work at CSX since that day in November 2003. His doctor told him that if he didn't leave the railroad, he'd wind up in a wheelchair, said his wife, Sandra.

Lightfoot sued CSX in his 2003 accident when he was flipped off the train. A jury found that CSX's negligence contributed to the accident, but it held Lightfoot partly responsible, too. A judge ordered CSX to pay $240,600. After attorney fees and court costs, Lightfoot said he got about $115,000.

Despite her husband's bad experiences, Sandra Lightfoot says he misses the railroad, where he worked for 31 years. "He switches cars in his sleep," she said. "He'll say, 'You watch out, somebody's going to get hurt on that.'"

Friday, May 02, 2008

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Rail union employees from Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern railroads testified yesterday before a House committee about how their supervisors discouraged them from reporting serious accidents or even delayed treatment for their injuries.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing focused on harassment and intimidation of rail workers. Some railroads coerce employees to not report on-the-job accidents and injuries. Thus, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) may never be notified about a large number of injuries and accidents. As a result, FRA safety statistics may not accurately reflect the number of accidents and injuries in the industry.

“I was struck in the head by a piece of steel on a rail car brought into Kansas City,” said Greg Haskins, a former Union Pacific employee. “When I came to, I was lying face down in my own blood. No call to 911 was ever made. No one volunteered to rush me to an emergency room.”

Haskins did not receive medical attention for more than two hours. He finally was sent home to take aspirin, his head bandaged. The following day, through intervention of his family, he was seen by a neurological surgeon in Kansas City and diagnosed with Post Concussive Syndrome. Haskins now suffers from depression and other serious medical issues and no longer works on the rails, something that was once his lifelong ambition.

Former Norfolk Southern employee Timothy Knisely testified that when he attempted to disconnect an air hose from a set of rail cars, the hose broke loose, continually striking him in the head, chest, arms and legs with 80 pounds of pressure.

“The trainmaster tried to persuade me to not report the injury,” Knisely said. “But I resisted his pressure and reported it. The next day I was charged with making a false report. After 27 years of dedicated and loyal service to the railroad, I was subsequently charged with lying about being struck in the head and eventually fired.”

David Cook, a former CSX locomotive engineer and a member of Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) Division 769 in Sanford, Florida, also testified about his experiences after being injured on the railroad. In closing his statement, he implored the Committee to ensure that railroad workers are treated better.

“U.S. workers deserve to be treated with dignity and respect in their workplace and this has not been happening,” Cook said. “U.S. railroad companies are guilty as charged based on the clear facts. While the U.S. railroads should continue to educate employees to improve safety, intimidating employees through threats and false FRA test failures is an unacceptable means of creating misleading and faulty safety records.”

“Haskins, Knisley and Cook’s experiences are just three examples of mistreatment that rail employees are forced to endure,” said John Tolman, Vice President and National Legislative Representative of the BLET during testimony at the hearing. “We are here today to bring experiences like these to light.”

Tolman also thanked lawmakers for passage last week of H.R. 2095, the Federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act of 2007. Included in the bill is a provision that guarantees the right to prompt medical attention and makes it unlawful for a railroad to interfere in the relationship between an injured railroad worker and his or her doctor.

The Teamsters Rail Conference represents more than 70,000 locomotive engineers, trainmen and maintenance of way workers who are members of the BLET and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division (BMWED). The Teamsters Union was founded in 1903 and represents more than 1.4 million hard working men and women in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.

Friday, October 26, 2007
bentley@ble.org

(The following story by Rob Juteau appeared on the Evening Times website on March 15.)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — After Monday’s freight train derailment in the city of Oneida that sent fireballs into the sky and forced the shutdown of schools, roads and communities for miles around, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer, D - NY, Wednesday called for the creation of a new National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Railroad Administration and Department of Homeland Security task force to investigate the cause of the accident, as well as the repeated incidents involving CSX freight trains across upstate New York.

Monday’s derailment was the fifth involving CSX in New York since December, which had prompted Schumer and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to immediately urge a federal investigation into railroad safety across the state. National Transportation Safety Board investigators arrived at the crash site Tuesday. On Wednesday, Schumer issued a report citing 23 other rail accidents in five counties of Central New York from 2000 to 2006. Those 23 rail accidents included four each in Herkimer and Montgomery counties and caused $2.3 million in damage.

“Lately we’ve had an accident almost every other week around the state,” Schumer said during a telephone conference call with reporters. “Enough is enough. For far too long, CSX has failed to prevent these incidents and protect upstate New York communities from recurring accidents. Federal regulators have not done nearly enough to crack down on the rail companies after accidents to improve and secure the rail infrastructure across the state. The task force would have the sole focus of getting to the root cause of these accidents to ensure that CSX is taking all necessary steps to avoid a catastrophe. Unfortunately, CSX’s track record this year may have put us collision course for disaster.”

