"An Injury to One Is An Injury To All"
Report
of the
Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division
of the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
to the
House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
and its effect on the
Amtrak Maintenance of Way Worker
and
Safe working Conditions
An Injury to One Is An Injury To All
The BMWED has extensive experience with Amtrak on the issues that drive Amtrak's safety culture. It is our members and Amtrak's customers who pay with our lives, and life changing injuries, when Amtrak management ignores their obligations to operate a safe railroad. Hopefully, with your help we can reverse the downward spiral on safety that began with the Boardman administration. Under Joe Boardman the Amtrak safety program was characterized by corruption, chaos and incompetence that wiped out the gains in safety made by his predecessors who worked jointly with the BMWED on this issue.
An Injury to One Is An Injury To Allry To All
Continue reading this report to the House T&I Committee beginning with General Chairman Dodd's February 15, 2018, letter linked below along with supporting attachments, all which support that Amtrak management does not consider Safety as the First Importance in the Discharge of Duty.
An Injury to One Is An Injury To All
| February 15, 2018 |
General Chairman Dodd's letter and report to House T&I Committee leaders |
| Attachment A |
Amtrak Engineering Safety Statistics |
| Attachment B |
Amtrak Engineering Department Fatalities |
| Attachment C |
Amtrak Engineering Department No Fault Close Call Reporting Policy |
| Attachment D |
Amtrak Terminates Safety Agreements with BMWED |
| Attachment E |
Amtrak Office of Inspector General; Safety and Security |
| Attachment F |
Close Calls and the Need to Reform to Prevent Tragedy |
| Attachment G |
Amtrak's Cardinal Rules Program, Amtrak Spreads the Fear |
| Attachment H |
"For Big Railroads, a Carload of Whistleblower Complaints" |
| Attachment I |
General Chairman Dodd's letter to BMWED re: Chester Accident, and Joey Boardman's letter to Amtrak's Union employees |
| Attachment J |
Jan. 9, 2017 letter from Engineering Unions describing current state of safety |
| Attachment K |
June 6 and 17, 2016 letters to Amtrak Board of Directors requesting Close Call Policy be Reinstated |
| Attachment L |
BMWED March 23, 2017 letter to Wick Moorman |
| Attachment M |
House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Letter to Richard Anderson dated January 17, 2018 |
An Injury to One Is An Injury To Allry To All
An Injury to One Is An Injury To Allry To All
The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the April 3, 2016, derailment of Amtrak train 89 near Chester, Pennsylvania, and the worker fatalities and injuries was caused by deficient safety management across many levels of Amtrak and the resultant lack of a clear, consistent and accepted vision for safety.
“Amtrak’s safety culture is failing, and is primed to fail again, until and unless Amtrak changes the way it practices safety management,” said NTSB Chairman Robert L. Sumwalt. “Investigators found a labor-management relationship so adversarial that safety programs became contentious at the bargaining table, with the unions ultimately refusing to participate.”
The NTSB strongly recommended that Amtrak:
1) Work with labor to achieve full participation in all applicable safety programs.
2) Work collaboratively with labor to develop and implement a viable safety reporting system (for example, C3RS); ensure that employees do not experience reprisal for using the system; respond quickly on the data collected; and communicate any resulting safety improvements to all employees.
3) Work collaboratively with labor in an effort to develop a comprehensive safety management system program that complies with pending Federal Railroad Administration regulation Title 49 Code of Federal Regulations Part 270, System Safety Program, and that vitalizes safety goals and programs with executive management accountability; incorporates risk management controls for all operations affecting employees, contractors, and the traveling public; improves continually through safety data monitoring and feedback; and is promoted at all levels of the company.
4) Once [the previous safety recommendation] is completed, implement the safety management system program throughout the company with resources sufficient to ensure that all levels of management and all labor unions involved with Amtrak operations accept and comply with the system.
An Injury to One Is An Injury To All
An Injury to One Is An Injury To All