The senator added that Monday’s accident was just one in a series of dozens of accidents, derailments and fatal crashes that CSX has been involved in across upstate New York. The most recent accident occurred when a CSX train traveling from Buffalo to the CSX rail yard in Selkirk derailed, igniting liquid propane tanks that created explosions that lit the dawn sky. There were 80 cars on the freight train, including 40 propane cars and two containing non-toxic inhalant hazardous material. Twenty-eight of the 80 cars jumped the tracks.

Schumer said that had the train derailed earlier — it passed through downtown Syracuse shortly before the accident — the explosion could have been devastating and chemicals could have been spewed throughout the heavily populated area. The crash forced the evacuation of hundreds in the community, closed schools and shut down a large section of the Thruway, leading to back-ups throughout Central New York.

Spokesmen for CSX and the Federal Railroad Administration responded that safety records have improved statewide and nationally last year, and for the company both last year and so far this year. “We’re not happy with any accident. We’re not happy with the fact we’ve had certain high-profile incidents this year,” CSX spokesman Robert Sullivan told the Associated Press, adding the company cooperates with all federal agencies.

“The train accident in Oneida and other recent major rail accidents in New York state are of great concern to me, and over the past 90-days I have directed the Federal Railroad Administration to take aggressive steps to find out what went wrong,” Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph H. Boardman said. “The FRA is actively conducting comprehensive accident investigations, performing a safety review of railroad bridges in western New York and scheduling one of our automated track inspection vehicles to check track across the state this spring. I have also personally met with CSX senior executives to discuss their rail safety problems and the results of a FRA focused inspection on CSX property. I am committed to taking all necessary action to determine why these accidents happened and will assess penalties against those who violated federal rail safety regulations. I have also asked the FRA regional office to expedite our investigations into CSX accidents in New York so we can use the findings to guide our next actions to prevent future accidents from occurring.”

The cleanup continued Wednesday, with eight families still kept from their homes within a half-mile radius, Madison County Fire Coordinator Joe DeFrancisco said. “We’re still burning off propane from some of the tank cars that have remaining product. They’re uplifting cars and moving them out,” he told the Associated Press. One car contained ferric chloride, a mild acid, and some leaked and requires special cleanup.

The cause of the derailment and a timetable for reopening the track have not been determined yet, Sullivan said Wednesday.

Air quality monitoring is continuing with no toxic fumes detected.

The senator’s data showed that 572 upstate rail accidents in the past seven years have caused $34 million in damage.

“To date CSX and other rail companies have gotten off with just a slap on the wrist,” Schumer said. “Unfortunately, the previous Congress failed to address these issues and let the railroads run the show and we have seen the results. We’ve got to find out what CSX is doing wrong.”

CSX’s response was to investigate each accident and try to ensure it was not repeated, as well as ongoing training, and spending on infrastructure that reached $1.4 billion last year, Sullivan said. “Last year, I believe, we had reduction in train accidents of 24 percent, and so far this year versus last year we have a reduction of 28 percent,” he said.

U.S. Department of Transportation data shows total train accidents across the country declined for the second year in a row last year, falling from 3,236 in 2005 to 2,834 in 2006. The number of accidents fell from 105 to 89 in New York state.

Schumer said the new joint task force should have the sole authority to investigate the recent CSX crashes in upstate New York, determine their cause and asses whether CSX has done enough to fix any past problems and prevent future accidents. At the conclusion of the investigation, the task force would turn over any findings of negligence to the appropriate law enforcement authorities if warranted.

The senator also wrote to the chairman and ranking members of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the freight rail industry, asking for immediate hearings on freight rail safety.

Schumer is the author of the bi-partisan Rail Crossing and Hazardous Materials Transport Act, which sets tougher minimum and maximum fines for fatal accidents and establishes new requirements for investigations, inspections and the use of new safety technology. The legislation aims to crack down on negligent railroad companies and require the broader use of modern technology to protect the public from more fatal crossing and hazardous materials accidents. The bill raises the minimum civil penalty for gross negligence resulting in a fatality to $50,000 and the maximum to $10,000,000. For gross negligence not resulting in a fatality, the fine will be at least $5,000 and not more than $2,500,000.

The legislation sets strict age restrictions for cars carrying hazardous materials by requiring every car be inspected and upgraded every 15 years. In addition, all rail cars 15 years or older currently in use must be inspected and brought up to federal code within one year. The bill would also create a new infrastructure grant program that would authorize $50 million in federal funding to complete vital infrastructure improvements.

Monday, March 19, 2007